I am puzzled by this... how can you say someone who had instant pain from sounds and ear fullness from too much sound exposure didn't have hyperacusis?
My Pain Hyperacusis Improved Significantly: Went to a Party without Earplugs and Still Fine
- Thread starter SummerDreamer
- Start date
Pain and sound exposure are subjective. Hyperacusis that happens after cochlear damage very rarely goes away. In fact, I think it does not go away, it just changes and morphs into other hearing conditions, so one would not be able to say "I don't have hyperacusis" but "I traded hyperacusis for more tinnitus and hearing loss".
The cochlea, once damaged, cannot be repaired, so that's why cochlear hyperacusis would not go away.
To be honest these are your personal beliefs not proven facts. I agree that hyperacusis very rarely goes away but its fairly common that people make improvements either very minimal or drastic.
Member- Sep 21, 2016
- 1,051
- Tinnitus Since
- 2011 - T, 2016- H, relapsed 2019
- Cause of Tinnitus
- noise-induced
I don't necessarily think it always 'changes and morphs into other hearing conditions' - true, once acquired it almost never fully goes away and even if you no longer have symptoms, you are still susceptible to a relapse if not careful. But I don't think it necessarily morphs into more tinnitus or hearing loss.
Only time will tell... I just share my personal experience, in case it can help others.
- Sep 21, 2016
- 1,051
- Tinnitus Since
- 2011 - T, 2016- H, relapsed 2019
- Cause of Tinnitus
- noise-induced
I've had hyperacusis for 4 years and it hasn't morphed into further hearing loss. But I think it's valuable that everyone share their personal experiences here.
It did not morph into hearing loss for me in the first 4 years. This happened later on.
- Sep 21, 2016
- 1,051
- Tinnitus Since
- 2011 - T, 2016- H, relapsed 2019
- Cause of Tinnitus
- noise-induced
Sorry to hear this - at the end of the day, this condition is awful. Hopefully future research will illuminate what is going on.
If you are going to repeat what I say in this forum then please do so accurately otherwise refrain from doing so. Many people in this forum that have hyperacusis and say they have had TRT have had nothing of the sort. They may have been told they are having TRT by their Therapist, but unless the treatment is the same as described in my posts, then it is not TRT.
Furthermore, the negative mindset that some (not all) people in this forum have towards tinnitus contributes to their difficulty to habituate. Tinnitus can be severe and very problematic for some people. Unless such a person seeks treatment it will remain this way and could become worse over time, especially if hyperacusis is present. Hyperacusis can improve by itself but in more severe circumstances, the help of an Audiologist specialising in tinnitus and hyperacusis management is needed. If a person has additional health problems these can contribute to making tinnitus and hyperacusis more acute and difficult to treat.
Michael
You're doing it again, shoving TRT down our throats. You also consistently tell people they somehow followed the protocol incorrectly when it doesn't work for them. How can TRT improve all types of tinnitus and hyperacusis anyway if hyperacusis is an outdated umbrella term for several different pathologies?
If you read my posts I have said nothing that you have accused me of saying. I say again, please quote what I say correctly. I have never said a person isn't following TRT correctly. What I have said is this: Some people that say they have had TRT have had nothing of the sort. For when I ask them to describe their treatment it is not TRT. Furthermore, I have never once said TRT works for everyone or improves all types of tinnitus. TRT is a retraining of the way a person thinks about tinnitus: It helps remove and demystifies the negative thinking that is often associated with tinnitus and this takes time. Typically, 12 to 24 months is the duration of treatment. Hyperacusis, is treated using white noise generators, worn daily for the same amount of time.
You are so vehement, hostile and negative, you cannot even spare the time to read my posts to fully understand what I am saying.
It is a complete waste of time continuing to correspond with you.
Gooday and I wish you well.
Michael
I'm hostile towards you because you repeatedly feel the need to put hyperacusis sufferers down, and you blame their lack of improvement on negative thinking. This sets a lot of people, including yours truly, off, but very few people want to get involved because you tend to start "disrespectful" pissing contests with people who disagree with your doctrine.
How can I be wasting your time if you're just going to spend all day on tinnitus boards anyway?
Just out of curiosity, when you talk about cochlear damage, are you referring to the same discreet set of pieces e.g. outer/inner hair cells, and synapses, that we always talk about in the context of regeneration, or are you alluding to another form. Thanks!
I expect this sort of behaviour from weab00 for he is immature and will never learn. However, I'm quite disappointed in you.
Gooday.
Michael
- Sep 21, 2016
- 1,051
- Tinnitus Since
- 2011 - T, 2016- H, relapsed 2019
- Cause of Tinnitus
- noise-induced
I think currently proposed therapies should address most of our hearing problems -the dysfunction seems to stem mostly from hair-cell loss and synaptopathy. Damage to the auditory nerve itself is very rare with noise-induced trauma, as @FGG has pointed out (although Rinri Therapeutics are working on this).
I don't understand for the life of me why they can't take 1000 rats, blast half with noise, then autopsy them to see how the cochlea differs from an undamaged version. In fact I know they've done this, so how is it so hard to discern what the damaged structures are? We are in the dark ages...
From an ethical perspective RIP the rats btw, pretty atrocious what we do to them
They've done that already like a million times. The problem is each and every single OHC, IHC, synapse, etc have to be connected in the correct way, fire in sync to deliver an electric signal, and the transmission (nerve) and processing system (brain) also have to work in sync and interpret the signals properly. And all these structures are miniature structures, really small, remember, the cochlea is approximately the size of a pea and it encases around 12.000 OHC and 3.500 IHC, two membranes, etcI don't understand for the life of me why they can't take 1000 rats, blast half with noise, then autopsy them to see how the cochlea differs from an undamaged version. In fact I know they've done this, so how is it so hard to discern what the damaged structures are? We are in the dark ages...
From an ethical perspective RIP the rats btw, pretty atrocious what we do to them
That's why I am not optimistic about having a cure soon. It is not a matter of being an optimistic or pessimistic person. My view is based on decades of failed attempts to restore hearing. If you make a Google search for hearing pill or pill to restore hearing or search for news about a drug that can reverse noise damage, you will find scientists have been fidgeting with this idea for a long long time, and they have always been unsuccessful.
I see - well I'm hopeful that despite the complexity, regenerative therapies will allow the ear to put itself back together, rather than us needing to decipher that blueprint - it may be easier to trigger a healing response than understanding every aspect of the organ itself.
That being said I understand the need for sober skepticism. Only time will tell.
In the hardest bone of the human body(temporal bone)Sometimes I feel the same way as you too like the odds are against us. Goodness, to image the blood vessels require magnification equipment the size of a soccer goal net. I still hold onto hope.
- Sep 21, 2016
- 1,051
- Tinnitus Since
- 2011 - T, 2016- H, relapsed 2019
- Cause of Tinnitus
- noise-induced
You keep on saying that there have been decades of failed attempts to restore hearing? How can that be when we only made the discovery in the late 1980s that birds can regenerate theirs? Not being funny, but this doesn't really add up - hearing regeneration wasn't really seeen as possible prior to this. Charles Liberman has also said in an interview that we're finally at a stage now where our understanding of the underlying biology has improved to the extent that he is confident there will be effective treatments on the horizon.
There have always been charlatans marketing the idea of a "cure" yes - but there are now dozens of biotech companies working on this, several in clinical trials. Please go on and tell me which biotech companies were working in this space back in 2000? Or 2005? Or in the 1990s?
- May 27, 2020
- 556
- Tinnitus Since
- 2007
- Cause of Tinnitus
- Loud music/headphones/concerts - Hyperacusis from motorbike
@serendipity1996 is right. Research over the years into treatments for tinnitus have not been well-funded or supported because medical approaches such as TRT were allowed to prevail without question, and so became dogma. Can you imagine telling someone with Crohn's disease or cancer that it's all in their head, they need to reframe their relationship with the condition and that they should just learn to live with it? But this is exactly what happened, and so there was very little financial backing for research into treating tinnitus. It is hardly surprising therefore that that recent long-term study showed no difference between TRT treatment and placebo. If you have had TRT and you've learned to live with tinnitus or your hyperacusis got better, TRT didn't cure you: you got lucky and your body healed in spite of the treatment, which was most likely doing further damage to you.
As far as hearing loss is concerned, cochlea implants have been around for years, but again, these were mostly designed for war veterans or industrial workers who had lost their hearing in the pre health and safety age, so the market was never seen to be big enough.
We now live in a different time. I remember around 2004 or 2005 I was reading an article that said something along the lines of by 2025, some 50% of 30+ year olds will have noticeable hearing loss. I was 14 at the time and I'm coming up to 30 in a few months time. I have had tinnitus for 13 years and hyperacusis for the last 6 months. This article was written around the time iPods and mini mp3 players came out and everyone could own one; it was written around the time mobile phones were becoming the norm and, again, everyone owned one; it was written around the time that PC gaming was also becoming very popular and many kids were wearing headphones.
So what you see is a change in the environment. Not only was the world already noisy as it was with city traffic, construction, bars, restaurants and nightclubs, but the population as a whole was starting to engage in much noisier day-to-day activities that would put its hearing at risk. It was not a surprise therefore that less than a decade later biotech companies and PhD students started to make hearing loss and regenerative hearing an area of interest - precisely because it would become a matter of public interest and therefore one with potential market value. It is not uncommon for researchers to pick their area of study based on their chances of securing funding for their research. Quite sadly, the world revolves around money. All I can say is that I hope now capitalism does its thing and we all, in the coming years (or sooner), end up with the treatments we need to never have to visit this forum again.
Seriously, fuck these conditions. As someone else on here once put it, this journey is for the strong.
Yes I agree, everything is getting louder in one way or another. It's really worrying for the younger generation. I'm concerned about the compression technology in digital media in particular, including voice calls (this alone seems to hit call center workers really hard), and not just that but the amount of time people spend on modern phones. Given hearing loss is cumulative it's all going to add up much quicker for the younger generations.
The 'good' (if we can call it that) that will come of this though is that hearing loss and the related conditions will become much more prevalent and inevitably drive more research and funding to solve the problems. We're seeing it already.
- Sep 21, 2016
- 1,051
- Tinnitus Since
- 2011 - T, 2016- H, relapsed 2019
- Cause of Tinnitus
- noise-induced
Yes, I have noticed, for instance, that even my speaker phone on the lowest volume setting feels quite loud and 'harsh' on the ears. Of course it's partly a consequence of having hyperacusis-riddled ears lol but I do genuinely think volume levels are getting dangerously high.
The first time I remember reading about the "pill that restores hearing" after noise exposure was like 15 years ago, and it was quoting research that had been done previously, so... would it be fair to say we have been stuck nowhere, in terms of advances for "hearing regeneration" for 2 decades, 20 years?