Dizziness and Ringing in Your Ears

Hearing loss rarely shows up alone. The same anatomy that processes sound — the inner ear and the auditory nerve — is also responsible for balance and is connected to pressure regulation in the head. So patients with hearing changes often experience related symptoms like ringing, dizziness, or fullness in the ears at the same time. This page covers what those related concerns mean and what we can do about them.

Tinnitus — Ringing, Buzzing, or Hissing in Your Ears

Tinnitus is the perception of a sound — ringing, buzzing, hissing, clicking, or whooshing — that has no external source. It’s extraordinarily common: roughly 15–20% of adults experience it, and the prevalence rises with age and noise exposure.

What causes tinnitus

In most adults, tinnitus is a symptom rather than a disease. The most common underlying causes are:

• Hearing loss — often the first sign of inner-ear hair-cell damage. The brain “turns up” certain frequency channels to compensate, producing the perception of sound where there is none.
• Noise exposure — sometimes acute (a single loud event) and sometimes cumulative.
• Earwax impaction or middle-ear fluid — reversible causes that can be treated directly.
• Certain medications — aspirin, NSAIDs, some antibiotics and chemotherapy drugs.
• Underlying conditions — high blood pressure, TMJ, certain neurological conditions.

What we can do about it

Tinnitus rarely has a “cure” in the medical sense, but it is highly manageable for most patients. Treatment usually combines:

• Treating any underlying hearing loss. When we treat the hearing loss, we treat the brain’s reason for generating the phantom signal. Many patients report tinnitus becoming dramatically less noticeable once they’re wearing properly fit hearing aids.
• Sound therapy. Modern hearing aids include built-in tinnitus management features that play customized background sounds — not to mask the tinnitus, but to give the brain something else to anchor on.
• Cognitive strategies. Tinnitus retraining therapy and similar approaches help the brain learn to push tinnitus into the background, the same way you stop hearing the refrigerator hum.

If you’ve had tinnitus for more than a few weeks — especially if it’s in only one ear or comes with hearing changes — it’s worth scheduling an evaluation. Sudden or pulsing tinnitus, especially one that “throbs” with your heartbeat, warrants prompter evaluation.

Learn more about our tinnitus management services →

Dizziness and Balance Issues

The inner ear contains the vestibular system — the body’s primary balance organ. It works alongside vision and proprioception (the sense of where your limbs are in space) to keep you steady. When the inner ear is involved in hearing loss, balance can be affected too.

Common dizziness patterns

• Vertigo — the room is spinning. Often comes from the inner ear’s vestibular system. Conditions like BPPV (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo) cause brief, intense spinning when you turn your head a certain way. Ménière’s disease combines vertigo episodes with hearing changes and ear fullness.
• Lightheadedness — you feel like you might faint. More often comes from blood pressure changes, dehydration, or medication effects than from the ear directly. But it’s worth ruling out the inner ear if it’s recurring.
• General imbalance — you feel unsteady on your feet. Common in older adults with hearing loss. The brain uses sound cues for spatial awareness too, and treating hearing loss often improves perceived balance.

Why this matters

Adults with hearing loss have a measurably higher risk of falls. Falls are the leading cause of injury in adults over 65. So while dizziness might feel like a separate concern from hearing, addressing them together often produces meaningful improvements in safety and confidence.

If your dizziness is sudden, severe, or accompanied by sudden hearing loss in one ear, treat it as urgent and seek immediate evaluation. Sudden inner-ear changes are time-sensitive — treatment within 72 hours dramatically improves outcomes.

Ear Fullness, Pressure, or Pain

A sensation of fullness or pressure in one or both ears can come from several sources, some trivial and some not.

• Earwax impaction — the most common cause. Usually fully resolved with professional removal.
• Eustachian tube dysfunction — often follows a cold, allergy flare, or air travel. The tube that equalizes pressure between the middle ear and throat doesn’t open and close properly.
• Middle-ear fluid or infection — less common in adults than in children but possible.
• Ménière’s disease — the combination of fluctuating hearing, ear fullness, vertigo, and tinnitus suggests this. Diagnosis and management is usually a coordinated effort between an audiologist and an ENT.
• TMJ (jaw joint) issues — the jaw joint is right next to the ear canal. Clenching, grinding, or arthritis in that joint can produce ear-fullness sensations.

Pain is different from pressure. Ear pain — especially with fever, drainage, or vision changes — should be seen by your primary care or an ENT promptly, not just an audiologist.

Hearing Loss and Cognitive Health

Two decades of large-scale research, especially work by Dr. Frank Lin and colleagues at Johns Hopkins and the 2024 Lancet Commission report on dementia, have shown that untreated hearing loss is one of the largest modifiable risk factors for cognitive decline in mid-to-late life. Treating hearing loss does not “cure” dementia — nothing does — but addressing it appears to slow the trajectory.

The mechanism isn’t fully understood, but the leading theories are: (1) reduced auditory input gradually de-conditions the auditory cortex; (2) effortful listening drains cognitive resources from other thinking tasks; and (3) social isolation from hearing difficulty itself accelerates decline. All three improve with hearing treatment.

If you’ve been told your memory feels foggier and you also have hearing loss, addressing the hearing piece is one of the most useful steps you can take.

When to Make an Appointment

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