This is a bug, of sorts, and will be cleaned up in the next release.
The "better" way to profile is to just right click on a track when you are in pan mode. It will still be highlighted, but the highlight is much less persistent.
The problem is that the profile tool is the merge tool as well, and when merging you want your track to stay around more, perhaps even if you disable files that are a part of it.
We're going to two tools soon. Thanks for the feedback.