Mine is a symptom of Meniere’s and I’m stuck with it, have been for about a dozen years now. Fans are a good white noise masking agent when you sleep. That’s when it bothers me most, when everything else is quiet. There’s also the sudden bouts of vertigo and, worst case scenario, sometimes day long struggles with nausea.
From what I understand diet can bring on some of these symptoms. Chocolate, cheese, salt, alcohol, they’re all known triggers.
Initially, mine comes from too many rock concerts as a teen.
Later, the army told me to fire cannons for a few years. While I tried to make sure I had ear protection, sometimes it just didn’t work.
Nowadays, I just crank my iPod. So it is my own fault.
Every few months one of my ears randomly goes, for lack of a better word, “half deaf,” like it’s up against a pillow or other “muffling agent” and it lasts about a minute.
I would like to say it “whines” but it’s more a lack of sound, and the muffling of sound, that makes me notice it.
It goes away within ten to sixty seconds, and my ear is back to normal…almost like that feeling when your ears pop and you can hear normally again.
I’ve been told that it’s auditory damage; I have no reason to doubt it. But why and when it happens to me are pretty random. I’ve only been to one concert in my life; I don’t even own a pair of headphones. But I have worked in very very loud clubs/bars etc., for about a decade…and I know that Mr. Levins can comfortably hear TV shows at a much lower volume than me. I’m the “turn it up a bit??” girl.
I’m only 31. I’m hoping this doesn’t get worse. Anybody else experience “temporary deafness” like I do? Almost like one ear went underwater for thirty seconds?
Has a doctor looked? Sounds like earwax.
A really great (and loud!) concert with DJ Krush from Japan back in, '01 I think. Got a severe ringing in my ears for days afterwards, as to be expected, but it went away - until, a few days later I had the pop thing happend, and since then my right ear is constanly giving off a high pitched whine. Was really bad in the beginning, but I guess ze brainz learned to ignore it after a while. Now I never hear it unless I focus on it, or when reminded, as when I saw this thread title 
So here I am listening to the buzz in my ear, cursing the OP… Also has some reduced hearing in the right ear methinks, altough nothing to troubling yet.
Several of y’all have mentioned the nighttime “marching” sort of tinnitus (see below). I too had this when I was a kid, but only when I lay the side of my head on the pillow before going to sleep at night. (For some reason I used to envision the sound as the footsteps of Bert and Ernie outside the house, forever walking towards my house to come visit me, but never quite arriving… Weird, huh. :dubious:)
And then I realized that what I was actually hearing was just the whoosh of blood pulsing through my carotid artery. (Note that I didn’t know the words “pulsing”, “carotid”, or “artery” at the time, though!) I could check my pulse at my wrist, and it was always perfectly in time with the “marching/footsteps” in my ear.
As far as I know, this isn’t at all anything abnormal. When my neck and head are positioned just right, I can still hear it.
My own verdict = not tinnitus.
I’ve had this identical effect all my life, although lately it seems to have become a little less common. I’m 23 years older than you, and despite this still have normal hearing, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about.
Yeah, I know, this thread is 4 years old. But Drain Bead’s comments about her tinnitus are remarkably similar to what’s happening to me now, though my problem started directly after a car accident, so I am wondering if it’s some bizarre internal injury.
Dunno if caffeine would make any difference, but I do know I can alter the sounds in my ear the same way she describes. And the exploding head thought is exactly the same as well.
Been to my primary care doc, who has me scheduled for an ultrasound of my neck, and an ENT visit for further workup. With my age and history, it’s a good plan - I just hope that in the meantime everything stays in one piece.
some hair cells in the inner ear may have been damaged when you had your bell rung. such damage could cause tinnitus.
lots of possible causes.
IANAD though i do have ears.
The funny part is that I didn’t hit my head in the accident, though I did end up with bruises across my chest from where the shoulder belt was, and also at the point where the shoulder and seat belt meet.
Can’t discount what might have happened getting whipped around by the force of it all. It could also be a complete coincidence … I’m not a spring chicken and my family has a history of cardiac weirdness.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the tests. Provided my head doesn’t explode in the interim!
I’ve had the constant whine as long as I can remember. It usually doesn’t bug me, since it’s almost always steady. Once in a great while it will get loud, but that doesn’t last long. My hearing has always been very good.
I got mine from years of drums, and it sounds like this. I don’t notice it unless it’s perfectly quiet, or I’m reminded of it.
Probably hear it all day, now.
Rarely I’ll get a brief case of tinnitus in one ear, which comes on fast and tapers off in ~30 seconds to a minute. It’s shocking because the effect is pronounced at the onset.
The other incident of note was due to firing my .45 without hearing protection. I did this once, and only once, just to experience how loud it really is. My ears rang for several hours after that 
Tinnitus Retraining Therapy is the only proper treatment for tinnitus and its cousin which I have, hyperacusis.
You must re-train the brain’s response to sound by listening to low-level pink noise all day every day for at least 12 months.
Well, will you look at that…to add value in replying to myself, I’ll note that 4 years later, mine has not improved but it also has not gotten any worse.
The major consequence to my life is that I can’t hear the warning beep from my refrigerator door left open, or the little beep my coffee maker makes when it’s done.
I believe I have developed tinnitus although it wasn’t much noticeable until a couple of months ago. It started with me hearing what sounded like crickets chirping when I tried to go to sleep every now and then over the last couple of years; I literally thought nothing about it as I would forget about it the next morning.
Then about two months ago I had one of those weeks at work finishing a project that required literally days of getting only 3 to 4 hours of sleep for about 10 days straight; I found out that when I was tired those crickets were chirping like mad. Now it is relatively constant but only really noticeable when I’m tired or in a very quiet room. I did some research and found this cricket chirping is a common tinnitus “sound”.
It’s far from bothersome and in fact makes me feel sometimes like I’m sleeping outside on a summer night but I do plan to bring it up to my doctor next visit.
Not sure what could be causing it; I’ve had head injuries in my youth, listened to my share of loud music when younger, and could, at best, be described as good health for a man my age; any and all of which could contribute to tinnitus from my research.
My ears ring constantly, but they have for years. It’s not even a problem, as I’m just used to it. In high school I had a pair of headphones with multiple drivers per side. I used to crank them up so loudly that there was a tickling deep in my ears, which I thought was cool. My sister used to come in from the other room to ask me to turn my headphones down, it was disrupting her homework.
Today I count my blessings that I still have hearing left.
Aaand, the diagnosis is, in fact, a bizarre internal injury.
Carotid artery dissection. Bilateral, internal carotid arteries.
I was walking around with this for 2 months with no idea. The CT scan the ENT guy scheduled for me showed it. Imagine my surprise when I got an urgent voicemail from him - who, when I called back, told me to go to the ER. RIGHT NOW.
I got bunged into the hospital and put on a heparin drip. I am now on warfarin and will get another CT in October to see if the tears have healed. Once they do, I’ll switch over to low-dose aspirin and probably be on that for the rest of my life.
Long strange trip, indeed.
good for you. real luck there.
even though your head didn’t hit something it got whipped around hard. your head was brought to a sudden stop only restrained by your neck. lots of forces to cause damage.
I’ve found out that while car accidents are classic for this type of injury, there’s lots of less violent stuff that can cause it too. The neurologists tell me they see it in weightlifters and swimmers - even some yoga moves can cause it. And mechanics and painters have this type of injury as an occupational hazard.
And I’m very lucky that my first ‘symptom’ wasn’t a stroke. I’ll take a little ear music instead …