One day my kid brought a nasty flu from the kindergarten. My otolaryngologist recommended the strongest irrigation stream I can find to clean my sinuses.
Not only did it not help, but it also pushed some goo to the end of my sinuses, which resulted in pulsatile tinnitus.
After about 6 months my kid got sick again, so we all got sick, and I got rid of this tinnitus where I was hearing my heartbeat, by casually blowing my nose. The trick was having a stiff blockage, I guess, so the pressure builds up.
It sounds stupid and probably won't help you, but I wanted to share my story. I had no support from the people close to me and the heartbeat was driving me insane.
I'm sorry you have to go through this. Even though it's not a life-treating condition, it might be a life changing condition (QoL).
I have Tinnitus, which I first noticed when I was sick one time as a kid - probably 5-8 yrs old. Thankfully I have no other adverse experiences to report (related to this).
Anyway, I think I just have chronic inflammation.
It's not allergy either.
I don't know if I have tinnitus. I had strong ringing in my ears every now and then as a kid. I once told a classmate about this, who said I should see a doctor, but I've had it as come up every now and then as long as I can remember.
I now have a continuous beep, but only really hear it when I intentionally tune into it. E.g. I can hear it now because I'm writing about it, but most of the day I simply don't hear it, because I don't tune in to it. Not sure if it was always there or just starting at some age. It is sometimes more present when I'm e.g. sick.
I have no idea if other people have this kind of permanent beep as well, because I never asked anyone.
(I just asked my wife and she doesn't have it.)
Tinnitus is like 30-50 times the volume of that, depending on how rundown I am or whether I have a cold. For me it's predominantly in one ear, though does sometimes change.
What he's describing is fairly normal and is just to do with blood pressure in your ears, from what I've subsequently read.
> Tinnitus is a condition when a person hears a ringing sound or a different variety of sounds when no corresponding external sound is present and that other people cannot hear.
That’s called tinnitus. And I agree, it isn’t rare. From TFA, roughly 15% of people have it (that report it).
Sounds like you may have severe tinnitus, which is more rare, limited to 1-2% of people.
Some people even have multiple frequencies of tinnitus at the same time.
We do. I've had tinnitus all my life, or at least I can remember it as far back as about four years old or so. It sounds to me like the whine of an old CRT. I thought it was just normal until I learned it wasn't. I used to think as a kid that it was what the Simon and Garfunkel song "The Sound of Silence" was talking about. Luckily for me it's just something that's always been, so it doesn't really bother me. I have no idea what it would be like to not actually hear anything at all. The one time I was in a sound isolation chamber, it just made my tinnitus scream.
My neighbor developed tinnitus later in his life and it drives him crazy. I definitely feel bad for him, and others who are similarly afflicted by it.
Changed my life, I thought I was living in a small crowd of fruit flies.
I have similar issues and 5 years in, problems are only getting worse (perhaps combined with pigment dispersion syndrom making it worse, but not on the path to glaucoma, at least not yet).
To be honest, I don't know where I'd rank on an objective severity scale. My floaters often make it difficult to read, and I've got one that can lodge in the wrong place for long enough to make driving feel a little scary. That's maybe not bad enough - given the risks, which I don't know right now - to argue against it. I'm not necessarily questioning the doctor's judgment - he's maybe right! - just mad that he didn't even tell me about this procedure.
Edit: WHOOPSIE DAISY
On the plus side, plenty of employment opportunities in the US these days. They’re offering us all the former meatbag jobs :)
The doctor also told me that it's not an ear problem, but rather a brain problem. The brain is supposed to filter out this noise, in the same sense that it filters out the sounds from a (normal) digestion, our breathing, etc. I do have some (undiagnosed) hypersensitivity, so that sounds consistent to me.
nozzlegear: it gets better with time, the less you think about it. I know it's not a great consolation, but trust me, train yourself not to think about it, and it will go away for extended periods of time (and will come back from time to time)
In my right ear I have another sound regularly, that I went to the doctor for, and she immediately said "Oh, tinnitus, nothing you can do". But I'm pretty sure it is something else. It feels like spasmic tiny muscle fluctuating against my eardrum, and gets triggered by a low-frequency sound, esp. when at rest. Stops after 15-30 mins.
Then I developed pulsatile tinnitus in my early 30s, which means I can hear my heartbeat in my (right) ear at all hours of the day as well. When I tell people about it, I like to describe it like the heartbeat from Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart.
Developing pulsatile tinnitus really affected my mental health for a while, despite living my whole life with a constant buzzing and ringing in my ears. I couldn't get over the fact that there was now this loud whooshing sound in my right ear, 60+ times per second, and my doctors couldn't even tell me why after several MRIs. I thought I was going crazy, or that I'd developed some kind of brain tumor invisible to scans.
I don't have any great advice except to say that eventually (maybe six months to a year) my brain just adapted to the sound and I hardly ever think of it anymore. It's as much a part of my life as the buzzing and ringing I've had since I was a kid. It can be annoying when I'm trying to listen intently for something (my wife is a birder and it's hard to hear things she points out), but it thankfully doesn't affect my mental health anymore.