Tinnitus often gets worse at night for most of the millions of people in the US that suffer with it. But what’s the reason for this? The ringing is a phantom sound due to some medical condition like hearing loss, it isn’t an external sound. Naturally, knowing what it is won’t explain why you have this buzzing, ringing, or whooshing noise more often at night.
The truth is more common sense than you probably think. To know why your tinnitus increases as you attempt to sleep, you need to understand the hows and whys of this really common medical problem.
What is tinnitus?
For the majority of people, tinnitus isn’t a real sound, but this fact just compounds the confusion. The person with tinnitus can hear the sound but no one else can. It sounds like air-raid sirens are going off in your ears but the person sleeping right beside you can’t hear it at all.
Tinnitus is an indication that something is not right, not a condition on its own. Substantial hearing loss is generally at the base of this disorder. For many, tinnitus is the first sign they get that their hearing is at risk. Hearing loss tends to be gradual, so they don’t notice it until that ringing or buzzing starts. Your hearing is changing if you start to hear these sounds, and they’re warning you of those changes.
What causes tinnitus?
Presently medical scientists and doctors are still unsure of exactly what triggers tinnitus. It might be a symptom of numerous medical issues including damage to the inner ear. The inner ear contains many tiny hair cells made to vibrate in response to sound waves. Tinnitus often means there’s damage to those hair cells, enough to keep them from transmitting electrical signals to the brain. Your brain translates these electrical signals into recognizable sounds.
The absence of sound is the base of the current hypothesis. The brain stays on the alert to get these messages, so when they don’t arrive, it fills in that space with the phantom noise of tinnitus. It gets perplexed by the lack of feedback from the ear and tries to compensate for it.
When it comes to tinnitus, that would explain some things. For starters, why it’s a symptom of so many different conditions that affect the ear: minor infections, concussions, and age-related hearing loss. That may also be the reason why the symptoms get worse at night sometimes.
Why does tinnitus get louder at night?
Unless you are profoundly deaf, your ear receives some sounds during the day whether you realize it or not. It hears really faintly the music or the TV playing in the other room. But during the night, when you’re trying to sleep, it gets really quiet.
Abruptly, all the sound disappears and the level of confusion in the brain rises in response. It only knows one thing to do when confronted with complete silence – create noise even if it’s not real. Sensory deprivation has been demonstrated to trigger hallucinations as the brain attempts to insert information, including auditory input, into a place where there isn’t any.
In other words, it’s too quiet at night so your tinnitus seems louder. If you’re having a hard time sleeping because your tinnitus symptoms are so loud, producing some noise might be the answer.
Producing noise at night
For some individuals suffering from tinnitus, all they need is a fan running in the background. Just the sound of the motor is enough to decrease the ringing.
But, there are also devices designed to help people who have tinnitus get to sleep. White noise machines replicate nature sounds like rain or ocean waves. The soft noise soothes the tinnitus but isn’t disruptive enough to keep you awake like keeping the TV on might do. As an alternative, you could try an app that plays calming sounds from your smartphone.
Can anything else make tinnitus symptoms worse?
Your tinnitus symptoms can be amplified by other things besides lack of sound. For example, if you’re indulging in too much alcohol before you go to bed, that could contribute to tinnitus symptoms. Other things, like high blood pressure and stress can also be a contributing factor. Call us for an appointment if these suggestions aren’t helping or if you’re feeling dizzy when your tinnitus symptoms are active.
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References
https://hearinghealthfoundation.org/hearing-loss-tinnitus-statistics/