How to Sleep Better with Tinnitus | Doctor's Tips

If you don't start sleeping better, you will never get rid of your tinnitus.

Hi guys, Rachael Cook, doctor of audiology at Modern Tinnitus, and in today's video I'm gonna be telling you how getting better sleep could be The missing piece to eliminating your tinnitus coming up.

One of the very first times you may actually be bothered by your tinnitus is when you're trying to get some sleep. When we try to rest, relax, or get some sleep, typically speaking, the surrounding noises of daily life are either turned down or turned off entirely and by the end of the day, you're likely winding down and no longer thinking about your daily responsibilities without surrounding sound or things that need your attention. It's easy for tinnitus to become the most noticeable thing in the room.

This, of course, doesn't help you fall into a peaceful or relaxing slumber. I remember this being the case myself. When my tinnitus was most bothersome, I would end a hectic day of attending graduate program classes and working and collapse into my bed completely exhausted, only to toss and turn, toss, and turn from that annoying, high pitched tone in my head.

At the time, I thought I was the only one that suffered from this cruel punishment at the end of a long day. But it turns out that research linking sleep and tinnitus is not only common, but proves just how significant of a relationship really exists.

Even with the increasing research, the relationship between tinnitus and sleep still isn't fully understood. However, there are some pretty convincing reasons as to how the two are related. In fact, their relationship can be so connected that you end up locked into a vicious cycle.

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Alright, let's jump into this vicious cycle. Your tinnitus is likely more noticeable at night because of the quiet environment. This can make it much more difficult to fall asleep, stay asleep, or get back to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night.

Over time, tinnitus can be become a sleep disturbance, making it much more difficult to obtain high quality restful sleep. And this is a huge problem. If you weren't spending the right amount of time in each of the appropriate sleep stages, you risk higher levels of anxiety, stress, and bothersome tinnitus.

And the more aware of your tinnitus you become, the harder it is to fall asleep. As you can see, tinnitus and sleep are most definitely connected. And because of this toxic relationship, you must do things to improve your tinnitus and improve your sleep at the same time.

Now, many people clinging to the number of hours of sleep that they got the night before, but this number actually matters much less than the quality of those hours. And the quality of your sleep can be measured by how much time is spent in each of the distinct sleep stages.

There are four main stages of sleep awake, light deep, and rapid eye movement, or REM stage one or the awake stage is really a transitional stage between being awake and being asleep. This stage is kind of considered falling asleep, and it can actually be the toughest one to get through if your tinnitus is really bothersome. However, getting through this stage is critical to getting to stage two light sleep.

This stage is important for memory consolidation and for processing sensory information. Time spent in light sleep can help you shift your attention and focus throughout the day. This can help you to tune out background noises that you should be easily able to ignore, including tinnitus.

Stage three is deep sleep, which is the most restorative sleep stage. During this phase, muscles and tissues are being repaired. It's also considered a reset for both your brain and body and is crucial for reducing your sensitivity to tinnitus.

The fourth and final stage is REM sleep, the type that occurs when you're dreaming. REM sleep is crucial for emotional regulation and for processing memories. This stage helps your brain better manage emotions and stress that could contribute to your tinnitus perception.

Now, the ideal amount of time spent in each of the sleep stages is going to vary from person to person, especially depending on age, gender, and overall health status. But for the average adult, the ideal sleep stages are as follows, five to 10% of your sleep should be spent in the awake state. 40 to 50% of your sleep should be light sleep, and around 40 to 50% of your time should be spent in a combination of both deep and REM sleep and without quality sleep in each of these stages, you risk an increase in stress and anxiety, impaired emotional regulation and an increase in sensory sensitivity, and each of these factors can greatly contribute to your bothersome tinnitus.

But while this information is incredibly important, it can be difficult to know if you're actually achieving high quality sleep by spending enough time in each one of these stages. Luckily, advancements in technology have allowed us much more information about ourselves than we ever had access to in the past, fitness bands and rings can collect data about many different areas of your own health and wellness, including activity levels, heart rate information, and the duration and quality of your sleep.

That's why at Modern Tinnitus we utilize biometric tracking. With this method, we can measure your sleep cycles so we know which treatments we need to administer to optimize them as best as we can.

This might include utilizing sound therapy like white noise or ocean waves to make your tinnitus less noticeable at night. This could also include relaxation techniques such as deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation or meditation to reduce stress and anxiety before bed.

These suggestions are in addition to other modifications that can improve sleep, like adjusting your caffeine intake windows, avoiding electronics before bed, and removing light sources from your bedroom. And each of these strategies and more are discussed in this video that I will have linked down in the description below.

Using biometric tracking can also give us other forms of objective data to measure over time. This allows us to see other areas of tinnitus improvement that can come from treatment itself and from lifestyle modifications.

Even with all of the new and research backed tinnitus treatments available today, there is still not one silver bullet that cures tinnitus for everybody. Tinnitus can be influenced by a variety of factors including your hearing, your lifestyle, your sleep patterns among many others, and you absolutely must address every single one of them.

If you wanna see significant improvements in your tinnitus, but starting with improving your sleep is a fantastic foundation to make fast progress. In order to get your tinnitus under control, you must get your sleep under control. And this is totally possible. You just need to use the right sleep strategies and measure your sleep cycles to ensure that these strategies are actually working.

But if you don't think you can do this on your own, head on over to ModernTinnitus.co for more information and to find a Modern Tinnitus specialty center in your area.