Can you hear your muscles?

I have tendonitis in my knee. I hear this crunching noise every time I walk up the stairs.

No but I can see them.  They twitch. Calf muscles particularly will twitch, undulate and move freakishly while I'm just sat still. Like there are insects running around under my skin.  24/7 - it never stops. I forget about it for ages and am then shocked anew when I notice it again!

Yep, it sounds a little like an air bed being blown up.

I think you are hearing the tendons running within their sheaths rather than muscles themselves. My knees creak occasionally (have done since my early 20s) but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a muscle.

Nope; not tendons, at least I really don't think so. If I keep the ever so slight tension static so that the tendons are not moving but are under strain I can still hear the noise. It is continuous until I stop tensing. 'Tensing' seems to be a far too strong word here, all I am doing is to just barely activate my muscles.

Yep - usually my bladder sphincter in the middle of the night - screaming at me to take action. So far I've always woken up in time.......

Not sure if it’s my muscles, or the stuff that’s supposed to make the joints move smoothly not doing their job properly, but I can certainly hear a variety of disquieting sounds when I’m moving around.

Not noticed it for while but once in a while I notice I can hear my eyes, can't remember if it's blinking or looking between left and right that makes a slight noise!

Isn't this just normal background noise that your brain has learned to filter out automatically from a early age? Otherwise you'd hear your heartbeat continually. My guess is that by focussing momentarily, you're sort of temporarily disabling the filter and allowing you to hear tiny background noises which could be all sorts of stuff - connective tissue, circulation etc, like a creaking bike.

One explanation of tinnitus is that your neural filter isn't working right, so you hear a background noise that would normally be filtered out. You focus on the noise, which in turn tells the brain that it's important, so you listen to it even more keenly and it turns into a feedback loop. Various tinnitus 'treatments' are basically about restoring that original 'filter' so that you're no longer aware of the tinnitus 'sound' even though it's still there.

In a totally silent room, apparently, pretty much everyone will be aware of a tinnitus 'tone', but in normal life, it's simply filtered out.

If I flutter my eye-lashes now and focus, I can hear them - in a quiet room - but in the normal way of things, your brain discards the signal as useless information, so you simply don't register it.

That's my take anyway. Not a neurologist, audiologist or owt like that though.

I think Rachel Atherton heard her Achilles tendon (attached to the muscle) snap a while back.

I can hear my eyes

I just want to quote that as it's pretty bloody epic! <Thumbs up>

My grandkids say they can hear a noise when they pull my finger.

YES, As with the OP, when I'm in bed and my hand is under the pillow with my ear pressed to it if I ever so slightly 'engage' any hand/finger movement then I can hear a noise, a little like the flow of water perhaps?

I'm very in tune with how to completely turn off my muscles for relaxing, and I've experimented when I can hear the noise, so I know that it's definitely muscle activation noise, but I couldn't tell you if it's tendons, muscle or whatever else?

Also, my BIL could hear his eyes when he moved them, and it turned out that he has a bone eating disorder that had eaten away some of his middle ear causing third window syndrome.

Rachel Atherton heard her Achilles tendon

Shudders.
I don’t even want to think about how painful that must be.

I heard my achilles snap too. Surprisingly quite loud, and was immediately followed by another bang as I hit the floor. Wasn't fun but no more painful than various other things. Took a long old while to get back to fitness though.

I can typically hear my heart beat in bed. For a while I wondered if I was hearing atrial flutter or something on top - a quiet and pretty regular pulse at about 300 bpm in the background. I could never detect it with my Kardia ECG thingy (though that maybe doesn't sample quickly enough for that anyway), and had no symptoms of any heart issues, so largely ignored it. Then one night I noticed that I could turn it on and off by tensing and relaxing my jaw muscles. So I decided that it was something to do with muscles. Weird that it was quite regular though!

You can "hear" a lot of stuff but it's actually transmitted through your skeleton, particularly your jaw.

So if you rest your head on you hand you are probably picking up the vibrations in your jaw rather than your eardrum picking up sound waves.

I had "Dequervain's Tendosynovitis" for a bit in my wrist - I (and others) could hear the tendons squeaking as I clenched and unclenched my hand, and it felt like gritty shifter cables. Not overly pleasant.

JonEdwards
Free Member
I had “Dequervain’s Tendosynovitis” for a bit in my wrist – I (and others) could hear the tendons squeaking as I clenched and unclenched my hand, and it felt like gritty shifter cables. Not overly pleasant.

Yep i had that about a decade back. Most odd and disconcerting feeling.

Went on it's own in the end. I think I just had to put an inflammatory cream on it or just rest it, can't remember really. Could really feel it when I pulled the front brake on the bike.

My grandkids say they can hear a noise when they pull my finger.

Joint cavitation: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4398549/

Isn’t this just normal background noise that your brain has learned to filter out automatically from a early age? Otherwise you’d hear your heartbeat continually

That or its drowned out by the background noise. Supposedly Anechoic chambers are slightly freaky since you can hear your heartbeat and even some blood flow (in ears).

Joint cavitation: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4398549//blockquote >
I'll try using that as an excuse next time but I'm not convinced it will work. 😀

 

Yes when it's quiet I can hear my neck grinding (?) as I turn my head. (Prev neck injury c3/4 ain't getting any betterer)

Visited Cairn Gorm's herd of Reindeer last week. Reindeer's leg tendons click with every step they take! It helps them find each other in poor visibility.

No. Not sure it’s muscles you’re hearing. Maybe tendons moving in their sheaths and between bony bits?

And perhaps some ‘grinding’ of joint surfaces and cartilage?

Carotid stenosis can make that blood rushing sound more prominent.

have you heard brain cells? https://www.apconix.com/tubular-cells/

Yup. When I lie in bed and think I've relaxed I know I haven't if I can hear the "thrum".

Yep, I can hear my eyes move as well. Sounds like a printer if I move them quickly- weird

When I lie in bed and think I’ve relaxed....

I sh1t the bed.... that's what the guy next door in A&E said......

Yep, I can hear my eyes move as well. Sounds like a printer if I move them quickly- weird

Then you might want to consider if you have some form of third window syndrome:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_canal_dehiscence_syndrome

I have it myself & the key diagnostic was being able to hear your eyes moving.

No but I can see them. They twitch. Calf muscles particularly will twitch, undulate and move freakishly while I’m just sat still. Like there are insects running around under my skin. 24/7 – it never stops. I forget about it for ages and am then shocked anew when I notice it again!

I've got this too, but only my left calf, what on earth is it? It's really visible. Same leg where I've had a year of muscle pain behind the knee, hoping MRI pins down the cause of this:-/

Dunno, I've had it for decades so have kind of stopped worrying about it.

@imnotverygood

I've read up on the wiki link...I think I'm in the clear as it says the eye movement sounds like sandpaper on wood.  In my case it's almost impercetable and sounds quite smooth.  I do occasionally get a slight sense of vertigo when nodding off to sleep but the article suggests that's triggered by noise.

you can hear your muscles, especially those in your hand. If you pop your thumbs over your ear openings and tense your fists you can hear your hand muscles 'roaring'. This is essentially the individual muscles fibres moving over eachother as they are stimulated to contract - and is closely associated to what you'd measure from electrical activity in the muscle (EMG).

Muscles don't contract as a single unit, but are formed of hundreds / thousands of fibres working in a co-ordinated fashion to deliver the desired force and range of motion of a joint. The more contracted the fibre, the louder it roars as it becomes stiffer.

I hear my leg muscles when I attempt to move but that's due to spms and the leg spasms that lock them rigid. I get 600iu to 800 iu of botox every 3-4 months to attempt to free them off and it does help but as it wears off the noise comes back, sounds like a loud scratch or cloth getting stretched/ripped when I attempt to stand up or move my legs using my arms.

Can be rather loud as my mum/mates have commented on it.

I can hear my eyes

I read the other day that in reality your eyelids are in fact reasonably translucent, certainly thin enough to see light through. Instead your brain 'turns off' your eyes when you blink, or close your eyes for longer periods, to make it black...

Mostly just feel the various areas that crunch and grind, the tinnitus wins over most other internal noises.

OP again. I'm just out of hospital having had a total hip replacement. I can tell you for nothing that being used as a lump of human carpentry makes a LOT of noise.

Did you have it done whilst awake?

Hope your recovery goes smoothly.

At a mates recording studio I put one of the mics against my chest to hear my heartbeat.

It was at that point i discovered I'd an extra beat every so and so number.

Quickly went off that idea :LOL:

Yup, awake but with sedation. I wore my own headphones and played music from my phone. It took just over three albums to do, One Giant Leap, Leftism and (the rest of)New Order.

It was a surprisingly acceptable experience. Weird smell though, apparently it's from the bone adhesive.

Cool. I had some screws taken out of my hip earlier this year. I asked about having it with a block instead of general, but the anaesthetist advised against because it was getting late and I'd be able to leave sooner with a general... if I had the block then my legs still wouldn't work for a couple of hours after it was done and dusted!

When I had tinosinoviitis, I could both hear and feel the tendons rubbing in the sheaf. When I had screws in my wrist that were too long, I could hear the tendons scraping over the screw head. The screws were replaced with shorter ones in a second op.

@TiRed. Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!