Hearing a hissing sound in one or both ears could potentially be tinnitus. However, the only way to rule out other causes or confirm whether the unwanted noises are indeed due to tinnitus is to schedule a thorough hearing and ear health assessment.
Tinnitus is a relatively common condition, but patients can have very different symptoms and experiences, which is why it is often misdiagnosed or mistaken for other causes. Noises like hissing, buzzing, ringing, and whistling could all be linked to tinnitus—or might be due to something unrelated!
Let’s look at some of the contributing factors to tinnitus, the alternative reasons you might have a hissing sound in your ear, and the tests and treatment options available to get your hearing and ears back to full health.
Key Insights Into Hissing Sounds Inside Your Ear
- Hissing noises, either in one ear or both, continually or intermittently, can be distracting and annoying. Tinnitus is one possible reason, but there are also myriad other causes of a hissing sound.
- Medical conditions like high blood pressure, reactions to medications, and injuries to the head and neck can also prompt a hissing noise or cause the perception of this sound. That is why a professional hearing assessment is essential to deciding on the right next steps.
- Stress, fatigue, and anxiety can often worsen hissing sensations in your ears. If you are worried about tinnitus or unsure if something else is going on, we recommend that you have your hearing and ears checked promptly and seek help finding the best resolutions.
Possible Causes of Hissing Sounds Within Your Ear
As we’ve indicated, hissing noises aren’t a definitive sign of tinnitus, nor are they necessarily long-term. Several problems and aspects of hearing and physical ear health are characterised by unusual sounds that originate from inside your ears and that nobody else can hear.
The most typical is an ear wax buildup, damage or an injury within your inner ear, or an ear infection. Microsuction ear wax removal and treatments to clear up infections might resolve the hissing noises in very little time, so it’s always worth getting assistance – rather than ignoring the problem and hoping it’ll go away.
Ear wax is responsible for an enormous range of symptoms and hearing complications, and simply removing impacted and blocked ear wax, checking that your ears are otherwise healthy and free of irritation and implementing a good ear hygiene routine might be the end of the issue for good.
However, there are other causes both of hissing in your ears and of tinnitus, which can be interrelated or might cause hissing that isn’t connected to tinnitus.
It’s important to clarify that even if the primary reason you’re hearing hissing noises is temporary, such as exposure to sudden and very loud noises or an ear wax blockage, this might still be labelled as tinnitus. This broad-scope term refers to almost any ear condition or hearing symptoms accompanied by noises from inside one or both ears.
That said, there is a big difference between temporary and short-term tinnitus, which is a symptom of something else that we can cure very quickly, and tinnitus, which is itself the issue and requires a more bespoke range of therapies.
Reasons You Could Be Hearing Hissing Noises
The focus is always on finding the root cause before making any recommendations. If, for instance, you suffer from serious migraines and these are accompanied by hissing noises, the right treatment might be to control your migraine symptoms – at which point the sounds may disappear.
In others, the right therapies will be related to your hearing capacity and ensuring your inner and middle ear are functioning correctly.
All of the below can cause impairments to the way your ears both receive and process sounds, which is why you could find hissing comes and goes, only occurs in certain environments, and ranges from an intrusive noise to a background sound you can only detect when you focus on it.
Middle and Inner Ear Infections
The delicate internal structure of the ear can be exposed to infections due to swelling and blockages, which cause fluid and pressure to accumulate within the ear. These can also be caused by allergies and viruses.
Any fluid, inflammation or blockage that prevents sounds from reaching your eardrum correctly or distorts sounds can contribute to hissing and other sounds typical of tinnitus.
Blockages to the Ear Canal
We’ve discussed ear wax blockages, which remain a leading cause of tinnitus. Excess ear wax can impact the natural function of your hearing, make infections more likely, and exacerbate or cause damage and injuries to the eardrum.
Natural Hearing Changes Linked With Ageing
In some clients, there isn’t an obvious or clear external cause of tinnitus or reason they might detect hissing within their ears. However, this is far from rare, with as many as 15% to 20% of people impacted by tinnitus, a large proportion of whom are adults of older age.
Age-related hearing loss is largely genetic and hereditary. If other family members have experienced difficulties with their hearing, required hearing aids, or been diagnosed with tinnitus, it is more likely to be a factor in your hearing disturbances.
Reactions to Medications
Some medications are known as ototoxic, which means they can potentially have side effects that impact hearing. These include antibiotics, everyday pain relief, and medicines used to treat heart and kidney conditions, as well as chemotherapy medications.
Migraines
Migraines are as complex and varied as tinnitus and can be both a symptom and a cause of tinnitus. Tinnitus is most often present during the initial onset of a migraine, also known as the migraine aura. This usually lasts at least an hour but can be prolonged.
Severe headaches can impact hearing, balance, sight, and sensitivity to stimulus, which is why low-level hissing noises can become much louder and impossible to ignore during the onset of a migraine.
Meniere’s Disease
Meniere’s disease is a rare inner ear condition that can be well managed with lifestyle changes, balanced nutrition, reduced salt intake, medications, and avoidance of particular drugs that can worsen symptoms.
Tinnitus, vertigo, a sense of fullness in your ears, and hearing loss are all potential symptoms and side effects of Meniere’s disease.
Trauma to the Ear
Physical injuries caused by a fall or accident and internal damage caused by infections can all contribute to tinnitus as a common side effect, particularly when your ears, head or neck have been injured, often connected with whiplash, concussion and exposure to explosions and other very sudden, loud noises.
Why Hissing Inside Your Ear Could Be Tinnitus
As we’ve mentioned, tinnitus doesn’t have a singular set of symptoms or causes, and anything that can prompt a hissing noise in your ear is equally a possible cause of tinnitus.
Tinnitus is widely misunderstood but is actually a symptom rather than a standalone health condition. This is why it’s so difficult to diagnose and why personalised treatments are always recommended—since a therapy that resolves tinnitus in one person might have little or no effect on improving your hearing if the underlying causes are different.
That said, noises such as hissing, humming, or ringing can all be tinnitus if they don’t have an external source.
If the hissing sounds don’t go away within a few days, you’re experiencing hearing loss, or you are worried about what the hissing noises mean, and whether they’ll have a permanent impact on your hearing quality, please contact your nearest Regain Hearing clinic as soon as possible.
We’ll start with a gentle, professional examination of your ears, followed by a thorough, pain-free hearing assessment to determine the cause and formulate a strategy to relieve your symptoms.
Treatment Options to Resolve Hissing Noises In One or Both Ears
Once we have a good idea of the primary causes of your tinnitus, we’ll put together tailored suggestions. That could mean removing ear wax, recommending massage therapy to aid in muscle relaxation, or seeking medical help to treat and manage migraines.
If there is no direct discernible cause of your tinnitus, which is connected to ageing and progressive changes to your hearing, we may consider bespoke tinnitus therapy, with cutting-edge treatments developed by our Principal Audiologist and Company Director, Lee Fletcher.
Despite myths that age-related tinnitus is impossible to cure, Lee’s approach is scientifically backed and uses state-of-the-art audiology techniques to provide immediate relief, mapping and tracing the exact nature of the hissing sounds you can hear to target your treatment specifically to you.
Tinnitus Assessments and Treatments
Available across Regain Hearing’s clinics, tinnitus treatments include an initial, in-depth review using a system called the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI), which is a globally used methodology that allows us to grade and evaluate your symptoms.
From there, we use pure tone audiometry to replicate and record the hissing sound, speech discrimination testing to check which sounds you can hear and make out with ease and those you can’t, and use these insights as a baseline for your treatment.
Often combined with ear wax removal and hearing aids, our use of innovative sound therapies and customised symptom mapping outperforms all conventional treatments.
For many clients, this means experiencing instant relief and long-term improvements until their tinnitus symptoms are impossible to discern.
