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If you suffer from tinnitus it is likely that your nights have already become your worst enemy.

At night, there are no distractions that make you forget about the blistering beeping or buzzing in your ears, such as street traffic, office noise or just chatting with people.

At night there is only you and your ringing, and that can be very hard.

(Note: go to this article to read “What is tinnitus, its causes and treatments?“)

Luckily, there are some measures that can relieve the symptoms and help make nights easier, especially if your tinnitus is high and intrusive, just like mine.

An easy solution that you can try from tonight is white noise.

Use white noise to sleep better (with Oticon Tinnitus Sound)

White noise is a common synthetic sound source used to mask other sounds, which helps to block your beeps or buzzes, allowing you to forget about it for a few hours and rest.

There are different free white noise applications that you can download on your mobile or tablet. I have tried several applications, both free and paid (some of them very expensive!) and my personal recommendation, and one which I have been using often, is Oticon Tinnitus Sound, which is FREE and very easy to use.

Oticon Tinnitus Sound presents a varied selection of different sounds that effectively reduce the discomfort of buzzing and provides temporary relief.

In addition, you don’t have to register, but simply download it on your mobile or tablet and choose from among all the sounds that allow you the most peace.

The sound is a matter of personal taste, since all the sounds available in the application mask the buzzing in the ears in the same way. My favourite ones are the rain and the bonfire, since they produce the most relaxed atmosphere and let me rest all night.

Rest is key to help with your tinnitus

If you are in your first weeks of being diagnosed with tinnitus, it is highly recommended that you help yourself with white noise to rest at night.

In these first weeks you will surely find yourself very frustrated and distressed and it is important not to add a lack of sleep to this situation.

Lack of sleep is one of the factors that most affect the mood, even when everything is going well. Therefore, it is important that you rest all you can to face this new paradigm that is your life with tinnitus.

You will be surprised to see that from the first night, the white noise is able to camouflage the ringing in your ears and provide you with some rest.

Do not be frustrated if you happen to fall asleep but wake up shortly after. That does not mean that white noise does not work. It simply means that your sleep pattern has been affected by this new situation and your body, feeling uneasy, tends to wake up.

But do persist and keep using white noise and soon you will start to rest better. And after a few nights, you may not even need to use it anymore (in my case, after a few weeks I had got used to sleeping regularly again, and naturally and progressively, I no longer needed to use it).

Here’s how you have to use white noise

Many people (as I did at the beginning) are tempted to turn up the volume of white noise until it completely covers the ringing of the ears.

While this is tempting and can produce an immediate sense of relief, the best otolaryngologists recommend setting the volume one point below the sound of your ringing, so that you hear the white noise as the main sound, but also hear a little of the ringing.

Your brain will feel relief and will be able to rest, whilst at the same time become accustomed to the existence of an external sound and will begin to send messages of normality to your body, so that you can begin to lower the intensity with which you perceive your tinnitus.

In my case, only four months after developing very acute tinnitus, I started being able to sleep for many nights in silence, without even noticing the ringing at times. I had conditioned my brain to get used to it completely, and you can do the same!