Dana Pulciani first heard the mystery noise when she woke up one morning in the fall of 2022. It was totally out of the blue. She’d always been healthy and everything was fine the day before. But suddenly, there was a constant whooshing noise in her left ear, similar to what’s heard when a pregnant woman gets an ultrasound, she says. At first, Pulciani and her primary care physician thought it was fluid in her ear. But when the noise persisted and got louder, she became concerned.
She had a narrowing of one of the main veins that take blood out of the brain, likely caused by idiopathic intracranial hypertension or high pressure in the head, Shaibani says. Surgery to stop the whooshing noise A narrowed vein creates noise in the same way pursed lips create a whistling sound, Shaibani notes. And because blood flows rhythmically, people with this condition hear a whooshing sound in sync with their heartbeat.