Cycles of Hyperacusis — Symptoms

Probably I have already talked about this but I wanted to compare experiences with other hyperacusis sufferers to see if they experience the same pattern as mine.

After being exposed to loud noise, maybe a car horn or stuff like that, loud radio feedback, or a power tool around (all accidentally), I experience a set of symptoms until my hearing stabilizes again. All these symptoms are there during a "cycle" of hyperacusis, and consist of pressure deep in the ears, bad headaches, vision slightly blurred (very slight feeling, and it does not happen all the time), a feeling like something is pulling from my ears towards my throat and temples (maybe pain irradiated), pressure behind my eyes, sometimes facial pain (like in the region located inside the cheekbones), feeling of something melting or itching deep inside my ear.

Usually after the full cycle finishes the last symptoms I experience are the melting or itching feeling deep inside my ears and also another symptom that means my hearing dropping to zero (I hear nothing) for a second, and there is a very loud beep (tinnitus like) and then my hearing becomes more stable and balance and there is less pressure, right after the beep. This has been discussed in other threads and some people referred to it as "fleeting tinnitus".

In the best scenario after a full cycle my hearing comes back to baseline. If the noise that triggered the cycle was bad enough, after experiencing pressure, fullness and pain, my hearing gets stable but I lose hearing or hear different, being harder to understand speech in noise or competing sounds.

Does anyone have the same experience? Does it match the way your hyperacusis behaves?

 

Kinda sorta. My hyperacusis would come and go, in big cycles, but lately it hasn't cropped up.

 

Mine is triggered after loud sounds. If it is loud enough I can be in pain for like 4 to 6 weeks after it resolves..

 

Your hearing becomes distorted after it seems like. Does it ever return to baseline for you? The ending part sounds like me, my hearing will get worse once I recover but I’m not sure if it’s a hearing loss as many people with H experience acoustic shocks that may take months to heal.

 

My hearing does not return to baseline. It gets worse. At the beginning it was very obvious that only the high frequencies 6Khz and 8Khz and beyond were affected. Actually sometimes it was easier to understand what a rock singer what saying for instance, than with very good hearing, because a lot of the clanking of drums, cymbals, a high pitched and distorted guitar, sounds just a bit more attenuated, so the lead singer sounds more clear and sharp in contrast.

Now my hearing loss is progressing towards lower frequencies (I think this is due to the specific place where haircells are arranged in the cochlea spirals), such as 4Khz and around 3Khz, and these frequencies are more important in terms of speech recognition.

The lowest part of the scale has also dipped just a little, maybe by 5 or 7 dbs, I mean the range until like 2Khz; I have normal hearing there. However, these frequencies are essential and a little drop means that the low voices of men, or background noise (static like), and low pitched sounds are harder to hear. It is a super weird feeling, because you hear sound but do not really understand it. Actually I can hear pretty low sounds among noise, but sometimes I understand them, sometimes not, so I guess it depends on the relative frequencies of the competing sounds, the sounds that overlap..

I am shocked about TV. I havent read about it, but maybe someone can explain why human voices are easier to understand that sound broadcasted by TV. The latest models are better but a TV bought a few years ago does not sound very well.. I have to get a new one.

 

Are you still able to hear in the frequencies or have you experienced a dip? For me, after a few shocks (my ears are really sensitive now) I too feel like my hearing has gotten worse. It’s almost as if I hear lower volume in pitches that should be higher? It’s a weird description but I relate it to ear fullness because it feels like there’s cotton in my ears all the time. When I do hearing tests they come back normal, but my complaint to the ENT is that while I do here the sounds, they just don’t sound as loud as they used to, kind of if my ear were protecting me from hearing things so loud, and this is in all frequencies.

 

Yes, that's exactly the feeling: 1) for some time you will go to an audiometric test and on the frequency of 6Khz you do hear something, there is a tone there, but the pitch sounds lower, maybe like it is 4Khz instead of the pitch of 6Khz; 2) after a few years of noise incidents, accidental exposure to loud noise, it is likely to lose hearing, so you will no longer hear any tone.

Same as me, I have lost some hearing too. Sometimes I have lost hearing on incidents with noise that other people considered loud but bearable. They were ok right after the sounds and I was in pain for like 6 weeks, and then I lost hearing. For me, hearing after a loud incident stabilizes around 6 weeks after onset, and then I can see how my hearing became due to the incident, whether it got worse, or more distorted, or by some miracle returned more or less to baseline.