Sudden Unilateral Change in Tinnitus (Dull Ring, High-Pitched Hum Sound)

[Forever hopeful]

Hi,

It has been long time since I have visited this site. I first got bilateral tinnitus about 5 years ago.

Tinnitus Talk was tremendously helpful to me. After several months of stress and anxiety, and a lot of support here, I managed to habituate and cope.

Tinnitus has not really bothered me much until tonight. I am not sure what happened but I was sitting in a quiet room with my husband talking and heard this strange noise in only my left ear. I moved rooms and it was still there. It was a loud ringing and a somewhat whooshing sound, not pulsating. The higher louder ringing stopped after about 5 minutes but I can hear a dull ring and like a high pitched hum hum like when your channel is off line in TV. This is not at all my normal tinnitus sound and is only present in one ear, and is scaring the heck out of me.

Has anyone ever had this happen? Is this a spike? If so, why only one ear and why a different noise? I am not sure I have ever had a true spike although I have had periods where I notice the tinnitus more than others. I also have a feeling of fullness in the afflicted ear as well. I would appreciate any insights. I have read and heard from my ENT that unilateral tinnitus is very rare and usually related to something.

This is, of course, increased my anxiety appreciably. Ok, well truthfully, I am starting to freak out again. I take good care of my ears , wear ear plugs to the movies etc., watch the medications I take. By the way I have no known hearing loss.

Thanks.

Danielle

 

[Laurie1961]

Hi Danielle,

I'm so sorry that you are going through this too. Since the shut down I've had the most dreadful problems with tinnitus. It is not that I am home more, because I was home before the shut down. I consider what is going on to be torture, some sort of surveillance, to be honest. It is a heinous crime, in my opinion. It is not constitutional to torture a person 24-7 with sonic aural devices. There are laws that a person can be tracked for their watch list, but no law states that they are allowed to torture innocent people, citizens of the US are protected by the Constitution and this tinnitus is a violation of our rights to freedom from torture. The surveillance is not covert, because we are all complaining about it. It is not a disease or a medical problem because doctors claim ignorance in curing it and research just wastes time coming up with nothing.

I've had this for over a decade. It has completely ruined my entire life. If you are young, fight with all you have left. I'm pushing 60 years old and the effects of this are literally killing me slowly. I can measure electricity on my body--abnormal in even humid weather, that has been as high as 700mV potential difference to ground. I can literally put a charge of a few microvolts onto a battery by holding it. When my tinnitus stops for a day or so, I have only a few millivolts of electricity, testing in the exact same manner, like between 0 and 20 mV. This is proof that the effect of the tinnitus corresponds to some sort of electrical radio frequency that is charging my body. I bet many others with tinnitus could use a multimeter set to millivolts and confirm this oddity. I only checked my own voltage because i was attempting to repair electronics and kept blowing a .500 mA fuse in my old analog multimeter when i finally noticed it was when I happened to touch the metal of both probes simultaneously. I had to go buy a digital one and then another one to verify that the first one was correct before I found other people who I could test to find there level was low, 0-5 mV. This is torture, it is heinous torture and it is unconstitutional. On top of tinnitus, when the voltage on my body is high, my vision blurs too.

Blinding a person to surveil them? I have never done anything criminal that would warrant putting me on a watch list as a terrorist, nor do I know anyone else who might be.

Any of my actions, that may or may not have put me on a watchlist, have honest legitimate cause that I could defend, and would be understood completley, if given the opportunity, in a court of law as the Constitution suggests is the rightful remedy.

(PS I have a niece with your name.)

 

[Forever hopeful]

Well I have been trying... and trying... and trying... to put on a brave face and say, this happened before, you survived it and you will again. Still the anxiety is palpable. The noise machines are in full concert around the house. And I am failing miserably.

As I indicated in other posts, my bilateral tinnitus was essentially gone. Barely heard a noise in the last 4 years. WTH? Now back in one ear. Not really sure why? Take great care of my ears. Could be the neck, could be TMJ. Both areas hurt. The aural fullness is awful... day 7 today for tinnitus and AF. No real changes in either symptoms. No change in tinnitus loudness of type of noise.

I guess I never had a true spike. Is this what this is? Is this like my first real spike? Is aural fullness normal with spikes? I had AF bilaterally when I was first diagnosed. No hearing loss per audiogram but fluid in both ears. The affected ear is fine and free of fluid/infection. How long do spikes last?

I feel like I am right back where I started from in 2015...

 

[Bobbette]

Well I have been trying... and trying... and trying... to put on a brave face and say, this happened before, you survived it and you will again. Still the anxiety is palpable. The noise machines are in full concert around the house. And I am failing miserably.

As I indicated in other posts, my bilateral tinnitus was essentially gone. Barely heard a noise in the last 4 years. WTH? Now back in one ear. Not really sure why? Take great care of my ears. Could be the neck, could be TMJ. Both areas hurt. The aural fullness is awful... day 7 today for tinnitus and AF. No real changes in either symptoms. No change in tinnitus loudness of type of noise.

I guess I never had a true spike. Is this what this is? Is this like my first real spike? Is aural fullness normal with spikes? I had AF bilaterally when I was first diagnosed. No hearing loss per audiogram but fluid in both ears. The affected ear is fine and free of fluid/infection. How long do spikes last?

I feel like I am right back where I started from in 2015...

Spikes can last a long time, up to a year. Try to rest and not worry too much.

 

[Forever hopeful]

Hi@Bobbette ,

Thank you. I will try.

Best,

Danielle

 

[Forever hopeful]

This is my second month with a new presentation of tinnitus.

I don't have a lot of experience with spikes. My tinnitus fluctuates and I've had some really loud times but it usually quiets down to a barely audible level before it fluctuates up again. It has rarely been this loud.

Two days ago I took my 10 year old son and a friend to the zoo and his friend just like screamed in the back seat of the car during the long car ride. Not like a sustained scream but mostly just like these intermittent loud noises that he would make that would last like a second, but it was really loud. I finally put my earplugs in because I couldn't stand it anymore and I ever knew when he was going to yell. I do not have hyperacusis and am not bothered by every day sounds. It was probably more fear than the fact that he was doing any damage to my ears.

That said, yesterday my tinnitus spiked and stayed spiked all day and it is still high today and I'm just wondering how long it's going to last. I have never had it quite this loud for this long.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Thuan]

@Forever hopeful Give it a couple of days or weeks for the volume to go down. Awhile back, I had an old lady yelled at me suddenly in the phone (that damn b*&%$) where it dulled my ear for days with a tinnitus spike. But, the tinnitus did go down few days later.

I think (my guess is that) what really happens when you're suddenly exposed to loud noise is that the hearing becomes insensitive/dull and our brain dials up everything it can do to hear better, which unfortunately in this case includes the tinnitus.

Eat healthy (low sodium, not no sodium) and avoid sugary foods. Take those vitamin pills to give your cells as much nutrient to recover as much as possible. There's those vitamins for women gummy bears. Doesn't hurt to try. Stay off any meds that can spike it (surprisingly, sleeping meds can spike my tinnitus too).

Try to stay calm because we all know stress and sudden fear can prolong spikes (at least in my experience).

I usually avoid strenuous activities where it will spike blood pressure (that also spikes the tinnitus). Get good sleeping posture and sleeping patterns.

I hope you get well.

P.S.
Please just always use ear plugs whenever you go out and take it off when you are inside. Better be safe than sorry.

 

[Forever hopeful]

@Thuan

Thank you for your response. I appreciate it.

Well this morning it was pretty quiet and I felt better. It stayed low for the majority of the day and then ramped up again. I guess because it's fluctuating in nature, I can't tell what is a true spike and what isn't. I do notice that it tends to get worse throughout the day on my good days.

I am on a very low sodium diet, which is a total bummer because it really limits what you can eat since there is sodium in everything. Given that it fluctuates so much I can't really tell what caused the spikes and what doesn't. It's so frustrating. It could change within an hour. And it isn't really loud, the problem is it's just so high-pitched that you hear it over everything. Masking does not work.

I need to take medications to sleep because otherwise I won't sleep at all. But I'm not on anything new that I haven't been on for a very long time.

Can I ask what you mean by good sleeping posture?
I think my posture in general has been horrendous since March when COVID-19 hit and my company had us start working from home. I started having neck problems and I have some TMJ issues and my ENT thinks that the high-pitched ringing may likely be related to my TMJ and not related to hearing loss b/c I get lot of pain and fullness in my ears which I guess could be referred pain from the jaw. I do have some very very mild hearing loss at one tone in the left ear and have a different tone of tinnitus in that ear but that never changes and never increases no matter what I do, eat, sleep etc.

Thanks again.

 

[Thuan]

@Forever hopeful

For my experience, I usually get a spike whenever I have headaches or neck pain. So I usually try to sleep straight on my back, with a good neck pillow. I avoid sleeping on my side, as I found out my tinnitus gets louder whenever I wake up on my side.

As for TMJ, I have that too but I don't really have any solutions for TMJ except only eating soft food and avoid nuts where it requires too much jaw action. I also usually let my jaw hang a bit to avoid using the jaw muscle. Although speaking of TMJ, I realized haven't had much jaw locking pain for awhile, only some numbing pain once a few weeks.

That's my experience but it might be different from yours since you said diet and sleep doesn't help. However, a good neck pillow is always a good thing because it feels so good. God knows we need some form of relieve in life when suffering with tinnitus.

 

[Forever hopeful]

@Thuan,

Thanks for your reply.

I so get where you're coming from in terms of neck positioning during sleep. Unfortunately, for me, I am totally a side sleeper, and I have a horrible time sleeping on my back. I wish I could sleep on my back. I bought those supportive pillows and they are so darn comfortable but I had to end up using a sound pillow because I do sleep on my side and when I occlude my ear, I can hear the ringing loudly and it keeps me up all night. But I don't think that pillow is good for my neck sadly.