How Long Does It Take to Know If a Loud Sound Will Cause a Spike in Hyperacusis / Tinnitus?

[ECP]

If I hear a loud sound, sometimes I will experience an instant increase in tinnitus volume or ear pain. Other times, I will feel nothing, and then start to feel worse later. The delay, for me, can take up to two days, and when it happens, I never know for sure whether to attribute that to the noise from two days ago, or something else.

How do you know when you're out of the woods? Is there a certain point in time when you can say with absolute confidence that you're not going to spike?

The flip side of my question is that I sometimes have terrible spikes that take me by surprise, and I am unable to think of any loud sounds in the past two or three days that might be responsible. So maybe the window of time for having a spike is actually larger than I think. And maybe the offending cause isn't even a loud sound but something less obvious, like a slight glitch in brain chemistry. How would I know?

I'd love to hear other people's experiences with the timing of their noise triggers and subsequent spikes because I still can't figure out the question for myself. Every day is a new nightmare of uncertainty.

I don't take NAC daily, but I do take it after being exposed to a loud sound, and then I continue to take it twice a day for a few days after that, just in case. I wish there was more I could do.

 

[ajc]

There's probably no answer to this. I've read people claiming they have had delayed spikes even a week after an incident. I don't now how the hell that is possible though. Psychological?

 

[Michael Leigh]

Hi @ECP.

There is no answer to your question. We have corresponded before and just looked at our previous messages. Sorry to know you are still experiencing difficulty. You need treatment and I suggest you try and see an audiologist that specialises in tinnitus and hyperacusis management. You could also try self-help, as mentioned in my threads: Hyperacusis, As I See It and New to Tinnitus, What to Do?

Take care,
Michael

 

[ECP]

Thank you @Michael Leigh and @ajc.

I am doing all kinds of self-help now and getting acupuncture and herbs on a regular basis. My HMO has no audiologists in the network with experience treating my condition, so if I want TRT, I will have to see an out-of-network provider and pay out of pocket. I am hesitant to start, knowing that it will be expensive and that good results aren't guaranteed. My other reason for hesitating is that my symptom severity fluctuates so wildly from day to day. I can't decide if that's good or bad. In a best-case scenario, I will eventually start to trend in a positive direction and keep trending that way until I'm significantly better.

I do think that if the fluctuation continues much longer, or if I start to get progressively worse, I will have no choice but to start TRT with one of the few qualified providers in my region.

Between the medical expenses and the lost wages, I shudder to think what this noise injury will cost me financially, let alone psychologically. I have already lost seven months of my life to this.

 

[momus]

I have pretty much given up trying to figure out causation w/ my tinnitus. Yesterday and last night it was very minimal, but overall it has been very loud since moving from the Arizona desert to The South, where high humidity is a way of life. So I "thought" that might have something to do w/ it. But I distinctively remember living 6+ years in Florida 4 years ago and it wasn't like this. Or, at least my memory of it wasn't like this. Florida is hardly the South, but weather wise, it is.

I laid down for a nap today for an hour, and as soon as I awoke, it was screaming again. Not one thing had changed in that 1 hour. There are so many things that might make it go up or down, but there also may be long delays. Which makes causation impossible to figure out. The operative words w/ this are maybe, might, could, etc. In 20+ years of having this medical condition, I have never been able to point to what made it go down.

I know ways to make it worse. Exercising hard will get it amped up. Weed too. So that is not something I can do anymore and that's OK. If I get earwax built up, that will make it louder. But getting it to go down from a base level? Every time I try something like a different diet or staying away from this or that, it doesn't work. Common sense should tell us that if we can understand what makes it worse, we should be able to figure out a way to get it down, right? Well, it doesn't work that way for me.

 

[ECP]

@momus, that's interesting how taking a nap can change your tinnitus. My first thought was that the position of your head and neck may have had something to do with the change, but who really knows?

I once read a book on reports of paranormal phenomena, and there was some speculation that the parts of the United States that were higher in humidity were more likely to have alleged sightings of ghosts. That always stayed with me because the person who came up with that observation was obviously trying very hard to make sense of the unexplainable, using whatever correlations they could come up with. Correlation, of course, doesn't always point to causation, so we're still left scratching our heads. All we can do is continue to try and piece together new ideas and see which ones can be proven wrong or right.

Seven months into my condition, I have yet to notice any weather-related correlations to my symptoms, but even if I did, it might not be anything I could work with confidently.

It would be nice to have more control over this. The unpredictable nature of this is wearing me down.

I sometimes experience tinnitus spikes from mild exercise, but I'm no longer bothered by them because they are always temporary. I hope you can also get back into some kind of exercise that feels comfortable to your body and especially your ears.

 

[Michael Leigh]

I am doing all kinds of self-help now and getting acupuncture and herbs on a regular basis

I think you are doing the right things in trying to help yourself @ECP and I commend you for your efforts. If you can apply sound therapy at night using a sound machine at low level, this might also be helpful. Since you are unable to see an audiologist that specialises in tinnitus management and to have counselling, I suggest you print some of my articles on my started threads, as I believe they will help to reinforce positive thinking.

Take care,
Michael

 

[ECP]

I think you are doing the right things in trying to help yourself @ECP and I commend you for your efforts. If you can apply sound therapy at night using a sound machine at low level, this might also be helpful. Since you are unable to see an audiologist that specialises in tinnitus management and to have counselling, I suggest you print some of my articles on my started threads, as I believe they will help to reinforce positive thinking.

Take care,
Michael

Thank you @Michael Leigh. I sometimes try to listen to soothing sounds at night, but I never know how best to position the source of the sound when I'm in bed. Both ears have tinnitus, but the noxacusis is only in the right ear. Would it be best to position the source of the sound at my left side, my right side, or directly behind or beneath me?

During the day, I can barely tolerate brown noise coming from my laptop. I can comfortably listen to it only if I swivel my office chair to the side so that the laptop is on my far left. If the laptop is directly in front of me or positioned toward my right, I still feel like 99% of the sound is being piped directly into my right ear, and then it starts to hurt. I can't figure out whether to push through that discomfort in small doses or just keep the brown noise aimed at my left ear for now.

 

[Michael Leigh]

Thank you @Michael Leigh. I sometimes try to listen to soothing sounds at night, but I never know how best to position the source of the sound when I'm in bed. Both ears have tinnitus, but the noxacusis is only in the right ear. Would it be best to position the source of the sound at my left side, my right side, or directly behind or beneath me?

It doesn't matter which side you position the sound @ECP, because the brain has one audio centre. I was told this by an audiologist. Don't worry about which ear has the noxacusis.

During the day, I can barely tolerate brown noise coming from my laptop. I can comfortably listen to it only if I swivel my office chair to the side so that the laptop is on my far left. If the laptop is directly in front of me or positioned toward my right, I still feel like 99% of the sound is being piped directly into my right ear, and then it starts to hurt. I can't figure out whether to push through that discomfort in small doses or just keep the brown noise aimed at my left ear for now.

Once again, try not to worry about this. You can have calm relaxing music playing in the background during the day if you want, as long as you are not deliberately focusing on the sound. Sound enrichment should only serve as background ambiance.

Best of luck,
Michael

 

[ECP]

It doesn't matter which side you position the sound @ECP, because the brain has one audio centre. I was told this by an audiologist. Don't worry about which ear has the noxacusis.

Once again, try not to worry about this. You can have calm relaxing music playing in the background during the day if you want, as long as you are not deliberately focusing on the sound. Sound enrichment should only serve as background ambiance.

Best of luck,
Michael

Thank you @Michael Leigh. Even if an audiologist says it doesn't matter which direction the sound is coming from, I still have a hunch that I would be better off (at least for now) with sounds playing overnight on my left side. I respect audiologists, but they are so often wrong about tinnitus & hyperacusis that I take everything they say with a grain of salt.

We may have only one auditory processing center, but if we have two ears with different amounts of damage and types of damage, it's possible that the direction of sound makes a difference. I may experiment a bit and see what works best for my case, since nothing works universally for all of us.

 

[Michael Leigh]

We may have only one auditory processing center, but if we have two ears with different amounts of damage and types of damage, it's possible that the direction of sound makes a difference. I may experiment a bit and see what works best for my case, since nothing works universally for all of us.

You make a valid point. If I were in your situation, then I would buy white noise generators and treat myself if I were unable to see an audiologist that specialises in tinnitus and hyperacusis. Widex and Oticon make them.

Best of luck,
Michael