Earphones at night

[MattyP101]

I’ve been using earphones at night to play relaxing sounds to mask my tinnitus and help me sleep (I use the headphones as my wife hates any background noise)

I’ve heard conflicting advise on this as whilst it helps me relax is it not good for my ears? They are quite comfortable and I play low volume just enough to block out my T but I’ve also heard people saying the masking noise needs to be lower than the T - If not will this hinder my chance of habituate long run?

I want to do what gives me best chance to habituate but also want to be relaxed and sleep well

Thoughts welcome

[TinnitusUKPat Partner]

Hi Matty - thank you for posting.

You will hear as many contradictory arguments for and against earphone use as there are menu options at Subway. The prevailing belief is that volume level is the main issue to be mindful about - so long as the volume level is set low enough, you shouldn't encounter too many problems.

For tinnitus sound relief, this is the standard procedure in any case - the volume level of anything that you are using to provide a distraction should be lower than the volume of your tinnitus. The goal isn't to obscure the tinnitus sound, but for your brain to filter out tinnitus by giving it something else to focus on.

Masking is different in that many people aim to increase the volume of whatever they are listening to with the end goal of muting or obscuring their tinnitus entirely. There's some conjecture about whether this does actually help or whether or not it may delay habituation and keep people in a heightened state of stress and tinnitus attention.

If the techniques you are using right now help you to sleep, that's a great goal to start out with. The rest (stress reduction, tinnitus habituation) will hopefully come in due course.

Take care,

Pat

Forum Administrator

[MattyP101 in reply to TinnitusUKPat]

Thanks Pat for your sound advice (excuse the pun!)

I think I will try and reduce the noise just enough and follow the sound therapy approach as opposed to masking as I want to habituate and realise just drowning it out is not a long term solution but I understand why some people have to do this to get some form of sleep at night!

[nigelph in reply to TinnitusUKPat]

Thanks for the information. I am using sounds and SleepPhones. I must admit that I have increased the volume over the last year. I think I will try gradually reducing the volume again. Not sure if the Tinnitus is getting louder that has caused me to do this.

NIgel

[TinnitusUKPat Partner]

Matty, puns are always welcome with me!

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I've tried soothing sounds and get a better distraction from audio books. Tinnitus is all about forgetting the noise for me so I replace it and don't focus on the sounds. A story helps by engaging my brain more. I set the sleep timer to 30 minutes so it stops about the time I am sleeping. My left ear is the worse for me so I start the night on my left with a pillow speaker