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by mettamage 1574 days ago
Are there any people with tinnitus that have figured out how to sleep with earplugs on? My tinnitus gets worse when I try to sleep with earplugs on. I currently use my Airpods Max (at home) or Bose QC 35 (when traveling) to mask noise.

Now that I've read that noise cancelling doesn't protect from sound, I'll only use this for sleeping and use actual earplugs in other situations.

2 comments

My tinnitus also gets worse with earplugs, and I wear them since I'm a light sleeper, with a bedroom close to a somewhat busy road. What I've managed to convince myself is that if I focus on in, instead of ignoring it, I can "use" it as an inbuilt white noise generator. I've probably conditioned myself to get a reassuring feeling out of it, but I guess that's what counts. I know it sounds ridiculous, and it might be I'm just lucky since my tinnitus is only a hissing noise, but it works for me, so it might work for others as well.
I have musician's earplugs. It sucks. You often cannot hear the conductor, some frequencies occlude more than others, and your tinnitus is louder than ever. (I realize the filter can be weakened and fit improved, which I plan to do, but I'm on my fourth fitting and second filter.)

The alternative? Take them out and enjoy the rich, sonorous, ever-so-slow hearing loss!

I use sleep headphones with brain.fm playing. I used to listen to pink noise (similar to white, but more waterfall and less static).

I use acoustic sheep headphones, but I wish there were more options out there.

I sleep with the TV (ipad actually) on playing netflix tv shows, with earbuds in; the TV show drowns out the tinnitus. Sucks to have to do it, but it works for me.