Does Reactive Tinnitus Only Appear with Hyperacusis?

Do you have reactive tinnitus? Whether it's accompanied by hyperacusis or not, please share your experience!

Is there anyone here that has absolutely no ear pain, and no sort of sensitivities (normal things sounding too loud, sensitive to certain frequencies and so on) but have tinnitus that grows louder with external noises?

For example, if I turn on a fan it’s like the noise gets louder and goes right over it. Same with our heater and so on. It’s not reactive in a sense that it only appears with noise. I have constant, fairly severe tinnitus but it has gotten even more difficult to mask because it just gets louder with any external noise .

How many of you guys have “just” tinnitus (no hyperacusis at all) but it’s also extremely reactive in that absolutely nothing masks it?

 

Anyone on here that doesn't have reactive tinnitus is absolutely blessed... well in that way. It's much much easier to habituate to constant tinnitus that doesn't react to sound. Me personally I wouldn't be on here if I didn't have reactive tinnitus.

To answer your question, I don't really get ear pain or headaches from noise or loudness hyperacusis but i do think the tinnitus is too loud and intrusive if i stay in a grocery store for more than 30 minutes.

 

Reactive tinnitus exists and anyone telling you otherwise is being highly pedantic. If your tinnitus gets louder in reaction to noise, it's reactive. That's literally the definition of reactive.

 

My tinnitus competes and spikes to random noise, both soft and loud (and randomly because the same sound doesn't always cause it to get louder) however I have no noise sensitivity* or pain.

* There's always been noises I dislike but cause no pain or sound louder etc. Just a sensory issue.

 

Well, I have severe noxacusis (and loudness hyperacusis too) which came on gradually in late 2013/early 2014. Before that I had "normal" tinnitus which I was 200% habituated to. My tinnitus has changed a lot during these last years. It fluctuates a lot from day to day and on some days it's extremely reactive and is totally impossible to habituate to. My noxacusis pain manifests in sharp stabbing pain in direct response to sounds and also in violent middle ear muscle spasms.

 

I have severe noxacusis (sound causes ear pain).

Sound also causes my tinnitus to increase temporarily, it usually will reset to baseline overnight after increasing in reaction to sound.

 

I have reactive tinnitus and hyperacusis. I have bilateral tinnitus, but my reactivity seems to be only noticeable in my right ear. Anyone else with this experience?

EDIT: My tinnitus is normally more pronounced in my right ear anyway. I’d say 2 points higher on a 1-10 scale than the left in general.

 

I am responding to the OP. I'm not exactly sure what I have, so maybe someone can help me classify my symptoms:

• I have a continuous high frequency hissing tinnitus sound. Some days it is louder than others, but it definitely reacts immediately to sound, especially high pitched sound, where I notice the hissing getting louder in response to whatever ambient sound triggers it. But then it seems to back right down to the previous starting point when the ambient noise ceases.
• I can't really tell if my background tinnitus loudness goes up or down after days where I have been exposed to more noise. I have not really detected a pattern.
• Many "normal" sounds seem too loud to me, but not painfully so. I have never had any ear "pain" and I can tolerate clanking plates, traffic noise, grocery stores, etc. without serious discomfort. I hardly ever protect my ears when I am in normal settings. But daily life seems noisier before the onset of my symptoms 3 months ago.

So, I would call this having reactive tinnitus with mild hyperacusis. But I can also see the point made by Michael Leigh that reactive tinnitus is a subcomponent of hyperacusis. I have wondered if the "reactivity" of my tinnitus would recede or disappear if I could effectively "treat" my hyperacusis, or it just resolves naturally. I have seen many posts where folks say they had reactive tinnitus, but the reactivity declined over time.

The sad reality of this situation is that doctors and audiologists really know nothing about these distinctions; and data on the treatment effectiveness of TRT and similar approaches are ambiguous at best. TRT takes 2 years to complete, and yet the data show that most people naturally habituate after 2 years anyway. So while this is an interesting academic question, I'm not sure there is any practical advantage to knowing what particular variety of tinnitus and/or hyperacusis that we have.

 

I've got reactive tinnitus and noxacusis in both ears @Orions Pain. Much worse in the left, hardly noticeable in the right but it is there.

Both ears tinnitus sometimes reduces to a very manageable level but once triggered by noise, the tinnitus reacts and spikes and the pain also spikes along side it. Then both tinnitus and pain calm down again over time together.

 

There is this really stupid myth perpetuated on this website about how reactive tinnitus is hyperacusis, and the dude that spreads it has 0 scientific basis for this so called "theory" of his and yet it is preached like fact.

If there is anything I have learned about this condition is that everyone's tinnitus is kinda unique in its own way and how it presents can vary widely from person to person.

So I think it is entirely possible to have reactive tinnitus but no hyperacusis.

 

Yes and no, honestly it can be quite bizarre.

My tinnitus reacts to sound the moment I wake up but then goes quieter the more sound I’m around, I think the term for that is residual inhibition but correct me if I’m wrong so naturally the more sound I’m around to a limit the better my tinnitus feels but then the hyperacusis becomes unhappy and flares up (noxacusis in my case) but that too then settles down with the aid of a painkiller and the more sound I’m around (again within a limit) until bedtime. Tinnitus is usually super quiet at this point and then when I wake up it’s absolutely screaming. Rinse and repeat for the last nearly 5 years.

It’s very hard to predict what way it’s going to go sometimes and a random setback can genuinely occur out of nowhere. I could go for a drive through the mountains (super quiet modern car), get home, be perfectly fine with some mild pain, rest and be perfectly fine where as other days I could go for a walk and hear distant traffic noise and return to a setback with extreme reactive tinnitus that lasts days/weeks or months.

It’s honestly that random.

 

I have tinnitus and hyperacusis in only right ear from high pitched explosion. The pain is normally more bothersome than the ring for the ring is easy enough to mask with a fan, music, or a TV. It is reactive however, if I go play my drum kit with no hearing protection, the ring will be all I can hear after, super loud and super annoying. Interestingly enough my hyperacusis pain doesn’t get much worse it’s kinda always just gnawing at me no matter what I do. If I hear a really sudden loud noise however it will cause brief spikes of pain but they do not last. My incident only happened 3 and a half weeks ago so I may still be healing and getting used to my injury in certain ways.

 

I as well have reactive tinnitus but also some reduced sound tolerance. But at times I as well get some pain & weird sensations like ear pressure or closing feeling. Sometimes the reactive tinnitus can last as long as the external noise which is causing it or even worse it can cause a spike for longer periods.

 

I have reactive tinnitus where the baseline whiny high-pitched hissing will literally ramp up in volume in direct response to ambient noise so that it can be clearly heard over everything. It will then drop right back down to baseline after the noise exposure. I have never been able to mask my tinnitus with any kind of sound therapy. In recent weeks, however, I have had days when the baseline tinnitus is quieter and is not reactive. What possible mechanism can explain how reactivity can come and go?

I do also have some increased sound sensitivity, but never any pain or fullness. I did have an audiologist test my LDL's and she said I didn't really have enough sensitivity to be diagnosed with hyperacusis. My sound sensitivity seems to really be just the increase in the reactive tinnitus volume.

It is utterly amazing to me that medical science has no clue about any of these conditions.

 

Yeah I get really jealous that there's people who can get days of relief and feel like their old selves again when I have the reactive tinnitus every single day. I really wished doctors would know why some have debilitating reactive tinnitus every damn day with no days off and some are fortunate to get days of feeling normal and having relief from it.

I'm so sick and tired of reactive tinnitus. I genuinely feel like I cannot habituate to it because it's a very severe type of tinnitus and it's extremely debilitating and my quality of life is at zero. I really want to kill myself at this point.

I just need to figure out how to commit suicide without causing too much physical pain while dying but that's going to be an issue. Euthanasia seems like the best way to go but I guess it's expensive. I've had reactive tinnitus for over a year and it's the same every damn day.

 

I have felt same way but still hoping for improvement or habituation. Have you had TRT or CBT & sound therapy? Reached out to tinnitus 'experts' online who do Zoom counseling? Or any type of therapy since your onset? Do you have family or friends in your inner circle that can act as a support group? Do you have an activity you love doing that you can immerse yourself in on a daily basis?

 

There’s 100% a connection between the two. My left ear started reacting to different tones prior to hyperacusis coming in.