Pulsatile Tinnitus — Now on Tinnitus Talk

I didn't mention it to anybody but Karen so far, maybe someone will have any idea what is going on and what could I do.

I've been experiencing some very unusual symptom for few years before my "normal" tinnitus started. When I perform certain actions, I hear a loud, roaring sound that lasts for 2-3 seconds in my right ear. It happens most often when I stretch myself, yawn, or reach for something on the ground. Sometimes it happens while I'm talking. I can speak normally but right after I finish the sentence I hear this "whooosh" in my right ear.

It was never really a problem to me and I didn't pay much attention to it but some time ago I got pulsatile tinnitus that would appear in the late evening and disappear in the morning the next day. It started on 23rd of december and resolved itself somewhere mid-january.​

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Now it's back, 3rd day in a row I can clearly hear a whooshing, rhythmic sound in my right ear. It's not as severe as the first time it appeared but it still bothers me a bit. It comes around at 11:00 PM and when I wake up in the morning it's gone completely.​

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The problem is, the ENT doctor I told about my symptoms just raised an eyebrow and wasn't really sure what to do with me.​

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Hey there Karen.

I didn't have it yesterday anymore *crosses fingers*

The pulsating was nowhere as severe as after Christmas, it lasted for few minutes then went away. Only in the late evening and only in the right ear. I have tried pressing my head, jaw and neck in various places but nothing seems to have any effect on the pulsating. Sometimes I feel it gets a bit worse when I bend down to pick up something off the floor. I feel it might be spine-related after all.

I am 100% sure the pulsating is not present throughout the day, I would definitely have heard it

Those symptoms are so weird! I guess I gotta go back to my doctor...

 

You are right Markku, I was thinking the same thing - that there has to be a physical cause for it and it could be "seen" by a doctor for example if he looked what happens with my ear drum while I'm yawning or something.

He actually wanted me to do an MRI but the pulsating was completely gone two weeks before the test and I decided there's no need to do it anymore, silly me

Funny thing I realized is I didn't hear nor even think about my "regular" tinnitus for few days now, until today.

 

Hello again,

thank you for your replies, thank you Karen for your continued support! Pulsating tinnitus didn't come back anymore.

I visited a different ENT doctor today and described him my symptoms. He attempted to see with an otoscope what happens inside my ear when I produce this "rumbling" sound. I'm not sure if I translated this name properly but he said my "tensor tympani" muscle contracts itself involuntarily causing the roaring. Pulsating tinnitus was possibly caused by it, tensor tympani muscle contracting itself in the rhythm of my heartbeat for some reason.

It could be stress, tmj-related, neck etc. Well, I really need this MRI I guess...

I realized I've become much more sensitive to anything ear-related since my "normal" tinnitus started... I lived with this rumbling sound for a long time and never paid much attention to it before

 

Maybe, this is an old thread. It's an interest to me. I have Pulsing Tinnitus.

Anyone find a connection too high blood pressure, and or hyperthyroidism, and or hypertension causing the pulsing? Perhaps someones has mentioned this. I'm just not sure of the answer.

I mentioned to my GP my thyroid medication might be too much for me, as I age, with my TSH at .37, the doctor didn't think much of that. She told me to skip a dose a week. No change yet.

 

Hey guys,

I have been looking at these forums and i am extremely extremely glad that people are experiencing similar accounts. I am new and am really excited to have signed up. The reason i am posting today is i have been doing a lot of research today and there is one thing i have not seen in other symptoms. You know for the most part people with pulsatile tinnitus experience around the same thing. And i've been seeing that, or a pattern, within the feeling of Pulsatile Tinnitus. I understand that Pulsatile Tinnitus is a symptom of usually something much larger as i have been reading on whooshers.com.

I will give a little history. I started experiencing this back in june of 2012. I have been taking a medication called Depakote ER and anti-depressants which is Zoloft. I have never experienced this problem before in my life and i noticed that it began as i went off of these medications. Now.. everytime i should say. I had some issues where i quit taking each of those medications and i noticed the Pulsatile Tinnitus pretty much immediately when i went off of those medications. And it goes away when i get back on them. One thing that occurs when I have my PT is whooshing in both ears in coordinance with my heartbeat. Now when this is happening, the strange thing is, that there is a flutter throughout my entire body. In rhythm with my heartbeat and PT.

Not only is there a flutter but there is also an annoying tingling sensation that goes down my arms into my hands and fingers and down my whole body into my legs and toes. This is annoying. Extremely annoying. It feels like extreme anxiety and i dont know if that is produced by me because of the feeling itself but my hands also shake for quite awhile. I notice this very badly in the morning times. it gets better but i can still feel it throughout the day. I have a Dr appointment coming up on the 9th which is a couple days for medications purposes and ill be going back on them and i will discuss this with him as well but I'm mainly wondering if anyone experienced this similarly and what became of it? Thanks so much for even reading this.

 

Karen, a new acquaintance told me her pulsatile T probably arise after years of being nervous and tense on her job. I wonder if there is a correlation with those born with nervous disposition and pulsatile T. If nothing could be found on the scans, could it be somewhere along the other portions of the nervous system?

 

Thanks for some replies! Yay. Thats interesting you bringing up those with nervousness or anxiety. I am a huge nervous and anxious person that tried forever to self medicate that. I wonder of those with nervousness or anxiety show a predisposition to T. That's interesting. Alit of people here or have anxiety? I know it strays a bit but...

 

So apparently my pulsatile tinnitus was caused by a drug reaction after going well off of the drugs. So I suppose this was a symptom of withdrawal. Of course my doctor did not take it seriously at all. He took it quite lightly. Shrugged it off and said it was just because I was in off my meds. I guess that could be it. Just as it always has my physical and emotional state went back to normal as my tinnitus subsided.

Interesting how much it affects your life and then a doc can throw all of your stress down the pipe with such ignorance. Whether or not his guided words put me at ease or his utter lack of acknowledgement. Maybe I'll never know. Or maybe I will find a doc who cares to look a little bit into it. Or maybe he's right. Anyhow its gone.

 

I apologize, HOMFO and Karen, if I'm messing up the order here. This is my first post and I'm having a little trouble figuring out how to do it. I wanted to respond to your question about nervousness/anxiety, since I'm someone who is tense most of the time. I'm now experiencing the pulsating or pulsatile tinnitis and it's pretty frightening. For someone like me, who gets very anxious when I don't know why something is happening, a group of folks like all of you providing information is a wonderful gift. I imagine there are many of us with the same nervous constitution going through this. It's wonderful we can support and help each other, and I'm grateful.

Now I'm going to try to figure out how to post my own message in the right place and forum!

 

My pulsatile tinnitus started on the same day I caught a cold (last Friday). The cold was better after 2-3 days but the pulsing sound has persisted. It sounds like someone is breathing down my neck and I can almost feel a slight vibration as it happens. During the day, the sound is not perceptible, but if I turn off ambient sounds and am sleeping in a quiet room, it gets annoyingly frustrating. I've definitely lost sleep over this.

I've been to a doctor and taken a hearing test from an audiologist and everything checked out completely normal.

For those who have experienced it, what was it like? How did it happen and did it go away?

 

The tingling sounds like a well-known phenomenon called a brain "zap," linked to withdrawal from antidepressants, especially if done too quickly. You say it happens when you're tapering off, right?

 

hi.i need help badly.for the past 2 weeks i have had a ear infection and along with that a pulsating sound in my infected ear.doctor prescribed me antibiotics and ear drops and the pain went away and left behind a pulsating sound in my ear.its fine during the day but at night its really hard to sleep and its driving me insane.i know tinnitus doesnt have a cure but i read somewhere that pulsating tinnitus is caused by a medical condition which is most likely treatable.im hoping that my left ear will stop pulsating soon.i dont know what i will do if it doesn't. i have mild tinnitus but it doesn't really bother me.it usually clears up after a while in quite places..i went to the eye and ear hospital 2 days ago and they said the infection hasn't cleared up yet so he gave me antibiotics.can any of you people share your experiences with this.thank you.

 

Breathing/snoring
Swallowing
Chewing
Bloodflow

These are all audible bodily rhythms. In the worst case, if the pulsation stays with you, it will just join the soundtrack and you won't give it another thought. Karen and I can attest. Meanwhile, treat the anxiety if it's disrupting your sleep.

 

Hi,

I'm a 27 years old male, fairly skinny and generally healthy.

For about 3 years (maybe longer) I have pulsatile tinnitus. I hear a high pitched whooshing sound in my head (mostly in right ear) on the rythm of the heart beat. I'm not sure if it got a bit louder, but lately I am noticing it more again.

The strange thing is, is that it changes with the position I'm in. I don't hear it at all while lying down for instance. When I'm standing straight I can hear it a bit, but when I turn my head sideways it almost disappears. When I sit I can hear it the loudest, but again, when I look up or sideways it dissappears. When I look down, the pitch changes (lower).

It's not really the sound bothering me (it's not very loud and I mostly don't hear it throughout the day), but it's that I'm scared that something serious is causing it.

I went 2 times to the doc (GP) for it. 1 checked my blood pressure and ruled that one out. The other looked at my ears and said my eardrums are slightly retracted inwards. She said that this might be the cause and that many people are hearing these sounds...

Now 2 years later, I'm not so sure of that. Informative websites say it is is pretty rare (3% of tinnitus cases) and can be caused by serious ilnesses. My question is, what do you think?
Why does the loudness / pitch change with different positions? Does that mean high cholestorol / tumors can be ruled out?
Does the blood flow to your brain changes with these positions and how could that affect the pulsating tinnitus?

Any help or insight is helpful and very welcome.
Thanks for your time.

 

Thanks Karen! And good luck with your tinnitus. Good to hear yours has no serious cause.

I might go to the hospital to rule out some things later, but I'm kinda scared for what might come out

It doesn't 'seem' serious. I'm not even sure about how long I have it. I might have had it already when I was a child. Just trying to figure out now what I can conclude myself from the symptoms and what I can rule out.

Hope somebody can help me with that whilst reading my 1st post.

 

Same here! But if I look left it triple increases to my pulse asking with a whoosh.looking right makes it quieter.try bending chin to chest.momentarily silences it! It's like heaven

 

Hi all,

For years I have pulsatile tinnitus. It's not very loud and very high pitched, almost like a mosquito which flyes closeby and then further. The sound syncs with my heart beat.

Also, it completely disappears when I lie down flat. When I stand straight, it becomes almost inaudible. When I twist my neck and look sideways, it's inaudible.
When I sit / stand while looking (slightly) downwards, I hear it. Not even does the volume changes when tilting my neck, the pitch also changes...

Like I said its not very loud and can only hear it in quiet times. Luckily it disappears when lying down flat so it doesn't bother me when I try to sleep.

I just want to know if it's something dangerous or not. What could these signs mean? Is it a positive thing that the sound is high pitched? Is it a good sign that it dissappears when I have my neck straight? Could we ourselves from this already rule out tumors and aneurysms for example?

I'm sure many of you have experience with what medical experts have shared to you. What do you guys think when you read this?