Did Anyone Else Develop Hyperacusis Before Tinnitus? (I Did)

About a month leading up to the full onset of ringing

 

A day or two before my ringing began.

 

I really became aware of the hyperacusis a few weeks after the tinnitus, but looking back now, I'd started to think a speaker in the car had broken about the time the tinnitus arrived. The H seemed to unfold slowly but reached its peak around six weeks in.

 

I will share a theory and glad you asked OP because this is a question I have asked myself even though relatively academic in changing the balance of our condition. I too have H and T.
Chicken or egg, which came first. Indeed. And yes, there maybe much too much speculation and hypothesis on this forum in the absence of answers to more questions. So one more hypothesis.

A great many of tinnitus sufferers have hyperacusis. Its speculated this number is as high as 40%. Who knows what the real number is...and both tinnitus and hyperacusis aren't binary integers...but rather shades of grey relative to the bell curve of normalcy.

So will share my opinion because tinnitus is so heterogeneous:
Tinnitus isn't precipitous. It is gradual. It sneaks up a person. An aggregation of changes to the hearing apparatus and the brain making sense or lack of sense of this departure from earlier physiology.
My theory is, my tinnitus at least is rooted in the onset of hyperacusis. I have known for well over a year or two prior to my onset of constant ringing in the ears that my ears are overly sensitive. In fact when pounding nails or using power tools etc, I always wore sound blocking headphones because these noises were painful.

One must ask what is tinnitus? It is speculated that if you put a so called normal hearing person into an anechoic sound room, most can hear vestiges of tinnitus....akin to a good stereo amplifier when turned up without input, you can hear the noise in the system. With hyperacusis, the brain inexplicably turns up the gain on amplification which in turn magnifies this noise in everybody's sound track that they can hear in a perfectly quiet environment only in our case we can now hear this noise in an environment even with modest ambient noise levels. Once we can hear this buzz or ringing all the time, our brain develops memory and its hard to un-forge the neural pathways that lead us to this state...un-hike this trail we have traveled. Hopefully one day, perhaps with electrotherapy this trail can be reversed to undo this journey.

So I believe my hyperacusis not only preceded my tinnitus but is in effect is the reason for my tinnitus. Yes, my brain turning up the gain...my internal amplifier on sound...even loud speaking people bother me...or those with shrill voices...this increase in amplification actually caused me to recognize the previous background noise everybody has in their personal sound track and now by contrast is etched in memory...a new normal. And yes, perhaps many with hyperacusis like me...is due to repetition of sound exposure over a life time including listening to music through headphones thousands of times, motorcycles that were too loud under full throttle in spite of wearing foam ear plugs...and a myriad of other times when sound levels exceeded healthy listening levels. Life.

My theory....I haven't seen written...and we all know theories are like @&^%$....everybody has one.

PS: I know a cure will come...just not soon enough.

 

I had a very mild ringing in my ears that I noticed as early as 2007. It was so quiet that it did not bother me though, and I could only hear it in a quiet room.

In September 2012 my hyperacusis started. My tinnitus then worsened over the following 6-12 months into what it is now.

So my tinnitus didn't begin after my hyperacusis, but it wasn't until after hyperacusis that it became severe enough to affect me.

 

@stophiss fantastic response! I never thought of it that way but you make very valid points that could very well be correct. I have my second audio test tomorrow so i will update you on her thoughts with my T and H and see if she can give any of her thoughts. Once again great reply!

 

Hi Cam Cam,
Relationship between H and T seems to make sense to me if one accepts the notion that everybody has noise in their sound track however those with normal hearing have this threshold below the audible level. H simply amplifies this noise to a discernible level making it less forgettable. Underlying reason for the brain turning up the amplification is generally conjectured as a change to the hearing apparatus. Many things can cause that. Complicated.

Please come back and tell us what you learn about your second audio test.
Best of luck!

 

Stophiss, this has been said in pieces all over the forum in various ways, but not really brought together coherently in the way you just did. What you have put together there is a sound theoretical model that in a perfect world would become a basis for further research.

I've struggled to find ways to explain to others what it feels like, but this is it. This is how to explain it.

 

Thank you Paul.
As we struggle to make sense of this outcome...our brains generating its own sound and the gain on our hearing turned up inexplicably.
Insidious. Too many good people here afflicted with this. A cure has to be found.
Thanks again.

 

exactly this. H faded though over about 4 months.

 

@stophiss here are my hearing test results. The first one is 2 weeks ago and the second image is my results from yesterday. The audio sad that my tests were basically the same even tho there was a slight dip in 5db in my left ear. She acknowledged that this was a margin of error and could change for better or worst if i did it again. What is interesting is that I had a sinus infection for 6 months leading up to T (which started about a month ago now). The first audio test I complained of the ringing in my left ear, which with the acoustic immittance test down the bottom notes that my test result is Ad which stands for a hypermobile tympanic membrane. I had no ringing in my right ear during the first audio test as well. The second test yesterday I said the ringing was now in my right ear as well as my left, but nowhere near as bad. As you can see from the second test my right ear now has a result of Ad as well, which means my right ear is now classified as having a hypermobile tympanic membrane. I am thinking that there is a correlation between this result and the ringing/pain/distortion.

edit- my audio thinks that my T is not noise induced but related to my sinus issues even tho I used headphones daily, but then again I don't listen to music with one headphone in and my ears don't have the same results AND I am not the professional haha! I have my ENT appointment next week

Any thoughts from you would be awesome!

 

My T started in January 2011,just a mild hissing with an intermittent tone that actually faded away nearly completely within the first year.

After a noise exposure in 2012 my T rampt up as a result,the tone was drilling my head for about a month or two before calming back down to a barely audible hiss.I noticed throughout those months that I had become a little sensitive to sounds that had that exact tone in it,my vacuum cleaner sounded exactly the same and I could no longer bare the sound of it!Funnily enough after the tone disappeared so too did the sensitivity along with it although not immediately.
My T at this point was maybe a 2/10 and my H was a 1/10 at best,really loud environments were a no go for me along with longer sittings in moderate noise environments like a busy pub.

Then the big one came,in January 2014 on extremely high pitched noise went off in front of me and everything changed dramatically.My T went through the roof along with my H,it was unbearable and agonising to listen to just about anything!But again as my T began to calm down again so did my H along with it.My T was easily a 6/10 and my H a 6-7/10 at this point but surely but slowly as my T backed off my H always went back with it.My T eventually fell back to a 2/10 and my H was maybe a 2-3/10 at this point also with sensitivity to loud and really sharp sounds like a smoke alarm or house door being slammed hard.

I was steadily getting better,I associated it with sound therapy but I now don't believe that to be the case.Either way I suddenly and dramatically worsened in January 2016 out of nowhere.I was getting out a lot more after my fathers passing and I fear I may have overdone it.I started experiencing odd symotoms about a month leading up to my devastating worsening but I never connected it with my ears.My T now is easily a 5/10 and my H a 9/10.Whispering is now painful and pain is something I never experienced before with my H,the odd headache maybe but not substantial pain.
My T has improved very slightly and my H slowly followed after but it's still devastatingly bad at this point and I see no more improvement coming.

T and H are heavily intertwined together,it is without question to me that whatever causes T also causes H so these two symptoms are direct causes of the same underlying problem in my opinion.

A long winded message but just giving my two cents and experiences.

 

Cam Cam,
There are those more learned than I relative to both T and H and hopefully they will offer advice. The question begged which is pretty unanswerable is...will your condition improve? I too have greater ringing in my left ear and I suspect I have Ad as well...and my onset of tinnitus wasn't precipitated by loud noise...though I have had a life filled with intermittent headphone usage and addiction to motorcycles and loud environments..though not a big club guy where the dB levels are off the chart. But I am older and tinnitus runs in my family...both my elderly mother and grandmother had it...my grandmother quite badly and both had considerable hearing loss and so in my case their maybe degradation to my hearing apparatus that has precipitated my T and H. To me there is a genetic component interacting with environment. I have had perfect hearing throughout my life and my heart goes to out to the countless here that are young and inexplicably struggle with this disorder.
Hopefully others will chime in with their thoughts. Please share the result from your ENT.
Best of luck and thanks for sharing your results with us.

 

Hi Paul

I'm at 6 weeks exactly now...and yes indeed, it seems to be peaking also....

Does it fade down, any advice for me? Now the H bothers me more than the T...!

 

It takes your mind off the T, then in my case its faded off a little after three years, showing the T up now in all its stylus-down-glass glory.

 

Hi everyone, looking for some help. I keep getting H and very bad ear pain followed by very loud tinnitus. Is this a similar patter for everyone? Is there a way to stop the ear pain or prevent it so it doesn't keep turning into exasperated T? This has been happening for days and it keeps getting more constant. Yesterday for example it went down by about 40%. Do you think it will go down again or is trying to build up and get worse and worse? It came on gradually, noticed a day or two in the evenings but it was more mild. Now it's stronger and more consistent. I'm really scared. I don't know how H works and if there are patterns involved and it will go back down. Right now the T is much worse than the H but they are connected along with the ear pain.

 

I had hyperacusis for several years before T started.