Have you ever jumped into bed after a long day, rolled onto your side, and noticed a rhythmic thudding noise as you tried to sleep off? Well, you are not alone. It happens with millions of other people as well. But why does this noise happen and what is it to be concerned about?

According to doctors, if it happens once in a while it may be due to your carotid artery basically sitting against your pillow. However, if you hear your heart beating all the time when you are lying on your side, it could be pulsatile tinnitus.

Pulsatile tinnitus is a relatively rare condition that affects 15 million people across the world.

Pulsatile tinnitus occurs when there is a disturbance in the blood flow in the arteries and veins near or around the ears.

Being a rare form of tinnitus, it causes constant noise in a person’s head that no one else hears. They often, but not always, describe it as a ringing sound. People who have pulsatile tinnitus hear a noise that may be loud or soft but tends to happen in time with their heartbeats or may sound like a whooshing.

According to doctors, many times pulsatile tinnitus is a sign of vascular disease – which affects your veins and arteries, as well as malformations of vascular structures or atypical blood flow near your ear, and in some rare cases, tumours.

Pulsatile tinnitus can be caused by an ear blockage, high blood pressure, narrowed veins and arteries in the head and neck, an abnormal connection between arteries and veins, benign head or neck tumours, elevated pressure within the brain, and less commonly, anemia and pregnancy, which make the heart work harder.

Like tinnitus, pulsatile tinnitus can interrupt your ability to concentrate, sleep or work.

Many people, who have tinnitus or pulsatile tinnitus develop depression or have symptoms of anxiety. Most importantly, pulsatile tinnitus may be a symptom — and your first warning — that you have a serious medical condition.

A few signs and symptoms of the condition include:

A rhythmic swooshing or whooshing noise inside of your head that often keeps pace with your pulse is the most common symptom of pulsatile tinnitus.

This is common blood pulsing faster than normal through a variety of veins and arteries located near your ears. This may include large arteries or veins in your neck and at the base of your skulls, and smaller arteries in your ears. In a sense, people who have pulsatile tinnitus hear their hearts beating.

While pulsatile tinnitus happens in general when there are some abnormalities that change the flow of blood in blood vessels, sometimes changing blood flow is also a sign of a serious medical condition. A few of these include:

It happens due to the hardening of your arteries, which can make for uneven blood flow.

These are tangles of blood vessels affecting the connections between your veins and arteries.

High blood pressure measures the pressure of blood against your blood vessel walls.

Anemia can spike your blood flow, which may in turn affect your blood vessels and cause pulsatile tinnitus.

Some people have small tumors in their middle ears located near the parts of the ear that receive sound.

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