Tinnitus Triggered by Sleeping on One Side — Isolating Myself with Earplugs Makes It Bearable

[Nes]

Hello everyone!

I developed tinnitus one month ago. I'm not sure if it was noise induced or due to fluid in the ears. Two different GPs saw fluids in my ears, but, I saw an ENT two days ago and they said I had nothing. The ENT believes my tinnitus was noise induced and sent me on my way without any support.

Honestly, the ENT visit was so stressful that it sent me into a spike which is just starting to lessen. Before seeing the ENT, the tinnitus in my right ear was gone, and now it reappeared I don't have hearing loss though, which is good news, except for a 20 dB loss in bone conduction at 2000 Hz.

Anyway, I have a ringing sound in my left ear and a static noise (going from low to very high pitched) in my right. It is quieter in the morning and gets worse throughout the day. It changed a lot throughout the month, and I feel it's quieter and less intrusive now than two weeks ago.

I've noticed that when I sleep on one side, the tinnitus gets worse. And by worse, I mean new sounds appear. For example, if I sleep on my right side, I get a ultrasound level high pitched squeal in my right ear instead of the static and the ringing in my left ear almost disappears.

I've also noticed that isolating myself from noise with earplugs makes the tinnitus way more bearable, too. For example, earplugs makes all the ultra high pitched sound disappear!

Reading Tinnitus Talk, I've come to understand that tinnitus is capricious, but this seems in contradiction with all the posts I've read. Do some of you also experience this?

 

[Jupiterman]

Whatever side you are lying on will increase the blood flow to that ear; just like if you stand on your head, all the blood rushes to your head.

With one ear being at slightly higher blood pressure than the other, this can cause tinnitus in that ear to increase.

 

[momus]

Capricious and contradictory... that pretty much sums up tinnitus. I always have a box fan running by my bed at night, along w/ a small sound machine that has several different types of sound. By having some other neutral sound in the room, my mind doesn't pay full attention to my tinnitus. Hearing my tinnitus and being aware of it are different things. If it can be part of the overall sounds in the room, it's a lot easier to let go of it.

 

[Nes]

I've had tinnitus for two months now. I still don't know what really caused it, between noise and this persistent viral infection/sinusitis/rhinitis I've been having. During those two months, my tinnitus has been very variable. It almost disappeared, came back as a new sound after a super stressful situation, lessened again, and I was able to tune it out. Then, a new sound appeared two weeks ago, and I managed pretty well not to be bothered by it.

But yesterday, my partner vacuumed, and now I'm having a huge spike. Essentially, my tinnitus went from a pretty quiet and high-tone jet engine to a constant 1.5 kHz pure tone that I hear over everything. At night, it screams very loudly.

I hope it quiets down with time. I am quite scared this caused some permanent damage. I learned my lesson, and I'll buy some proper noise protection this week.

 

[SumGuy]

Does your tinnitus go away when you sleep on your side?