Putting in Foam Earplugs Silenced My Pulsatile Tinnitus

Hi,

I've had a whistling tinnitus since a startlingly loud rock concert in 1979 and, ironically, I made it worse when I tried to discover how high a frequency I could hear using an online test and the single frequency accidentally played very much too loudly through headphones [though I wonder why the level was set so high by the website] added a different tone, and seemingly in a different part of my head. Then there was another noise that sounded a bit like someone using a typewriter that lasted a couple of years but seems to have largely gone.

A few years ago I developed pulsatile tinnitus in my right ear to cap it all off. Fortunately, unless activity provoked it, I was only really aware of it in bed and even then only if I lay on my left side [you'd think it would be when the bad ear was on the pillow, wouldn't you?], but it rapidly became very much worse recently. It didn't matter how I lay and the slightest movement, even just a deep breath would set it off so loud I had to turn up the radio, with the whoosh-whoosh sound merging into a virtually constant roar as if I'd done some strenuous exercise. Recently a new layer of noise joined the fun, sounding like a long sweep of a yard broom on paving and even louder than the original sound at its worst. More Shhhhhhhhhhh than Whoosh, so I had whoosh, whoosh, shhhhhhhhhhh, whoosh, whoosh, shhhhhhhhhhh. All very odd.

Anyway, the good news.

When we had a night-time storm last week and the vegetation creaking and bashing against the house was keeping me awake I put in foam earplugs for the night and since then the pulsatile tinnitus has all but gone!

Just a few pulses if I turn over in bed and even then, very much quieter. The sweeping noise has gone completely. Were the earplugs enough to shift some earwax or open up a blocked 'passage'? I wasn't noticing any dulling of my hearing beforehand, though I have done so on occasion in the past due to a build up of wax, so it seems unlikely that wax was the problem. It would seem too much of a coincidence that the pulsatile tinnitus almost ended the day I used the earplugs if they didn't really do anything, but perhaps that's all it is. It would be ironic if earplugs improved the situation when normally they just focus your mind on the problem.

The constant soundscape of whistles remains and is hard to ignore even after forty plus years, but it's great to be nearly clear of the pulses. For now, anyway...