A long while back I was hanging out with one of my sisters and she said that she hears thunder in her head when she gets startled.
Me: “Scuse me. What?”
Her: “You know. That thunder you hear when someone startles you.”
Me: “Again. What?”
Her: “You don’t hear thunder when someone startles you?”
Me: “Uh, no.”
Her: “Oh. I thought that happened to everybody.”
Is this a thing? Does this happen to anybody else out there? She did struggle with depression for much of her life. Could that have had something to do with it?
I think it’s probably this. I can actually make this muscle vibrate using some of the same muscles you use when you yawn, but I had no idea that it protects your hearing. I also play music and used to tour in some pretty loud bands. Remarkably I don’t have any hearing loss, and actually hear better than many of the high schoolers I teach. (I teach physics so we actually have a section on sound, and we test what frequencies people can hear.) I always felt very lucky that in my mid 40s I’m still hearing well. But I also notice that when things are very loud something seems to “overload” in my ears, and it seems like the sound is being blocked. Maybe I have stronger tympanic tensors?
I can do the same and I wonder if you just got lucky. I’ve had a penchant for loud music for decades and I’m only just noticing that my hearing may not be that great as a result. Nothing’s muffled, but the one single time the tinnitus let up I remember being shocked and hopeful it would stay that way (it did not).