Tracking Your Tinnitus

11:08

Tracking Your Tinnitus

by Peter Vernezze

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

Plays

1

In this talk I describe a way of tracking your tinnitus level, for example on waking, through the day and at bedtime, alongside things that might be linked to changes, such as food, drink, noise and sleep. I share one person's detailed records and what he found, explain why it helps to limit what you are looking for, and remind you that a link is not the same as a cause. I also talk about doing this for a set time without letting it take over your life. The aim is to learn what you can influence and what you cannot, and to practice letting go of the rest. This content is educational and is not a substitute for one to one professional care.

Tinnitus Sleep Diet Mindfulness Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

Meet your Teacher

Tucson, AZ, USA

Meet your Teacher

Tucson, AZ, USA

Transcript

So, There was an interesting article in the most recent Tinnitus Today. Spring 2025 issue that I received a couple of emails on and I told folks I would respond to. So I want to talk about it here because I think it offers some of the best advice I heard I've come across in working with tinnitus. I'm Dr. Peter Bernese, I am a psychotherapist, And like you, I have tinnitus. So, The particular article in mind is called Sleeping It Off, How Sleep Can Affect Tinnitus. And the author relates how he was getting advice from his audiologist and others about stress and tinnitus and how to work with it. No one was helping try to figure out the variations in his tinnitus level. He says it seemed obvious that if your tinnitus varies, Something must be causing the variations. So, What he does, And what I've recommended based on, Actually worked by, There's a similar strategy as this in Vimalaya Birch, And in a wonderful book that I've reviewed and talked about, Elaine Langer's Mindful Body, Who describes a very similar strategy in working with conditions, Especially chronic conditions. And it's to track the variation. In the symptom, In the severity, And see if you can notice what might be correlated with it. Now, Correlation is not causation, We have to remember that. But if you're working with your own condition, Your own symptoms can determine there's enough of a correlation, It can be worth paying attention to that and acting on it. And this is what the, You know, So some of what the author does here is carry that out here and I want to talk about this. And how you might apply this to your tinnitus. So the author, As he says, I began to keep detailed records of the variations in my tinnitus level and the factors that might be associated with them. I know that the times, I know the times when the levels seem to change. And I recorded the subjective waking level each morning to prevailing level that particular day and the retiring level when I went to bed. What he does here is record the level when he wakes up, The overall level for the day, And the level when he goes to bed. He has an 8 point scale here. In terms of how he's going to rate these. So what he does and then investigate what might be responsible for the variation. So you have to limit what you're looking for. Am I going to test for caffeine in these observations? Am I going to notice salt? Or do I notice I've eaten chocolate and this has a cause? So you have to have some idea of what you're looking for. It's not just charting random Tinnitus levels you have to try to be associated with one of what you're looking for and so the author says I investigated dietary items including salt and caffeine that have been noted to by others to affect tinnitus. I also explored other suspected triggers such as Wi-Fi exposure. With a minimum of 100 observations each, So this is a pretty detailed investigation. His close exposure to household noise, Such as a vacuum cleaner, Nearly always led to an increase in tinnitus level, And dozing off during the daytime always did, So further investigation of these two triggers seemed unnecessary. So he knew, You know, I might take a nap, My tinnitus level gets up, Figure that out. So, What he ends up with is, With the exception of alcohol, None of the dietary items I looked at was associated with changes in tinnitus level. And other people, Working close to a Wi-Fi router had no effect either. And these are things that have been noted by others. But what he found was that sleep duration was unrelated to next day tinnitus over the long term. No impact on the duration of his sleep. But what he does notice, And this is pretty interesting, Is that when he stays up late, The tinnitus level goes down the next day and this, By some investigation and talking with a researcher, He relates to essentially the levels of what's called adenosine, Which builds up when we have sleep debt. And what he sees is that the higher Adrenosine levels build up while a person is awake, Sleep pressure increases. And so when this level is high, His actually tinnitus level goes down. The thinking being that when we really need the sleep for him, This causes his tinnitus levels to go down. Ongoing sleep debt, Which refers to the accumulated lack of sleep over time, Fits such a description. Insufficient sleep for successive days causes this to accumulate and somehow the accumulation of this impacts his tinnitus by dropping it down. I mean, It's not clear what you do with this information. It's not really healthy to stay up late. So, In this case, It's knowledge that is not of practical use at this point. But there are things we can find out through the investigation of our own tinnitus. And I think this is good because it empowers us to start looking at what we can do to influence the tinnitus. It gives us some control. Whereas we're so often told that there's nothing we can do. Well, As he points out, If the tinnitus level varies, There has got to be something causing the variation. Now, It might just be random shit, Right? But it's worth looking for and noticing what increases it and how we can deal with that increase. Contrary to his point about stress, I've noticed a lot of people who will swear, Myself, That stress makes So, One knows that one ought to get a handle on stress. And that's not a mystery. There's a program, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Which has been shown. To lower stress levels. Not surprisingly, Testing with mindfulness-based stress reduction on tinnitus lowers tinnitus distress. So something we could find out. But there may be other things to find out what it is that is impacting your tinnitus. This has to be. . . I mean, This has to be put in a context. That is, You don't want to devote your whole life to focusing on what's impacting your tinnitus, Only to find out something like, Well, Staying up late at some hour that's not healthy for me actually makes my tinnitus worse. Reduce in its level. What practical impact is that going to have on your life? None, Because to stay up late on a regular basis we know is destructive of our health. Not sure how that pays off in the end. But we may be able to find something out, Some things that impact it, Some things that don't. You may find As I do, Good sleep does. For me, I've done this sort of tracking, And good sleep is correlated with generally reduced tinnitus levels the next day. So I know to get good sleep, But I would be doing that regardless if I had tinnitus or not. And having tinnitus just makes me more cognizant of how important it is to get a good night's sleep. So you don't want to obsess about this, Make this your life project to spend all of your waking days monitoring your tinnitus when the very thing you want to do When you have tinnitus, Not think about letting it go into the background. But this is a project, I would say, Again, Worth undertaking. It's something that is commonly done with respect to pain, And as I said, Denalia Birch makes this part of her program and her BreathWorks, Which works with all chronic conditions, Not just pain. Ellen Langer, As I said, Suggests this to work with a chronic condition. Although she tends to see this as a way to bring about the placebo effect. Even if it isn't actually changing it, Say, You know, Staying away from a certain food, Or eating a certain food, Might not in actuality change the level. If you believe it does and It may impact it. In the long run, As long as you're not getting obsessed. About tracking and making your life's work to track your tinnitus, Doing this for a particular amount of time with relative thoroughness. I think is a worthy project. And something more needs to be done. It's on an individualized basis. I doubt my tracking of this will be of any value to you, But the general project of tracking your tinnitus levels and seeing if there is something that can be correlated with it, Working with a number of variables, Limited number of variables over time, Can be a useful project, Can help you get a sense of what you can control with your tinnitus, And importantly, What you can't control. When we find out we can't control, That's the part we then have to start letting go of. And knowing that what we can't control, We can nevertheless control our response to what we can't control. And that's how we, In the end, Control it.