Does anyone know why there's clicking noises in the ear, I get a series of wee clicks say 5-6 then a long pause, about 2 or 3 times in the first hour of sleeping.
I don't know what "wee clicks" means. But it seems to me that you are describing what I am having. I also get seemingly random clicks in my left ear. I actually started with my left ear, but then the right ear also got involved as time went by, although not as often or as strongly as the left ear which is in fact primarily my damaged ear. When I say damaged I mean SNHL due to long term noise exposure and an acoustic trauma with a sudden loud noise with headphones on.
I have seen a few posters that describe these symptoms, and as with them and you and me, it is most prominent at night when we go to sleep. Also, at least in my case and in the case of many more who have this, it seems to be triggered by swallowing. As I said it is most prominent during night time. The swallowing seems to trigger it nearly exclusively at night. During the day I can get a click just by sitting on a chair and working at the computer and not doing anything in particular.
I don't understand the neurological mechanisms of it, and I don't think you will find someone that does. But we are not alone in having these symptoms. I think this is a secondary symptom to SNHL.
I can try to explain to you how I think it is generated. The stapedius muscle contraction causes millimiter displacement of the stapes head, perpendicular to the normal motion of the stapes in response to sound coming into the ear. This contraction causes the head to snap out of the incudostapedial joint where the head of stapes meets the lenticular process of the incus. As the muscle relaxes, the head snaps back into its original position and a click sound is generated as bone meets bone. Unlike subjective tinnitus, which is the only kind of tinnitus if you ask me, these clicks are objective, measurable and coming from your middle ear, not your brain.
But what drives it? That I do not know the answer to. I will tell you when I do. But this seems to be a neurological disorder as a result of trauma to the ear or head. In my case, I was exposed to a very loud noise, and I recall hearing a loud click at the time of the accident. How do you stop it? We don't have an effective way to stop it non-inversely. The only option may be surgically cutting the muscle if it is too bothersome. If you can handle it, my advice would be to wait until we have a way to control neurons and reprogram them. There is already excellent work being done to this end. An entire new field of research has evolved out of this called optogenetics.
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