If you hear a noise that seems to be coming from inside your head, you are experiencing tinnitus. Tinnitus is a symptom, not a disease. According to the experts at the National Institute on Deafness, most people will experience tinnitus at some point in their lives. Tinnitus symptoms can be acute (temporary) or chronic (reoccurring or permanent) and can be rooted in a wide range causes, the two most common being hearing loss and loud noise and certain types of medication.

Loss of hearing from disease, infection, trauma or aging can also give rise to tinnitus symptoms. The reasons for this are not completely understood and may be related to the phantom limb syndrome. In amputees it is common for the brain – interpreting input from nerves that are still functioning but no longer terminate in the amputated foot or hand, to register the missing body part as still existing. It is theorized this phenomenon creates tinnitus symptoms from malfunctioning auditory nerves.

A ringing in the ears is the most frequently reported tinnitus symptom. This is commonly, but not always, caused by loud noise. Have you ever walked out of a rock concert and had sounds from the outside world sound muffled, accompanied by a ringing noise inside your head? That is acute tinnitus caused by loud noise. If you are frequently exposed to loud noise over a long period of time, the hearing loss and accompanying tinnitus can become permanent.

Medications that can cause tinnitus symptoms include common aspirin if overused; quinine, a naturally occurring drug commonly used to treat malaria; and the powerful antibiotic aminoglycoside.

Sounds other than ringing that are frequently reported by tinnitus sufferers include sounds like waves, crickets, wind and whistling as well as clicking and humming as if from an electronic device.

Clicking sounds heard in the inner ear can be auditory signals that reach the inner ear through skeletal conduction. This sound is usually found to be caused by a misaligned jaw bone, but can also be caused by spasms of the muscles of the ear or throat. Tinnitus symptoms that involve the whoosh of blood being pumped through the vessels of the ear are know as pulsatile (as in pulse) tinnitus. Common causes of pulsatile tinnitus symptoms are high blood pressure, anemia or an overactive thyroid.

On rare occasions, tinnitus symptoms are attributable to tumors or cysts in the middle or inner ears. A tumor that presses on the blood vessels of the ear can cause pulsatile tinnitus. Tumors on the nerve that carries the signals from the ear to the acoustic processing center of the brain cause acoustic neuroma. This condition occurs in only one ear, which distinguishes it from other types of tinnitus and should be examined by a doctor immediately.