Tinnitus Better During Sinus Infection?

[Dontrike]

Recently I had a pretty bad sinus infection. I think the sinus infection was caused by misusing an ear drop product, called Ring Relief. It worked for me in the past and one day I thought of using it after months of no use as that day it was a bit annoying. I'm sure I left the drops in too long or the drops expired. Anyways for a good few weeks to a month the Tinnitus in my right ear suddenly had a whistle noise with it, where there wasn't any before. Usually it had only been tones of varying loudness, which were bearable.

Right before I took medication my Tinnitus actually felt better, a few days before, and during the medication this high pitched ringing went away, for about two weeks total, and it was a blessing. I was taking Amoxicillin and Clavulanate Potassium Tablets USP 875/125 mg.

While writing this the ringing went from a 5-6 to a 10 for about 10 seconds, which was scary as this is the first time it happened, and then dropped to a 6-7.

I guess what I'm wondering is, why would my tinnitus get better during a sinus infection? Before the infection I was sick with plenty of mucus that made me hear my tinnitus more, but wouldn't a sinus infection make the ringing worse? Could there be another cause to this ringing? My tinnitus was caused from years of listening to loud music on headsets and headphones, not to mention loud vacuums from work.

 

[The Red Viper]

Interesting... Here's what happened to me. Long story short, got a cold in January and it went away after a few days. I still had a lingering cough and I went out in the snow to go sledding. This really made me cough (a wet cough) quite a bit. I believe this may have pushed some of the virus into my right Eustachian tube. A week or so later I had ear fullness, which gave me a weird brain fog and mild to intense headaches. My GP told me to take high doses of ibuprofen for ten days to reduce inflammation. I did, and after the tenth day I woke up with a ringing in my ear. It hasn't gone away since.

EXCEPT for when I developed another cold in April. My ears clogged up again due to the cold, but I noticed that the tinnitus was gone. After the cold passed, I've only had one day of silence (May 23rd). Interestingly, on that day I also had no ear fullness and no headaches. This is why I believe that my T is a side effect of Eustachian tube dysfunction.

My wild and unscientific guess to your situation would be that perhaps your T has a physical component with the bones/muscles in your ear. The sinus infection may have suppressed something to lower the T.