Guidelines for Sleep
Insomnia is among the most frequent complaints voiced by tinnitus patients. Below are some guidelines that have been successful in making the silence of the night a bit less "noisy." The idea is to make being in the bedroom equivalent to allowing yourself to fall asleep instead of trying to fall asleep.
- Use your bedroom only at night.
- Do not use your bedroom for daytime naps; try not to nap during the day, but if you must, use another room.
- Do not use your bedroom for reading or watching TV - even at night before sleep.
- Do not use your bedroom for work or for hobbies.
- Do not go to bed until you are tired, but regardless of what time you do go to bed, get out of bed and start your day at the same time each morning - weekday and weekend.
- Do not use your bedroom for intimate relations (except at night before sleep). If you want to make love any other time - use another room, closet, table, bathtub, putting green, back seat of a Ford ... but only use the bedroom for sleep!
- Try to avoid even going into your bedroom except to freshen it up and to retire at night.
- Keep the atmosphere in your bedroom as pleasant and peaceful as possible. Make it a "special" place. Never argue there. Surround yourself with objects of comfort and reassurance - heirlooms, photographs, etc. - but avoid too much clutter.
- Remove the television and VCR from your bedroom.
- Remove the telephone from your bedroom; get an answer machine or voice mail for another room in your house so you can return calls in the morning to anyone who might want to reach you after you go to bed at night.
- If you have been used to sharing your bed with someone and that person is frequently away on business or is no longer living in your home (e.g., divorce, separation, death), consider keeping extra pillows on the bed, or consider - if you are so inclined - allowing a pet to sleep next to you at night. This wonderful idea came from Malvina Levy of the San Francisco Hearing and Speech Center. (I respectfully recommend avoiding gerbils, ferrets, and pet pythons in the role of surrogate bedmate!!!)
- If you are unable to fall asleep at night after 15-20 minutes, do not keep trying! Leave the bedroom and watch TV, read a book, work on a project, drink some warm milk or caffeine-free tea, etc., and then - when you are more tired - go back to bed. If you still cannot fall asleep, leave the bedroom again. (Same rule if you wake up at night and are unable to return to sleep in 15-20 minutes.)
- Above all, AVOID SILENCE. Purchase an inexpensive bedside white noise generator and set it to a constant sound ("Tropical Rain," "Stream," "Brook," or "White Noise," for instance, rather than "Hawaiian Surf" or "Seaside") with a volume loud enough for you to hear, but softer than would be required to totally mask your tinnitus. Leave it on all night so that even while you sleep - and when you wake - your auditory system will be bathed in rich soft non-obtrusive sound. Examples of suitable bedside devices include Brookstone's "Tranquil Moments," The Sharper Image's "Sound Soother," or Radio Shack's "Sleep Machine."
- Pleasant dreams!
Please note - These "Guidelines" are not a prescription for overnight success; they are designed to effect a gradual conscious and subconscious change in attitude towards the bedroom and sleep over a period of several weeks. If you already sleep fairly well, there is no reason to change anything. ("If it ain't broke, don't fix it.") Also, they do not represent hard-and-fast rules - e.g., If a tinnitus patient lived in a city with a high crime rate, I would be hard-pressed to recommend removing the telephone from the bedroom, as that telephone might represent a "life-line" in case of a break-in!
Stephen M. Nagler, MD, FACS |
