Hi, it’s me the queen of tinnitus. This lovely ringing in my ears has been with me since my complete thyroidectomy 16 years ago. Sometimes it’s deafening, other times just a low hum but it’s always there. Ringing, whooshing, buzzing, full feeling, noise sensitivity and even hearing loss can all be caused by thyroid hormone imbalance. I think I have had them all at various times over the years. Let’s break this down as I try to understand where all the noise is coming from and maybe you can relate to some of my ear issues.
When I was on T4 only (125 -175 mcgs) I had 24/7 ringing at the same medium noise level. My FT4 was over top of range and my FT3 was about 40% of range. During this time I also had pulsing/swooshing in my ears, especially when I bent over. Another weird thing that I had at this time was ear pain. I’d wake up in the morning and my actual ear would hurt. Not like an ear ache, but like the cartilage of my ear would hurt and eventually would feel better as the day went on. Weird…. thyroid symptoms are so freaking weird!
When I introduced T3 for the first time in the form of NDT (Nature Throid 90) my ringing decreased as I got stabilized on my dose. My FT4 was at the very bottom of the range and my FT3 was around 50-60% of range. It was still there especially a few hours after I would take my dose in the morning but for the most part it was significantly better. These results led me to believe that maybe my ringing correlated to my usually high FT4 but that theory was squashed during my second trial of NDT (Armour) which resulted in the same labs WITH lots of ear ringing. Maybe it was a Nature Throid thing. I did have pretty good results on it but they discontinued it and any NDT I have tried since, hasn’t ended well.
When I’m on combo therapy my tinnitus and ear issues vary greatly. Sometimes I think my tinnitus is a good indicator of when I need to dose T3 or that I need more T3, but I have found that it’s a dirty little liar. If it were only that simple right? But what I have noticed is that I have certain ear issues with varying levels of hormone. When I tried 100/10 combo I didn’t have as much ringing but the swooshing was common and I also had some of the weird ear cartilage pain. My labs on this dose were around 60% of range for both FT3 and FT4. On 88/6.25-11.25 I have regular low grade tinnitus that comes and goes as it pleases. I also notice that when I am lopsided (higher FT4 in range than FT3) I have steady loud tinnitus. Most recently, after an overmedication disaster, I was on 80/5 and had a FT4 of 67% and a FT3 of 26% and had the worst ringing I’ve ever had to date and also during this time my ears felt plugged, like I had just gotten off an airplane.
Let’s talk about noise sensitivity. I get it and it really bothers me. I’m bothered because I have it and the actual noise bothers me. I’m not sure why I get noise sensitivity. If I had to guess, I would say I get it when I’m overmedicated. The TV is suddenly too loud, my grandsons are too loud, life in general is too loud. It’s almost like an overstimulated feeling.
As I am writing this post I am one week into 88/10 and I have swooshing and ringing that comes and goes. Hopefully as I adjust to this dose it will lessen, or maybe it’s just something I will have to live with.
I’d like to tell you that all this noise in my head doesn’t really bother me, but it does. Sometimes it bothers me a lot and other times I can ignore it. The outcome of my day is usually measured by how loud my ears are ringing when I wake up in the morning. On the days that I just can’t get away from it, I put my air pods in and listen to music, a podcast or an audio book. It doesn’t drown out the ringing but it keeps me focused on something else.
I feel like this post wouldn’t be complete without a section about the remedies that I’ve tried. Inevitably the common remedies on most Facebook thyroid groups when someone asks about tinnitus is “you need B12” or “you need to increase your T3”. Well, I’ve tried both and neither helped. Another common remedy is melatonin, no success with that either and I felt like a zombie in the morning. Klonopin is supposed to help tinnitus and that is the benzo that I take but it doesn’t do anything for my ringing. I went to a chiropractor that promised he could relieve my suffering, unfortunately the ringing came back within 24 hours. But please, let me know if you have had a success with something. I’m all ears!
As you can see, I can’t pin my average variety tinnitus on a specific level of thyroid hormone. The Thyroid Mom website has an article about thyroid ear problems and she correlates many ear issues with low T3. When I went to her sited reference for that claim it was research involving hearing loss caused by low T3 and low TSH. AND of course, I couldn’t find any research on ear problems after thyroid loss. So once again, we are left to draw conclusions from research not really pertaining to us.
Here is the link to the Thyroid Mom website, if you would like to check out the article that I referenced. Also, some research to ponder in regards to tinnitus improvement after Levothyroxine treatment as well as an increased chance of tinnitus when hyperthyroid.
Do you suffer with ear issues that you think are related to losing your thyroid?
Because this is a chronological blog you guys get to experience our failures and successes in a time stamped fashion. We hope that this will enable our readers to learn from our past experiences, symptoms and screw ups, while gaining knowledge from what we have been through.
Please always keep in mind that our posts are written from our experiences. We too are always learning, reading, researching and trying to figure out the needs of our bodies. Sometimes what we say in our posts changes over time: we do more research or we have settled into a dose that we thought was right but now just isn’t. Things change…. and so do we!
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