Do Older Folks Take Longer to See an Improvement of Their Hyperacusis?

[GoatSheep]

Ok so after doing my five minute cycles today - I skipped a few hours - but in total I've exposed myself for 25 minutes in various "safe locations" in my house. Upstairs in the bedroom, in a bathroom and downstairs in my work area. So after this 5th cycle of 5 minutes and helping my children very minimally with getting their showering done all while wearing earmuffs, which seemed to aggravate my ears some, I'm having my first actual pain cycle of the day. My ears are both aching constantly, my sensitivity is much higher, I'm having tingling throughout my jaw and my neck feels tight.

So while it was incremental exposures instead of single instance like the other night, around 30 minutes or less of exposure daily is seeming to trigger me.

This is very distressing. Being that people pretty much agree not to push through the pain, I felt like my quick exposures followed by protecting kept this from happening. But now that I'm having a full blown cycle currently, that seems to not be the case. They seem cumulative throughout the day and my ears do not seem to be recovering to where I can continue to do more cycles from this point even though there is an hour to even two hours between these brief exposures.

I'm already feeling quite suffocated so not really sure what to do at this point. I know this is all very individual, but what do people think? Rest entirely for a few days and then start again as I'm doing and see if any improvement or just cut back the length of my cycles from 5 minutes to maybe 2 minutes and see if I can do an entire day. It will suck to try to build extremely gradually, but I just can't see how I will not lose everything, meaning my job, children, home etc if I don't either protect constantly or do some type of tolerance building.

What is anyone else doing to try and build their tolerance? Being that mine has dropped so fast each time I get a long pain cycle I'm scared it will go lower. What are people's experiences with this? Any input would be helpful at this stage. I'm pretty much in crisis mode.

Look I hate to beg but I'm really freaking out. If anybody could just give some input period I would really appreciate it.

 

[Taw]

Just wanted to chip in that deeply inserted earplugs causes sharp and aching pain for me. The pain usually comes on random.

Exactly like me also, I wear them to protect myself but many times they add more pain.

 

[GoatSheep]

Exactly like me also, I wear them to protect myself but many times they add more pain.

Are you able to distinguish clearly between pain from noise and the pain from the earplugs and/or earmuffs?

Currently I get pain and irritation from hearing protection but it seems the pain from noise exposure is markedly different. Noise exposure causes a deep "injured" feeling ache first all around my ears, then things move out from there. My ears feel very brittle with noise exposure now. I guess to describe it like they could crack and shatter easily like a faberge egg or something.

 

[Taw]

Are you able to distinguish clearly between pain from noise and the pain from the earplugs and/or earmuffs?

Currently I get pain and irritation from hearing protection but it seems the pain from noise exposure is markedly different. Noise exposure causes a deep "injured" feeling ache first all around my ears, then things move out from there. My ears feel very brittle with noise exposure now. I guess to describe it like they could crack and shatter easily like a faberge egg or something.

Very tough question, unfortunately no.

For example, if I drive somewhere in my car wearing earplugs (strong ones, 3M 1100), I don't know if the pain is from the earplugs or from the engine noise that "penetrated" the earplugs.

But I am 100% sure that earplugs hurt, although I cannot tell the difference. But I never expose myself below 80 dB (shower, dishes and once a week with car) and I wear protection during this time. Still got setbacks and pain...

 

[GoatSheep]

Very tough question, unfortunately no.

For example, if I drive somewhere in my car wearing earplugs (strong ones, 3M 1100), I don't know if the pain is from the earplugs or from the engine noise that "penetrated" the earplugs.

But I am 100% sure that earplugs hurt, although I cannot tell the difference. But I never expose myself below 80 dB (shower, dishes and once a week with car) and I wear protection during this time. Still got setbacks and pain...

Yeah, I agree, earplugs hurt. Especially after wearing double protection. I get pain in my ears, but like to say it's more centralized so it seems at least to be coming from the earplugs. I wear 3M 1100's also.

Off topic, but I think what has happened to me is a two fold issue. I think the record store irritated the inner ear aspect of noxacusis in some way. These later noise irritations seem to have set my tensor tympani and/or stapes on alert and they are reacting a lot. I think that may be why even when I am exposing only in short increments of like 5 minutes that they are getting irritated to where each further exposure sets them off more till around 25-30 they create a real pain cycle.

Like I'll get some pain, some thumping and things from 5 minutes of exposure in my house, but then I plug back up and it's ok. I wouldn't call the mild effects afterward a pain cycle. But like yesterday, after five 5-minute cycles across about 7 hours I got a pain cycle that lasted several hours.

I'm hoping if this newer stuff is middle ear related maybe it will improve faster than inner ear related stuff as long as I keep up these gradual exposures.

I could be completely wrong, but that's all I've got right now to work with really.

 

[racedy]

Good to know!

Did you have (burning, stabbing) pain or loudness hyperacusis? Asking because dog barking is like 90-100 dB, which is huge, of course it's intolerable.

I had primarily loudness hyperacusis, but the high pitched screaming from my nieces hurt. Like jets flying over.

Crazy enough, I just learned I have glossopharyngeal neuralgia affecting the left ear, which causes a stabbing and burning feeling in the ear (and other areas connected to the same nerve... commonly the throat & tongue... I only recently began experiencing the throat pain, and this has been going on for nearly 3 years). Crazy enough, the first time I experienced this pain was when I was babysitting the screaming kids. It was very brief, excruciating pain -- like being struck by lightning in the ear. But then I started to get the pain when I was not around any loud noises, it even would wake me up, so I knew it was not hyperacusis related.

So I don't find noises painful any more unless I am also having a neuralgia attack. However, for whatever reason, I still find my left (neuralgia-affected) ear more sensitive to sounds than my right ear. I'm not sure why. I could look at the audiograms or whatever to see if my left ear might have more hearing damage at higher frequencies, but from what I recall, both ears are the same and my hearing is fine.

My dog generally barks at around 95 dB (I think the highest I clocked her was at 98 dB from 6 ft away... so thankfully she is not barking right into my ear), and I am surprisingly ok with this now, but I still reflexively cover my ears as soon as she starts barking. A year ago her barking triggered me so much that I wore my NC headphones when she wasn't sleeping because she could go off at any minute and I didn't want to deal with that!

While my hyperacusis improved a lot, my tinnitus is still going strong, but rarely bothers me these days (habituation).

 

[Taw]

I had primarily loudness hyperacusis, but the high pitched screaming from my nieces hurt. Like jets flying over.

Crazy enough, I just learned I have glossopharyngeal neuralgia affecting the left ear, which causes a stabbing and burning feeling in the ear (and other areas connected to the same nerve... commonly the throat & tongue... I only recently began experiencing the throat pain, and this has been going on for nearly 3 years). Crazy enough, the first time I experienced this pain was when I was babysitting the screaming kids. It was very brief, excruciating pain -- like being struck by lightning in the ear. But then I started to get the pain when I was not around any loud noises, it even would wake me up, so I knew it was not hyperacusis related.

So I don't find noises painful any more unless I am also having a neuralgia attack. However, for whatever reason, I still find my left (neuralgia-affected) ear more sensitive to sounds than my right ear. I'm not sure why. I could look at the audiograms or whatever to see if my left ear might have more hearing damage at higher frequencies, but from what I recall, both ears are the same and my hearing is fine.

My dog generally barks at around 95 dB (I think the highest I clocked her was at 98 dB from 6 ft away... so thankfully she is not barking right into my ear), and I am surprisingly ok with this now, but I still reflexively cover my ears as soon as she starts barking. A year ago her barking triggered me so much that I wore my NC headphones when she wasn't sleeping because she could go off at any minute and I didn't want to deal with that!

While my hyperacusis improved a lot, my tinnitus is still going strong, but rarely bothers me these days (habituation).

Great story, thanks for sharing.

Did you do something to cure it or was it just time?

Also how long did it take from the moment you had pain in silence and now? Many of us have also pain in silence, like you did.

Thanks.

 

[aura]

I had primarily loudness hyperacusis, but the high pitched screaming from my nieces hurt. Like jets flying over.

Crazy enough, I just learned I have glossopharyngeal neuralgia affecting the left ear, which causes a stabbing and burning feeling in the ear (and other areas connected to the same nerve... commonly the throat & tongue... I only recently began experiencing the throat pain, and this has been going on for nearly 3 years). Crazy enough, the first time I experienced this pain was when I was babysitting the screaming kids. It was very brief, excruciating pain -- like being struck by lightning in the ear. But then I started to get the pain when I was not around any loud noises, it even would wake me up, so I knew it was not hyperacusis related.

So I don't find noises painful any more unless I am also having a neuralgia attack. However, for whatever reason, I still find my left (neuralgia-affected) ear more sensitive to sounds than my right ear. I'm not sure why. I could look at the audiograms or whatever to see if my left ear might have more hearing damage at higher frequencies, but from what I recall, both ears are the same and my hearing is fine.

My dog generally barks at around 95 dB (I think the highest I clocked her was at 98 dB from 6 ft away... so thankfully she is not barking right into my ear), and I am surprisingly ok with this now, but I still reflexively cover my ears as soon as she starts barking. A year ago her barking triggered me so much that I wore my NC headphones when she wasn't sleeping because she could go off at any minute and I didn't want to deal with that!

While my hyperacusis improved a lot, my tinnitus is still going strong, but rarely bothers me these days (habituation).

Could you please tell me more about your pain?

I have migraines with earaches (knife and burning sensation), throat pain (that kind of pain that you're experiencing when you have a cold and a sore throat) and the same kind of pain in the area between throat and ears.

It doesn't seem to be related to sound , but I am very sensitive to noise (ear discomfort, tinnitus reactivity).

Is there anything that helped you to reduce the pain? Nothing seems to work in my case.

 

[aura]

@GoatSheep, why did you get tinnitus in the first place?

 

[GoatSheep]

@GoatSheep, why did you get tinnitus in the first place?

I mainly got tinnitus/hyperacusis from acoustic trauma. I put multi factorial because I was going through a bad divorce and dealing with a pretty bad medical issue with my eyes at the time so I feel all the stress depleted me and made me vulnerable to it occurring.

Before the record store I was at a stage where I was in public unprotected. I would go to stores, a couple times to a mall, take my kids to and from school and even did an outdoor movie at their school (I stayed far away from the speaker system).

The thing with hyperacusis as you say is certain things people are much more vulnerable to. Tons of people including me have issues with cheap speakers and music. I'm the case of music even though I was handling lots of noises well in public etc. I was only listening to music at volumes of around 50-55 dB at home. I could handle a little more, but that felt like my safe zone.

When I was in the store I felt like 60-65 dB wasn't dangerous either, but as I've cited before the store had very reflective walls, the stereo was a cheap stereo, the vinyl was very crackly and unpleasant sounding. Not a clean record on a decent speaker system like at my home basically.

I don't believe volume level is the be all end all of what is safe and not safe. Basically certain things trigger my hyperacusis at much lower levels than the dreaded 85 dB.

1. I have a "crappy" set of speakers. They are not actually crappy in a sense. They are basically monitors for mixing music that replicate the average sound people who are listening on phone speakers and cheap pill speakers etc get. It's so that if you are mixing you can tell how your music will sound in "the real world" vs on your nice expensive monitor speakers that are balanced across the frequency spectrum. It helps you determine if you need to make certain tweaks to the sound. When I was still doing well I couldn't really listen through these speakers anymore. They aggravated my ears. Likely because of the frequencies they emphasized.

2. A certain artist I listen to likes to mix his music with lots of ultra high frequencies. His music sounds very airy and bright. After listening to one of his albums one day even on my good speakers I had a couple days setback because "his sound" aggravated the crap out of my ears.

There's more but I can't think of specific instances right off hand right now.

Music covers a very broad frequency range all at once. So let's say you have sensitivities in sound from hyperacusis/noxacusis that is mild in several frequency areas. They aren't being aggravated as much by one off sounds in public etc. The ultra high frequencies in music aren't as present in lots of real world sounds like that. But basically listening to music is exposing yourself to the full spectrum that can irritate you at once. This is why people have lots of issues with music with these conditions I believe.

So I think the setup and the volume being higher than my normal listening level definitely aggravated something. In my opinion it was a worsening. I feel the inner ear aspect of my noxacusis got pushed to a level it was not previously at. I think this is why my normal recovery trajectory of a maximum of two months didn't happen and I continued to spiral farther.

At this point I don't think the inner ear stuff is getting worse. I think that the middle ear muscle reaction to the inner ear irritation is causing possibly my tensor tympani and stapes to go into hyperdrive with protecting. If you read Miriam Wescott's paper on Acoustic Shock Syndrome she posits that Tensor Tympani Syndrome leads to chronic pain in hyperacusis.

So what I'm doing now is giving my ears major rest, but gradually each day doing a little more exposure time. I'm documenting it all in a notebook now. This way my ears will still get rest, but I'm not completely depriving them of sound. These muscles need time to reduce inflammation, relax and reacclimate to everyday noise. I definitely will be majorly avoiding television and music, period, still, but I am trying to expose to everyday sounds and even some iPad sounds from my kids and stuff from a good distance. Not with them sitting right by me or on my lap or something.

 

[Athens]

Yes, I have pain, but not 24/7 though. But I almost always have really uncomfortable pressure feeling in my ears. I'm sorry you have it so bad.

At one point, you indicated that having a conversation had become more comfortable for you. How are you now?

 

[nogg]

I have noticed that younger people tend to see an improvement of their hyperacusis in a shorter period of time (less than a year). I am 56 and the hyperacusis began fourteen (14) months ago. I have noticed that some success stories have involved people who began to see improvement in two (2) to four (4) years.

I have read some statements that older people take longer to experience an improvement in relation to hyperacusis.

This is likely true for many conditions in life, but I am interested to hear some thoughts on this subject.

Hearing care providers certainly seem to think this is true from what I have read and heard them say. Also, I've heard that those who have had these issues for a long time are also harder to treat. Both are likely because neural pathways become less pliable and current pathways are reinforced over time. But, the brain does maintain plasticity throughout our life, so it is always possible.

I developed tinnitus and hyperacusis at 33 years old. For the next 6 years it only got worse. Then for the next 20 years it stabilized where it was at, or did get a little better. In the following 5 years the tinnitus improved a lot, and life just felt better. But 5 years ago everything took a turn for the worse and I spent my days looking forward to dying. When the pandemic started, I actually felt a little giddy, thinking that it might be my way out. No such luck. Now I'm trying a wearable sound generator, and after some initial trials, I am somewhat encouraged.

So. Yes, being older might slow down recovery, but it doesn't stop it. Then again, everyone is different, we all react somewhat differently to these issues, and my story isn't necessarily a pattern that anyone else should expect. So, continue to work on it, and best wishes.

 

[Athens]

Now I'm trying a wearable sound generator, and after some initial trials, I am somewhat encouraged.

Is that an above the ear sound generator that looks like a hearing aid? I listen to pink noise through mine but have not really noticed any improvement since July of last year.

 

[nogg]

Is that an above the ear sound generator that looks like a hearing aid? I listen to pink noise through mine but have not really noticed any improvement since July of last year.

Yes, above the ear, like a hearing aid. I think it just plays white noise, though I don't see any mention of any particular type of sound in the documentation.

I'm assuming you are referring to your hyperacusis and not any tinnitus. I don't think there is necessarily any one solution for everyone. My hyperacusis resulted from a noise trauma, but it might have a different cause for some, and the cause could make a difference in treatment.

For me, the sound generator is fairly new so I don't want to talk in certainties, but a month into this, some things seem to have improved. Water running in a sink mostly doesn't now bother me. I run the microwave while still in the kitchen. Traffic noise 3 blocks away is no longer sensitive to my ears like before. And typing with my soft-touch keyboard doesn't seem to irritate my left ear as much as it used to. For my tinnitus, it seems to have leveled out, at least as long as I'm not exposed to too much noise. So, there have been some changes. I don't know if there will be more or if these changes will remain. I've been using the sound generator at a level that is just barely perceptible, but soon plan on increasing the volume by a small step, and I'll see how that goes. I'm hopeful, but there are still many uncertainties.

 

[Athens]

Yes, above the ear, like a hearing aid. I think it just plays white noise, though I don't see any mention of any particular type of sound in the documentation.

I'm assuming you are referring to your hyperacusis and not any tinnitus. I don't think there is necessarily any one solution for everyone. My hyperacusis resulted from a noise trauma, but it might have a different cause for some, and the cause could make a difference in treatment.

For me, the sound generator is fairly new so I don't want to talk in certainties, but a month into this, some things seem to have improved. Water running in a sink mostly doesn't now bother me. I run the microwave while still in the kitchen. Traffic noise 3 blocks away is no longer sensitive to my ears like before. And typing with my soft-touch keyboard doesn't seem to irritate my left ear as much as it used to. For my tinnitus, it seems to have leveled out, at least as long as I'm not exposed to too much noise. So, there have been some changes. I don't know if there will be more or if these changes will remain. I've been using the sound generator at a level that is just barely perceptible, but soon plan on increasing the volume by a small step, and I'll see how that goes. I'm hopeful, but there are still many uncertainties.

My left ear is my bad ear as well. I played live music for decades without protection and my left ear took more abuse based on where I stood on stage. The hyperacusis is more of an issue for me than tinnitus (although the tinnitus just seems to get more pronounced). I am concerned that normal, everyday sounds aggravate both the tinnitus and hyperacusis and are creating a cumulative trauma. I am not a big believer in TRT and sound therapy but I have worked with an audiologist trained in it.

I have communicated with at least one person on this forum with a very severe case of pain hyperacusis and he has very thoroughly researched these conditions and even he says that just about everybody finds something that works for them that results in improvement (sometimes dramatic improvement). I have not found it yet. It might just be the passage of time. I bought some Lidocaine patches tonight and will try that based on at least one study that seemed to show a reduction in tinnitus after folks wore them for a month. I think that they were prescription patches but the OTC ones are only 1% less.

I am fortunate that I have not developed a lot of pain with this condition. It is just an uncomfortable, jarring sensation and the tinnitus is probably only moderate at this point.

I hope that you continue with your improvement.

 

[nogg]

Keep us posted on how well the Lidocaine patches work for you.

This is something I started to use on occasion last fall. When I use them, I put them on the back of my neck before going to bed and take them off sometime in the morning. The first time I tried this I felt I could tell a slight difference in my tinnitus in the morning. The second morning there was a definitely noticeable improvement, and for the next two days as I continued this I had clearly "good" days, which I found quite interesting because my "good" days were never more than a day and a half.

I still use them but just occasionally when my tinnitus seems to be worse, and usually in the morning it is better. But I'm not sure if that is consistently because of the patches. Since there is some variability in the tinnitus anyway, the day following a worse day could be expected to be better anyway. So I don't know.

I've never tried them every day for a month as you are planning on doing, so I'll be interested to hear how it does for you.

 

[Athens]

Keep us posted on how well the Lidocaine patches work for you.

I am trying the Lidocaine OTC patches. I cut them in two pieces. I put them on the back of my neck below the hairline. They do not stay on well and I have some medical tape that I use to try to keep it in place. I have only used them for a few days and do not notice any difference. I plan to keep using them for a few months. I wear them during the day for approximately seven (7) to eight (8) hours.

 

[nogg]

I use the Equate brand from Walmart. They have a gel surface that usually sticks ok overnight. I initially tried another brand, but they were hard to apply and impossible to separate if it folded on itself. A few years ago I tried using patches during the day, but I could never detect a change and so stopped. Then last fall I started thinking about it again and decided to try them overnight. It was only then that it seemed like it might actually be helping.

 

[Mister Muso]

We older folk take longer to see anything

 

[Eleanor89]

We older folk take longer to see anything

@Mister Muso, that is so true lol.