Bass Tinnitus Noise That Does Not Correlate with Heartbeat or Breathing

Hello Doc,

New here! My first post, but did some reading.

If I could get your expertise on this condition that has been bothering me for a while now: The low "humming" bass noise that is new for me (I had the usual high pitch tinnitus with a high frequency hearing loss, and I learned how to deal with that, even got fitted with a hearing aid that has a white noise function).

It is very similar to the discussion in this thread; https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/vibrating-bass-sound-is-causing-me-to-have-a-breakdown.31137/ but mine has two low tones that alternate every 1-3 seconds.

And for the longest time I thought it was an electrical short in an appliance, or a car driving by with the stereo blasting and the windows up, until I went camping with my son, and there it was! It does not correlate with heartbeat nor breathing.

I do have a medical background, but this condition is nowhere to be found in the medical literature.

Best

 

Welcome, @Not Sure. Sorry you had need to find this place, but glad we could be here for you!

Then I guess I will start by telling you the same thing I tell everybody. Reading is good. Too much reading is not so good. And just because something you read makes good sense, that does not necessarily make it good information.

So probably it is plain old ordinary tinnitus that happens to be low-pitched, which means it should be addressed (or not addressed if it is not bothersome!) like any other tinnitus.

But low-pitched tinnitus can be seen with Meniere's or Meniere's variants. So if you have any other Meniere's symptoms - like fluctuating hearing loss, episodic vertigo (of the falling-down-drunk commode-hugging variety), fullness in the ears, etc. - then you will want to discuss it in detail with your ENT. Let me stress that most low-pitched tinnitus has nothing at all to do with Meniere's.

The other thing with low-pitched tinnitus is that sometimes (rarely) it isn't tinnitus at all, but rather is a somatosound. So your ENT will want to listen to your neck, your ears, and all over your cranium with a stethoscope to make sure it isn't what used to be called "objective tinnitus." Many years ago I had a patient with extremely bothersome low-pitched tinnitus in her left ear that actually turned out to be a venous hum, which we totally cured by dilating up the stenosed vein in the angiography suite. CLICK HERE for a link to a WAV file that is an actual recording I made of the sound by placing a very small amplifier first in her right (asymptomatic) ear canal and then in her left (symptomatic) ear canal.

But, like I said earlier, most low-pitched tinnitus is just that - plain old ordinary tinnitus that just happens to be low-pitched.

Hope this helps.

Stephen M. Nagler, M.D.

 

I feel the need to add an important clarification to my post above.

I wrote [in part]:

"So probably it is plain old ordinary tinnitus that happens to be low-pitched, which means it should be addressed (or not addressed if it is not bothersome!) like any other tinnitus."​

When I say that there is no need to address tinnitus if it is not bothersome, that statement assumes that if you have had tinnitus for more than six weeks (or if you have experienced a significant change in your tinnitus lasting for more than six weeks), you have undergone an ENT evaluation and an audiological evaluation (1) to look for one of the rare causes of tinnitus that can be fixed with the expectation that in so doing the tinnitus will be cured, and (2) to rule out one of the even rarer causes of tinnitus that represent a potential threat to your health. Once (1) and (2) have been accomplished, then you are free to address or not address your tinnitus based solely upon how bothersome it is to you.

Stephen M. Nagler, M.D.