Does Anybody Else Have Hyperacusis That "Flips" from Ear to Ear?

When I first got hyperacusis, I had very bad symptoms in both ears and I would describe the pain levels and LDLs to be identical (terrible) for both ears.

Some 8 months down the line and my symptoms have improved overall, but not in the way I expected. Usually one ear, for example the right ear, becomes more sensitive and painful than the left ear, while the left ear seems to recover from the condition almost entirely - almost has if every step of improvement in one ear is offset by a step of deterioration in the other. This also goes for the trigeminal neuralgia, with the aching jaw/facial pain - the pain is only ever on the one side. Then a few days later, my ears will "flip", almost at random, whereby the left ear becomes the extremely sensitive one and now my left side has extremely bad trigeminal neuralgia while the right side seems to be completely ok. This has been going on for a few months now and the sensitivity and pain over this last week has been the worst it's been in months. This has made me question everything we know about this condition.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? How on earth does this behaviour fit in with any of the current theories/models, such as the type II afferent sensitisation route?

For what it's worth, my hyperacusis came on immediately after a noise trauma from a backfiring motorbike. I have a history of noise exposure, tinnitus and TMJ disorder prior to this event, and had noticed some prior sensitivity building up before this event happened for a good year or so but nothing debilitating. It also happened during an extremely stressful time of my life. Could there be something else going on that I haven't considered?

I would be interested to hear if anyone else has experienced something similar or has an idea as to what might be going on here.

 

@Aaron91 wow that sounds very odd. It must be something else triggering your hyperacusis if it flips ears like that.

I'm sorry I don't know what could cause this. Did you ever have your TMJD treated?

 

I know it's kind of a semantic debate if reactive tinnitus and dysacusis are hyperacusis but yeah mine seems to jump from ear to ear too. 90% of the time my right ear is the worst one and my left ear is almost normal but occasionally this will totally flip for a few minutes at a time. I don't know how this can be explained logically, my case just seems to be a completely unique one where I just have short, 5 minute bursts where shit is "normal", which leads me to believe that inflammation is a problem here. This definitely is not a placebo of some type too, for example I will search as hard as I can for my sound distortions where I 100% know where it will occur and then its totally gone but comes back 5 minutes later... I can perceive my hearing/sound tolerance deteriorating too back to baseline.

I am starting Keppra and will look into non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. Magnesium citrate, the brand you recommended to me, helps just a little bit... but not satisfactory. I think the efficacy is waning.

 

Not to the extent that yours does, nor as rapidly (my shifts take weeks/months) but my symptoms are uneven as well. However, I can usually attribute a shift to an irritating event, rather than it happening at random. I think many people on here have reported some degree of asymmetry although everyone is a little different. For some, there is no swapping but their voice bothers one ear more than the other, often corresponding to the ear that has more TTTS/ETD/TMJ issues. My right ear has always had more trouble with autophony/pain from my voice. My left is quicker to spasm in response to high pitched noise/running water.

 

I'm sorry to hear that Nico, but if it's helping just a little, no reason to stop taking it.

I had a really bad setback a week ago and decided a few days ago to start taking raw, high-dose, organic Curcumin and my trigeminal neuralgia pain has definitely improved I'd say by 20% over the last 3 days. I'd say my sensitivity has improved around 10%. I'm adding so many supplements on a weekly basis so I don't think I suffer from any placebo effect, so I think what I'm seeing is real and there's enough studies showing Turmeric, in a bioavailable form, increases BDNF, fights inflammation and potentially helps with hearing loss. I obviously can't vouch for this and perhaps it's just a coincidence, but I'll keep taking it over the coming days/weeks to see if I still get improvement. I know others on here have had improvement from Curcumin.

For whoever wants to know, I take about a teaspoon a day with black pepper and a fat (olive oil/avocado) to increase absorption and I add it generally to my foods/meals where I can. I also add some organic Turmeric to get the rest of the curcuminoids that come from Turmeric. I take it raw because I have never seen any benefit when taking it in pill form and so I have reservations now about the supply chain. Make sure you buy organic and it's certified for not having any metals. You will know it's the good stuff compared to supermarket Curcumin (or Turmeric) because it will look more orange than yellow.

Disclaimer: curcumin interacts with some drugs, so be sure to check first.

Thanks for sharing. It's not that asymmetry doesn't surprise me. To your point, if someone has a TMJ/ETD problem on one side it would make sense to see this kind of asymmetry. It's more the fact that that my asymmetry isn't constant. I would definitely say it's not always random. Sometimes I will hear a sound and it will trigger one ear more than the other, or just one ear entirely. I had a setback last week and my left ear deteriorated significantly, although my right ear if anything seems to have improved! Doesn't make sense!

 

I'll look into Curcumin and perhaps Omega 3 and other natural anti-inflammatories as well.

 

@Aaron91 maybe it's of interest to you regarding this thread but my sound distortions have a somatic element to them. It's less severe if I'm lying down and more severe when I'm upright. What's your theory behind this?

When using a Neti Pot (for the first time in years) I realized that there is an absolutely impenetrable blockage that is extremely far inside my sinuses which makes using the Neti Pot pretty much useless. Nothing I can do seems to clear this and honestly this is probably years of buildup. I wonder if clearing this will improve anything regarding my hearing but seeing as my distortions happened after noise exposure it's probably that instead...

But when looking at my "hyperacusis journal" from Day 1 I marked that I've had very bad post nasal drip which started on the day of the onset. So I don't know.

 

Not mine. My right ear is always my bad ear for hyperacusis. It's usually worse for tinnitus but sometimes that moves around a bit.

 

Interestingly, a study came out recently that would suggest it isn't a semantic debate at all. They compared two groups of non-patients - patients with tinnitus and patients without tinnitus - neither of whom were clinically defined as having hyperacusis (intolerance to every day sounds). They found that the group with tinnitus ears had, on the extreme end of the results, 14dB less tolerance than the group without tinnitus. The decibel numbers were still in the 100s for both groups, but the results would suggest that almost anyone with tinnitus has an extremely mild case of hyperacusis.

On your other points, it is interesting to me you do have this flipping thing as well, especially in the context of your sinus issues and somatic elements. It is also peculiar that you only have these for 5 minutes or so as opposed to say a few days or weeks in my case. I know for a fact I have very bad posture from sitting on a computer all day (what else can one do with this condition), and I have noticed that when I work on my posture, things improve. This may be why things are better for you when lying down. On this point, if you have bad forward posture, be sure to sleep with one pillow only and do chin tucks regularly.

I'm not too sure what to suggest for your sinuses. Do you have allergies/cold? Do you smoke?

 

No allergies. Don't smoke. No cold. I'm going to try to get a CT Scan. I'm fairly confident my distortions are the result of cumulative exposure to insane levels of noise (100dB+) but I don't know, this sinus issue started simultaneously. I'm not optimistic but it'd be nice to rule it out. Plus if I do have terribly diseased sinuses I'm sure other things will improve if I get that cleaned. I just woke up with pressure behind my eye so yeah, something is up in there.

 

Which brand of circumin did you buy?

Btw, I am fully deaf in one ear from birth, and sometimes my hyperacusis jumps from my hyperacusis ear to my deaf ear, which doesn't have any response to sound at all.

 

Yes I do too.