r/hyperacusis

I declined over 3 months even while avoiding loud noise. I think it's because I was repeatedly testing sound tolerance to (low volume) TV/phone and getting aggravated.

But even since avoiding all sound that aggravates me and wearing earplugs while going out, I'm not getting any better. Is there like any way to spot signs of improvement? Do I have to take one of those extreme psychiatric drugs like Clomipramine? What if they don't work, you're just fucked?

All the guidance on this illness seems to contradict itself, no doctors know anything about it and idk what to do. Think I'd rather have cancer since at least people are supportive and understanding about that.

Hi folks, just want to suggest trying PEA which is Palmitoylethanolamide. Someone else suggested it on here which is why I tried it. It’s helped me so much with really bad nox pain. It naturally occurs in our bodies.

I was in horrible pain two months ago. It takes 4 weeks up to 2 months for it to build up in your system and to feel the full effect.

I take 1200mg a day. I started at 800mg for a few weeks.

You should get it from a compounding pharmacy as it has to be micronized.

I now have significantly less pain which is helping me to expose more and I’m making progress finally after months of it exacerbating. That is to say, PEA coupled with mindfulness and TMS approach. Onwards & upwards. I am a success story in progress 💪

Could barely even scratch my skin. Talk. Now I’m speaking a few sentences again (so exciting), went outside in my backyard. Handling paper and not getting triggered.

Give it a go! It may help and virtually zero side effects so worth trying even if it doesn’t work for you.

*of course I’m only speaking from my experience - consult your doctor.

Anyone know what happened to this post or got a copy?

Edit:

Spoke to the mods. The post was automatically deleted because the user deleted his account. It is back now.

Hey everyone, 18M here.

For the past approximately two years, I have been experiencing progressive auditory sensitivity and fluctuating ear-related symptoms that appear to have developed gradually after repeated exposure to loud sounds over time. My symptoms mainly include increased sensitivity to loud environments, occasional ear pain, auditory fatigue, mild tinnitus, and periods where sounds feel too much. The sounds that affect me the most are shouting near me at school, sirens, dirt bikes or engines, concerts, cinemas, and loud music. The Thing with these is that i can let them slide but i know they will hurt my ears. Maybe not directly but later. I have noticed that my symptoms are often cumulative rather than immediate. For example, if I spend several consecutive days in noisy environments such as the city, cinema, or social settings, I tend to develop ear pain and increased sound sensitivity in the following days. The symptoms fluctuate significantly, with some days feeling relatively normal and other days being much worse.

Around one year and four months after the beginning of these symptoms, I developed a mild tinnitus in my right ear that is still present today. In addition to sound sensitivity, I sometimes experience ear pain even when I am in a quiet environment without any obvious sound trigger. This pain is usually brief and fluctuating. I also noticed that hearing protection such as earplugs can help me feel more comfortable in loud situations, although I am uncertain about when protection is truly necessary versus when my anxiety or sound vigilance may be influencing my reactions. Recently, after listening to loud music in a car, I experienced a sudden strong sensation of ear blockage and temporary reduced hearing in one ear. Later that same day, my hearing returned closer to normal after trying to “unblock” the ear multiple times by pinching my nose and blowing, but during the following days I continued experiencing fluctuating sensations of ear fullness, intermittent hearing changes, and eventually pain in both ears. That incident was major flare up.

The symptoms have started to impact my daily life psychologically and socially. I have become increasingly focused on my ears and worried about whether sounds are dangerous or could worsen my condition permanently. I often find myself monitoring sound levels and questioning whether I should protect my ears or simply tolerate normal environmental sounds. At the same time, I am still capable of attending school, going outside, being in the city, and participating in daily activities, although I now do so with more caution and anxiety regarding noise exposure.

I had a stupid accident with a smoke detector about 3 weeks ago that has left me with increased sensitivity in one ear and distortions in the lower and perhaps ultra-low frequencies. I haven't been able to get more than a couple of hours of sleep each night and I have been rapidly dropping weight. To top it all off, I live near noisy neighbors and an airport.

I don't exactly want to die, but life right now is pure agony. The primary reason I am alive is because my ENT said it may clear up in a few months. How did you get through the beginning of this affliction, and how do you continue to cope today? What motivates you to keep on living despite your pain?

Addressing another human being as a “sufferer” regardless of what condition they have sounds very rude and is insensitive. I’m not sure why people can’t just say “person with ___”, “patient” or “people with ___”.

I developed hyperacusis 2 years ago. It started with listening loud music, than my neighbour started very loud work in her garden. I also had a lot of stress and started methylphenidate after adhd diagnosis in my 40ties. Methylphenidate made my hyperacusis even worse. I leave near the airport so noise of planes was unberable to me. Even earplugs didn't help with it. Now noise of planes doesnt bother me too much, I got used to it.

What helped me?

1. I stopped taking methylphenidate. Stimulants make hyperacusis worse. Check your medicine
2. I switched to fluoxetine which helped me with stress
3. I am women in 40ties. I wasn't taking birth control pills and after some health issues I had to take them. It appeared my hiperacusis was correlated with perimenopause period starting in my life. Birth control pills with estrogen alleviated my symptoms totally! All together with fluoxetine. So if you are women check if it's not about your hormones and estrogen drop. I also was few months on progesterone only birth control pills and it made me worse. My symptoms of adhd also are perimenopause, not only adhd.
4. Exercise and being in nature help a lot

Hope it helps someone!

About three months ago, after listening to music at an extremely high volume in my car for two days, I started experiencing pain in my ears. I used Zoloft for one month, but it did not help. After consulting my doctor, I started clomipramine. I am also listening to brown noise through my headphones.

Is it possible for me to recover? If so, how? Or will I have to live with this for years? Please help me. I would be very grateful.

Thank you very much…

First some back story. I've always ears that are sensitive to treble and I've had mild tinnitus for about 10 years since I was dumb and went to metal shows without ear protection when I was younger. The tinnitus was at a level to where I basically never noticed it or cared.

I've gone to many shows since then using ear protection with no issues, until last week.

Was at an outdoor festival and the band I was seeing had WAYYYYY too much treble in their mix, the drums were ear peircing even with my earplugs in and being hundreds of feet away from the speaker.

I didn't notice anything weird on Monday or Tuesday. Then Wednesday my tinnitus spiked to where I can hear it over background noise and I can't listen to anything higher than really low volume, be it through my phone speaker or headphones. It just hurts my ears. Especially guitars and anything with a lot of treble.

ENT #1 was basically like yep you have tinnitus (no shit) and scheduled a hearing test a month from now.

ENT #2 can't see me until next week

Urgent care DR gave me Prednisone and I started taking it today (about 3 days after my symptoms started, 5.5 days since the noise exposure)

I'm kind of freaking out about this.

Hey guys. So it’s about my second week on Clomi. I went on 20mg of Clomi instead of 25mg(full pill). I have a scale and empty some of it out. So my H is a little worse but better at some frequencies, it’s a little hard to explain. I’m not expecting my H to totally improve until weeks later. My TTTS has actually gotten worse. I wonder if Clomi at the start shocks your whole system at the start and makes your hearing more sharp idk and makes your ears more keen to sounds. Now for tinnitus…The first few days was bad. It spikes it up pretty bad. I was pretty scared. I continued and now it’s actually lower than baseline which is very bizarre. It’s now more of a low generator hiss with tiny background metallic tone faintly in the background. Sadly I can’t truly enjoy this low Tinnius because my reactive T is 10/10. So any sounds or being in an environment of sounds turns into a loud metallic tinnitus and stays there for 20 mins. I guess it’s a mix of reactive T and dysacusis. I’m hopeful to get better. The main thing is to be positive and protect when needed. That’s the hard part. I want to say thanks to all the H vets for the advice yall still give me. Please continue to have me in your prayers. I start work next week and have no idea how it’s gonna go since I can barely speak without my ttts going crazy in my ears haha. Also the nausea went away, my heart rate went up slightly, and the Visual snow again is actually more calm in a weird way. Idk how. It’s still there but not as in ur face. I don’t have nox, just slightly some jaw and ear ache/fullness from sounds. And all the pooping and clicking when swallowing. Very annoying. In the past when my H got better all the pops and ttts vanished. So I know this is just part of the ride. The ttts is one of my more hated symptom.
- Rich

Hello, I have been dealing with Hyperacusis and recently Noxacusis.

I don't have any form of hearing loss as well.

My family is pushing me for an audiogram, which I have heard can really worsen this condition, can anyone clarify, elucidate and detail on this point?

Why is this case, please detail on the exact factors.

My family thinks that a doctor can solve this, and that i am worrying myself too much based on my own research.

Any help would be very much appreciated, be it directing me to relevant threads and so on.

Thank you for reading.

It’s insane pain Hyperacusis patients like me get treated as if we have a hearing issue when we have a physical pain issue caused by who knows what

Unfortunately, I suffered a recent setback that sent the nox in my right ear to severe levels. I can barely tolerate every day noise even with double hearing protection in this ear. I can stand maybe an hour before the burning and throbbing sets in indicating that I have used up my "battery" for this ear and another setback will occur. I started one day of clomipramine 25mg before bed and was greeted in the middle of the night with the most catastrophic tinnitus I have ever experienced. At this point if I take this drug I will need horse tranquilizers to sleep. I stopped the drug immediately and my tinnitus went to baseline in about a day. I am frustrated because left ear has no noxacusis and mild tinnitus due to the acoustic trauma from over a month ago mostly occurring on the right ear. Is this normal for this drug? I see a lot of people online describing tinnitus spikes but I am not sure if the pathology of what is going on in my ear is similar. Any advice on how to navigate this drug would be appreciated. I really need to get my life back.

Just spent $300 just to be told to go to the dentist and be referred to a psychologist.

I’m pretty sure I have TTS but I was told that it’s not possible as TTS is only a loud clacking/ tapping sound and it only happens in one ear.

She also said there’s no medication or treatment for Hyper. Only counselling.
That’s funny pretty sure I see clomparine everywhere on here and even the round and oval window surgery.

Just needed to vent lol.

For the past two days I increased by gabapentin dose as told by my doctor but now the burning pain has returned and it returns at the medications peak, should I stop it? This is very unsettling as I had gone a very long time without burning or stabbing

hi hot acoustic trauma from a 140db keychain alarm in June 2023 only a few seconds self inflicted and studid however even dr and audiologist were shocked something would be that loud and it wouldn’t cause much issues in a few so how is a normal consumer meant to no and the warning just said long term exposure to loud noise causes tympanic membrane damage, anyway I knew it would be loud maybe I’d risk my eardrum however I didn’t know that the rest of my life I’d have to fear every sounds and social event!

nearly 3 years in

in that time I’ve managed to qualify as a personal trainer

keep my job, I work from home and have to go to office for meetings and the occasionso trade show causes stress but go not to isolate

when my t and h and ttts symptoms started to stabilise I have been able to go bars, restaurants, 2 parties and cinemas

I wear ear plugs loop experience everywhere

cinema and parties are a no go caused me setbacks

restaurants usually ok the loud ones cause spike and it’s awkward and uncomfortable to eat and hear and talk with strong earplugs in properly

firwomarks night last year didn’t want to go but my family were their double ear pro still caused a spike

last week turned my pc volume up on during an incoming caused a setback pains and sore ears can’t believe I did this! I don’t think I should be allowed near any device !

I was busy and distracted

i have a trade show next week I don’t want to cancel as I feel isolated enough with this I don’t think it will be loud

there is another one the following month I think they make announcements on microphone so thats making me worry

but then I think it’s the random noise or loud that causes it don’t know

like I wasn’t expecting to cause my trauma last week so may as well go to events that might be ok

anyway will have my loop earplugs in not that it helps that much

feel so exposed without them

anyway question is any ideas on any stylish comfortable over ear headphones that I can wear I’m not going to play misic through them as scared of accidentally having A loud sound go directly in ear, I just want have some over ear pro for evtra protection but I’m around professionals and so dont want to stand out but need to be safe anything less than £100 even £50

Hey all,

I'm back to living my normal life, including headphones, after struggling with progressive nox which eventually became severe (couldn't tolerate soft human voices). Basically I tried the "Ronnie" method of gradual stimulation, saw some progress but had a big setback and lost my patience and just said fuck it. I can't live like this the rest of my life, in constant fear and isolated. At this time I also read Sarno and Unlearn Your Pain and watched Buglio and things started to click.

I eventually settled on a kind of "Pascal's Wager" of Hyperacusis. For context Pascal was a philosopher who said in a strictly rational sense you should believe in God because if He exists, He will reward your piety, and if He doesn't exist you lose nothing, since there's no God to punish you. Now I'm just using this as an example for H, not trying to talk about religion in any way. The big question we all ask is whether there's something physically wrong with us or not. What I began to believe, like Pascal, is that it doesn't matter, we should believe (that there's nothing physically wrong with us) anyways. I formulated my situation to myself as follows, either:

1. There's nothing wrong with me physically and it's just my brain making anxiety and pain due to my past trauma, and it will go away as I expose, or
2. There is something physically wrong with me. If there was, then I'm fucked anyways. I would rather live my life in pain doing normal things that I want to do and seeing my friends and family, than isolating myself and still being in pain anyways. As we all who have suffered from H know, even when you isolate and protect you get setbacks and pain because you can't predict everything.

I stopped wearing plugs completely and only used them at night at home when sleeping. This is basically the opposite of common advice "protect outside but not inside so you don't overprotect". However I think this advice teaches your brain to fear the environment. I turned plugs into a treat for me I could look forward to at the end of the day, not a crutch that made me fearful. During the day I packed my schedule as full as a possibly could to keep my mind off the pain (think I read this tip from Olly). I kept telling myself "you're fine. live your life." The first week I was in 24/7 pain. The second week it started to taper off and I started listening to mellow music in high quality headphones at night. I still felt pain, but was enjoying the music so much I found myself having to force myself to stop to not stay up late lol. In the past I would struggle to survive 5 seconds of any music at any volume. Around the 3-4 week mark I was pain free except for super loud sounds. Now I haven't even thought about it in days. I didn't even want to open this sub, because it used to freak me out so much because of all the negativity, but I swore to myself months ago that if I got better I would make a success post. And others' success posts were instrumental in keeping me positive.

So yeah, that's my story. I'm not going to go on longer cause I basically have the exact same experience and beliefs as Olly: https://www.reddit.com/r/hyperacusis/comments/1i0bkkm/success_story_catastrophic_noxacusis_and/ The only thing I really wanted to add was the Pascal analogy and reversing how I treated earplugs, since I personally haven't seen those posted elsewhere (although they well may be). Wishing you all the best and a good recovery. This is what worked for me. And a special thanks to Olly and Dan Buglio.

Mike

Hello everyone,

I've had extreme (pain)hyperacusis for almost 2 years now. I also have tinnitus in both ears with multiple tones that has become reactive a few months ago.

I finally decided to start taking clomi. I am taking a really low dose. But I'm already noticing it is making my gastroparesis way worse.

I'm not sure what to do. I'm only on day 3, but I'm not sure if i should push through or not. Bc my gastroparesis is really severe as well, I can only eat liquids and clomi is sending me back into a flare, which causes a lot of pain and constant acid reflux, it is horrid really.

Wondering if these side effects will go away over time and if somebody is in a similar situation as me?

Ty for your advice!

I'm going fucking insane every god damn day and why isn't there legal assisted suicide? Is there a country that allows it? I'm trying a therapist whorecommended listening to soundscapes and so far it ain't doing jack fucking shit it's making it worse but idk why I still have a sliver of hope hoping it'll go away I thought it was going to go away but my fucking dumb ass took a shower in a small enclosed space making it so it spiked twofold for 14 days. I think I'm going to try doing the sound scapes for an extremely short amount of time then stop...surrellyy something will happen and I'll be magically cured. If I even drop a spoon into a bowl from a few inches after eating my shit spikes. And my audiologist is a dumb ass who takes 5 days to reply with fucking a few words when I asked him multiple questions and I doubt any other audiologist will do anything better for me