Insomnia and Tinnitus : your experiences ? Best strategies ?

Hello there,

I have experimented tinnitus since one year and a half (august 2019), and since its catastrophic. I had been very anxious and flurried, also some kind of depression came. Very tired and anxious. Sleep insomnia came also.

Since i have to say its better. The day i am not thinking too much about it. The only serious problem left is sleep disorder, namely insomnia. I think i sleep between 5-6 hours average per night, when before tinnitus i slept 8 hours average. So i feel very tired and depressed, and its really difficult to live with. So i must say in general i am very very bad (tired and depressed with lack of sleep).

Until now my strategy was to ignore looking information on internet and avoid the most impossible thinking about it. Resilience. Hoping some better days would arrive, and make the best efforts possible despite my tiredness. But i have to admit its not working, so now i try another strategy, looking for information on internet and find best strategies to get correct sleep with tinnitus.

My hope is not to reduce tinnitus (its seems really unlikely) but to sleep correctly despite its. I have met people with tinnitus but sleeping well, so there are "variance" also inside population tinnitus people Unfortunately it seems on average there is a strong statistical correlation between tinnitus and sleep disorders.

I have to say that i had also previous health problems before tinnitus ( this was a topic discussing about health impacts on BJ i created four years ago where i indicated some weaknesses (www.blackjacktheforum.com/sh...cluding-Sleep), i made a deep depression in 2014).

Still, i am 100 % sure that my general condition sharply decreased (let say i was 5/10 and now 2.5/10) with tinnitus and sleep insomnia since 18 months.

I post on this forum not to complain and get commiseration, but because i know chess players in average are smarter than average population, so i would likely get good contents than other web-places. That is a pragmatical choice

Anyone had this kind of problems and get good information ?

Hi there,

I have had tinnitus since March 2015, it's definitely the hardest at the start. At this point I don't even think about it unless I'm trying to go to sleep.

I would HIGHLY recommend buying a white noise machine- it's helped me sleep again. They cost like $20 on Amazon, and it's been pivotal to helping me sleep. I listen to sounds of rain and it overrides the tinnitus and also relaxes me, so I'm able to sleep. If you don't want to buy one you can download an mp3 of some kind of white noise like rain sounds on your phone and listen to that, although I would recommend doing this with your phone in airplane mode so that you can sleep more easily. This also has the benefit of making you sleepier when you are listening to the sounds.

There are also ways to lower it, look up soundrelief clinic in Golden, CO- I had a consultation with them and they told me there's this thing they can put in your ear that makes a quiet humming noise- I don't totally remember how it works, but if it's causing significant distress it's worth considering.

Hope this helps, feel free to DM me if you have more questions or we can keep talking in the forums.

ASMR white noises: done.
you can check sounds on YT before buying
cheers gn :)

I feel for you my friend...I developed tinnitus during an ear infection in the late 90's...the infection passed but the ringing in my ear stayed...I tried everything to get rid of it but nothing worked, but it didn't effect my sleep.

Then in 2001, during a very stressful time at work, it got way worse and I mean way worse...sleep was impossible. And I was in a panicky situation. I had nights where I literally laid awake all night and then had to get up and go to work on little or sometimes what seemed no sleep.

The one thing that helped me a lot (once I got use to having it) was sleeping with my head pointed east I know this going to sound crazy but the minute i did that I could sleep.

Sleeping with the white noise of a fan might help you as well.

You will get use to it but I know its very hard in the beginning.

Generally speaking,the best compromise for tinnitus is considered to be a white-noise source,as previously mentioned.For insomnia,assuming no medical reasons for it,you can try using the bedroom only for sleeping...by that I mean don't take your laptop to bed and start doing that technical report that's due tomorrow. Develop a set going-to-bed routine.In a sense,you train your brain to associate that routine with sleeping as it's end-point.

For both of these, I think I wasn't alive/born ...altho its here rn, maybe there are vaccines

why so long words?

I already do not like to sleep!

welp

Never ever take medical advice from the internet. Go to a doctor, tell them your situation, and follow their advice.

Even if your tinnitus is not curable, there may be something a doctor can do to help with the insomnia.