How Do You Adapt to / Live with a Very Reactive Tinnitus?

[threefirefour]

I left the thread because there is nothing more to say on this topic and because I am right.

Michael

If you're so right then why not prove it?

 

[Michael Leigh]

If you're so right then why not prove it?

Now you are being disrespectful and quite rude and therefore I will not correspond with you again, on this thread or any other. You have done this before and I have overlooked it.

Goodbye.
Michael

 

[threefirefour]

Now you are being disrespectful and quite rude and therefore I will not correspond with you again, on this thread or any other. You have done this before and I have overlooked it.

Goodbye.
Michael

Fine, Sorry I came across that way. I'm just mildly upset that you're not addressing the issue. I'm sorry you feel that way, and nobody would think less of you for admitting you don't know. You don't have to know everything about tinnitus, especially when most researchers don't.

 

[SilverSpiral]

Fine, Sorry I came across that way. I'm just mildly upset that you're not addressing the issue. I'm sorry you feel that way, and nobody would think less of you for admitting you don't know. You don't have to know everything about tinnitus, especially when most researchers don't.

The ego is in the way of discussion here, he literally ignores logic, by ignoring people who try to ask for logic, or present logic themselves.

No matter how long he puts his head in the sand, it is likely that future research will grow further and further from his narrow rhetoric, more and more research is demonstrating more and more information regarding how acoustic trauma and other hearing conditions affect the inner and middle ear, and apparently they simply do not fit with Michael's very "unique" ideas.

 

[vermillion]

I don't understand the cause of the the turn that this thread took. I entered the thread in hopes to find other users' experiences over RT and learn from them, but eventually i couldn't follow. I thought the thread's title was "How Do You Adapt to / Live with a Very Reactive Tinnitus?"
Whatever...

My deaf ear reacts to each sound my good ear takes in. I hear and feel noise in the deaf ear with every sound introduced in the good ear. You can call it reactive tinnitus or hyperacusis or recruitment. I think it's all of the above. You can also throw in misophonia and phonophobia because I do fear and dislike sound at times. That being said, I do want sound in my life. I want spoken conversations. I want audio cues in my environment to help me negotiate life. I don't want to be 100% deaf.
It isn't a one size fits all treatment because our situations differ from one another. Some of you hate being in silent rooms because your tinnitus drives you crazy in silent rooms. I love silent rooms! Maskers or TRT might be right for you but not for me. There is also the ongoing argument about overprotecting versus underprotecting. I used earplugs much more often in the beginning of this ordeal because I felt I needed to. I carry them with me now but I don't often use them. All sound is uncomfortable to me but I know where to draw the line, and my line is going to be in a different place than your line.
I know my own T and H and I can tell you what helps me. I don't know yours. I can try to understand you but I'm not an expert and I can't dole out advice to you, just support.

@Lorac i admire the way you keep a sound-mind while dealing with those issues.

What is Hyperacusis?

The lack of consistency in defining hyperacusis is frustrating for researchers and patients alike. The following are the most common definitions for terms related to hyperacusis and decreased sound tolerance.

• 
  
  
  • Decreased Sound Tolerance- Present when every day sounds cause a negative reaction. This includes most of the conditions listed below.
  • Hyperacusis- Present when every day sounds are perceived as being uncomfortably loud or cause physical pain. Negative reactions to sound caused by something other than uncomfortable loudness or pain (e.g. fear, distortion, tinnitus, annoyance) is not defined as hyperacusis. Misuse of the term "hyperacusis" is common.
    • There is a push to replace the often misused "hyperacusis" with "pain hyperacusis" and "loudness hyperacusis" (Tyler 2014). This adds clarity to the meaning of the terms and splits into subtypes where detailed mechanisms will surely have differences. While these two types generally occur together, there is a portion of hyperacusis patients that present loudness hyperacusis without pain and a portion that present pain hyperacusis without increased loudness sensation.
      • Pain Hyperacusis- Present when sounds trigger pain in the ear below common pain thresholds (120 dB).
      • Loudness Hyperacusis- Present when moderately intense sounds are perceived as being uncomfortably loud.
    • The term hearing sensitivity is discouraged as the meaning is ambiguous and it can inaccurately suggests the ability to detect sounds that others cannot hear.
  • Misophonia- Present when everyday sounds cause a negative emotional reaction. Examples of emotions that can be triggered from sound include annoyance, rage and fear. Other researchers wish to drop usage of the term misophonia and instead split this into fear hyperacusis and annoyance hyperacusis in order to to simplify naming and make the terms easier to interpret by the general public.
  • Phonophobia- Present when everyday sounds cause fear (subset of misophonia). Other researchers wish to call this fear hyperacusis in order to make the term easier to interpret by the general public. For some, this is more directly linked to a fear of re-injury or long-term setback.
  • Vestibular Hyperacusis- Present when everyday sounds induce disordered balance or vertigo. This is commonly referred to as Tullio's Phenomenon.
  • Reactive Tinnitus- Present when everyday sounds increase tinnitus activity. This is not a term used in research literature but commonly used by tinnitus patients. Winding-up and kindling are terms sometimes used to describe similar effects.

The above comes from:
http://www.hyperacusis.net/what-is-it/4-types-of-sound-sensitivity/
I was skimming the website yesterday, to find information over H. It seems like a good reference point.

 

[PaulBe]

Do they mean that H makes their T worse

I really think they are all part of a continuum within the same pathological process. That said, hyperacusis seems to have something of a blurry definition nowadays and there is a likelihood that in some, symptoms could originate outside the inner ear. This year my tinnitus has dropped a notch in volume, and the hyperacusis that comes along with it most days has reduced within equivalence from what it was.

 

[SilverSpiral]

My deaf ear reacts to each sound my good ear takes in. I hear and feel noise in the deaf ear with every sound introduced in the good ear. You can call it reactive tinnitus or hyperacusis or recruitment. I think it's all of the above. You can also throw in misophonia and phonophobia because I do fear and dislike sound at times. That being said, I do want sound in my life. I want spoken conversations. I want audio cues in my environment to help me negotiate life. I don't want to be 100% deaf.
It isn't a one size fits all treatment because our situations differ from one another. Some of you hate being in silent rooms because your tinnitus drives you crazy in silent rooms. I love silent rooms! Maskers or TRT might be right for you but not for me. There is also the ongoing argument about overprotecting versus underprotecting. I used earplugs much more often in the beginning of this ordeal because I felt I needed to. I carry them with me now but I don't often use them. All sound is uncomfortable to me but I know where to draw the line, and my line is going to be in a different place than your line.
I know my own T and H and I can tell you what helps me. I don't know yours. I can try to understand you but I'm not an expert and I can't dole out advice to you, just support.

I empathize very much with your symptoms, it's hard to make people understand how something like maskers would be absolute torture for some of the more severe hearing conditions. No matter how many times I try to explain my condition, I get told TRT and maskers and ginkgo biloba will solve it, and it's my fault it gets worse if I dont do those. Well I did Ginkgo Biloba for over six months and was advised medically to stop taking it, and TRT isn't affordable where I live, so if people here want to advertise TRT, they should be prepared to answer questions since it is such an expensive treatment.

I have "sound enrichment" by living near one of my cities major commute passages. I can hear the distortions over the white noise of traffic, just as I can over any other noise source, I don't see how expensive WNG will be the solution. I would take TRT if it was offered for free or affordable though.

 

[Tom Cnyc]

He has me blocked bro. Don't bother.

I suggest you ignore him as well. His "insight" can't help you so why bother?

Stop bullying people. Their condition will not get worse just because they disagree with you. Nothing in their response indicated temper, you are simply gaslighting them.

I am still suffering with the type of hearing condition described here, which is along the lines of what the OP is talking about. For the record here is how I describe some of the terms used in this thread. I do not think you should marginalize people over their condition. I won't try to sum it up better than someone else already has.


For the record, this is how I interpret some of the terms used to describe the hearing conditions discussed and experienced by me.

Hyperacusis: Pain or Discomfort caused by sounds which the "average" person would not. Huge spectrum of severity and symptoms experienced by the individual.

Tinnitus: Generally referring to constant tonal tinnitus. However again a huge spectrum of severity and types.

Reactive Tinnitus: Generally used to refer to when someones constant tinnitus is increased in volume by environmental causes, usually sound exposure. Usually a "spike" that settles back to their regular Tinnitus named above.

Hearing Distortion: Used to refer to hearing imperfections, with me, this is what sounds like modulated tonal tinnitus present at certain frequencies in external noise, others who experience this often end up calling it reactive tinnitus. However hearing distortion can cover all other types of hearing problems people experience, immediately after acoustic trauma, and while having SSNHL low frequency hearing may be distorted. People describing hearing whistling over things (which I think describes the modulated tonal tinnitus tones I hear at certain frequencies, and can become faintly constant if I have an episode of reactive tinnitus as defined above. For others: everything sounding like it's coming from a broken speaker, robot or chipmunk voices are all some description I have read here, and may be described by people with Meniers.

 

[Keith Handy]

OK, so Tinnitus is a symptom, not an illness, right? It's a thing we experience. So when we say "reactive," we're describing the characteristics of that symptom. We're telling you what is happening for us, which is remarkably different from a continuous tinnitus sound at a relatively continuous level that would be more noticeable in quiet environments than loud environments. For some of us, our tinnitus behaves in the reverse way: it's less noticeable in quiet, and more noticeable in loud. And it's often very quick. It will pulsate to the rhythm of the music we're trying to listen to. Or it will be somewhat slower, and will trail off from each sound like an echo. Or it will be cumulative over longer periods of time—or a combination of all three. Saying there's "no such thing" as what I'm describing is absolutely gaslighting, and I'm glad someone else mentioned that earlier in the thread.