Anyone Have Hyperacusis Periodically Switch from One Ear to the Other?

I’m pretty confident my hyperacusis only exists in one ear at a time and then switches to another.

I only noticed this because more recently I was having periods of constant pain. So maybe 10 days of hyperacusis in the left ear, then suddenly 10 days in the right ear. Never in both ears at the same time.

I remember the day when my right ear first started hurting around a year ago, the pain in the left ear immediately ceased that day. I can’t remember a period where they both were in pain and sensitive at the same time.

Does anyone else have this?

It would be a pretty good indicator of the pain coming from the brain side of auditory processing rather than localised.

 

Interesting. My hyperacusis, like all my ear problems, has only affected my right ear so far. I'll definitely keep this thread updated if I experience a change.

 

I've spoken to many people with hyperacusis and until today I thought I was the only person who has had this experience.

During the first six months, I had hyperacusis in both ears all the time. Over the next 6 months, I then had a lot of ear "flipping". Effectively, my hyperacusis seemed to stabilise in one ear but not the other. I'd then be exposed to some kind of noise, the stable ear would get worse but the previously "bad" ear would then stabilise. Rinse and repeat x100, this happened more times than I can remember. I wouldn't say hyperacusis was completely gone from the stable ear, but it was much much better and not bothersome like the other ear.

After those 6 months (so a year from onset), my hyperacusis seemed to stabilise completely in one ear. My right ear was very good for 18 months, but my left ear lagged behind - a lot. However, a few weeks ago someone accidentally spoke near my right ear and I had a setback with my right ear. What was noticeable again was that my left ear seemed to improve. Once the setback was over, my right ear went to normal and my left ear went to shit again.

This has been extremely frustrating to understand and I still have no answers, only speculations: some kind of jaw instability or CCI? Stress? Sleeping position? The only thing on this that I found of interest was that the majority of trigeminal neuralgia cases are unilateral. They are very rarely bilateral. Given the trigeminal nerve passes through the middle ear, I speculated that maybe the nerve could only "fire" on one side at a time with hyperacusis in some of us, but honestly who knows.

 

Interesting thought. Will keep that in mind. Will see if others have this same scenario.

 

@Aaron91, I notice that you immediately jump to physical causes in your search for understanding. However, there doesn't always need to be a physical explanation. For instance, fibromyalgia can often have no physical explanation for why a patient is experiencing pain in their right arm one day, and then in their left leg the following day. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the work of Dr. Howard Schubiner, but he believes that a vast amount of chronic conditions do not have any physical underlying cause, and the majority of humans have physical abnormalities in their bodies without experiencing chronic conditions. I think he found around 80% of people over age 50 have degenerate disks or other structural problems.

After reviewing some of Dr. Schubiner's work, it got me thinking a lot about whether my hyperacusis is actually a physical problem or whether it is something else. In my case, it follows a lot of the behavioural patterns which Dr. Schubiner would consider to be signs of what he refers to as mind-body syndrome.

Some points which made me really consider whether my hyperacusis could be a structural problem, ear damage or something else entirely:

• If hyperacusis is due to ear damage, why did I get it in both my ears at the exact same time? The odds of both ears becoming damaged at the same time are surely extremely low.
• Why does my pain hyperacusis switch from one side to another? I find it unlikely to be structural as I can actively feel it change side when I am literally just sitting there.
• Nearly every success story I've read emphasises the point about disestablishing the brain's hypervigilance response to sound. Are personality traits and mental state a predominant factor in determining whether their hyperacusis will be acute or chronic? It is now understood that people with certain personality traits are more likely to experience chronic conditions. Furthermore, people who suffer abuse are significantly more likely to experience chronic conditions. Personally, I have the primary personality traits which make you more likely to experience chronic conditions. I can't remember them all, but they are typically perfectionists, strong inner critics, people pleasers etc. There are many reasons as to why doctors believe people with these personality traits are more likely to experience chronic conditions but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

What's interesting is that if you seek to answer these questions from the perspective of hyperacusis research, you will not find any answers. However, a paradigm shift to the perspective of central sensitisation allows these questions to be answered fairly easily.

I suppose my point is that trying to find physical explanations for the nature of hyperacusis could lead you down a frustrating rabbit hole and it may be worth considering different medical paradigms. However, I know most people on these forums hate the idea of central sensitisation even though it is now really becoming established in the medical world. I actually recently saw a success story from someone who had never seen any improvement until they treated their hyperacusis as a nervous system problem rather than an ear problem. Definitely food for thought.

 

I've never denied the possibility that psychological factors could play a role in the development of hyperacusis. I myself developed hyperacusis several months after losing a parent to suicide, despite the trigger being acoustic shock from a loud motorbike. However, it's one thing to identify the trigger and another thing entirely to identify the on-going cascade of (likely physical) processes that trickles down from the event - upregulation of pain receptors, pro-inflammatory molecule release, autonomic nervous system imbalances etc.

My journey towards healing has been to eliminate every possible co-factor, and that includes addressing my psychological issues. I've been to traditional therapy, I've been to EMDR therapy and I've also micro and macro-dosed psilocybin. All of these things have helped me deal with the mental anguish that hyperacusis brings and I now also understand myself a lot better as a person, but the condition still remains. So yes, I am skeptical as to how strong the psychological component of this condition is although I won't deny that perhaps for some people it plays a bigger role than others.

You question whether hyperacusis is truly physical if both ears become "damaged" at the same time, but I'm not sure I follow your train of thought here. This is like being surprised if someone has multiple injuries from a car crash. If sound is dangerous above a certain threshold, I do not see why it should differentiate between either ear.

Finally, regarding those that get better: do they get better because they became less vigilant, or did they become less vigilant as they became better? Alternatively, did they become better in spite of being less vigilant? The data on this is extremely muddy and poor as it's all anecdotal.

 

@Aaron91, regarding the first paragraph, if hyperacusis is caused by accumulative noise exposure which causes damage to the inner or middle ear, I'm not sure how it could move from one ear to the other. If your hyperacusis is a result of damage to your right ear, then surely the symptoms should remain within your right ear. In my case, I have hyperacusis in both ears and my point was that surely it would be unlikely for both ears to pass the damage threshold where hyperacusis kicks in at exactly the same time. Sound is clearly dangerous above a certain threshold but your ears are not evenly exposed to sound in the same way, e.g., someone can listen to music through 1 earphone, someone can scream in your right ear etc. I know this isn't a particularly scientific response but I find it an interesting thought nonetheless.

Regarding the second point, there are many publications showing that hypervigilance, anxiety and worrying about a condition can lead to it becoming chronic or increase the severity of the condition, e.g., paper 1, paper 2. Furthermore, hyperacusis sufferers seem to undergo cortical remapping similar to people with other sensory and chronic conditions. Cortical remapping essentially forms new neural pathways which determine your nervous system's response to stimuli. There really is a lot of material on cortical remapping and pain neural pathways to the point where the paradigm shared by doctors like Schubiner is becoming widespread. One of the UK's leading pain doctors was talking about how there are serious conversations within the NHS about shifting to a mind-body-focused approach for chronic pain sufferers as the existing practices of medicating pain clinic patients just aren't effective.