First Major Setback Since Onset Almost a Year Ago

Mr. Leigh, why do you think she did well taking that drug, even after lying to her doctor and when apparently she didn’t damage her cochleas?

 

@Yashin, the neuro-otolgist I went to said I might have an ear infection. She basically ignored what I said, that the ear pain corresponds to noise exposure. If I am in silence, the pain disappears.

There's this study named "Nerve cells warn brain of damage to inner ear." The summary says:

Some nerve cells in the inner ear can signal tissue damage in a way similar to pain-sensing nerve cells in the body, according to new research. If the finding, discovered in rats, is confirmed in humans, it may lead to new insights into hyperacusis, an increased sensitivity to loud noises that can lead to severe and long-lasting ear pain.

So the theory is that these nerve cells are sensitized, causing chronic pain.

 

Hi @Yashin

Sometimes we know our own body better than the health professionals. Whilst the majority of them know about the anatomy of the ear and can treat it medically or surgically, they know almost nothing about tinnitus. The reason being, most have never experienced it. You have to be in a person's position to understand what they are going through and what this feels like. When tinnitus is loud and intrusive it is ruthless and shows no mercy. Unless you have experienced this type of tinnitus, you can never understand when a person says they are unable to cope and will try anything in order to get some relief.

I rest my case.
Michael

 

To those reading this thread and want to get some hope: I've improved even more. I still haven't returned to baseline, but I'm inching my way back up.

Like I had said, I really don't want to mention any progress because I might jinx it (knock on wood), but I figured it's worth posting about it if it offers a bit of hope for other people who are in the same boat as I am.

 

Hi @Yashin! Are you suggesting 'hidden hearing loss' as a syndrome doesn't exist, only as a factor for explaining sound intolerance, or altogether? If the latter, how would you explain people who present with good audiograms in the speaking frequencies, but poor speech recognition in noisy environments?

 

Hi Lex, I am glad you are recovering from your setback. From your description it seems you are having an H spike. This happens when a sound that is way above your tolerance level hits you. In the first few days you can notice a variety of symptoms, like more H, pressure, muffled hearing, pain, very big headaches, etc In time you should get better, but these things are sometimes slow, as you know. Also, it is impossible to avoid offending noise, and setbacks do happen, but we have to try to take our focus out of the pain or hearing symptoms and divert our attention to activities and people in our lives who make us happy. All the best!

 

Why, then, is the noise threshold for cochlear damage also used by TRT clinicians as the exact threshold for which tinnitus and hyperacusis can worsen?

 

Lex:

I am so sorry to read that your despair remains. I am facing a bad month, what with a broken toe, forcing me to stay home alone even more. And a lot of DARK thoughts creep into my soul while alone. So I get it! But I am still far from you know what.

This famous soliloquy by Shakespeare always helps me out. Marco


To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
the heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
that Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub,
for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
when we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
must give us pause. There's the respect
that makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
the Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely, [F: poor]
the pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay, [F: disprized]
the insolence of Office, and the spurns
that patient merit of the unworthy takes,
when he himself might his Quietus make
with a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear, [F: these Fardels]
to grunt and sweat under a weary life,
but that the dread of something after death,
the undiscovered country, from whose bourn
no traveller returns, puzzles the will,
and makes us rather bear those ills we have,
than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
and thus the native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment, [F: pith]
with this regard their Currents turn awry, [F: away]
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy Orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.[2

By the one and only: William Shakespeare
Thank you, people of England ,for this great genius!!

 

@Lex Hope you are feeling better and seen further improvement. Don't give up.

 

Been having lots of ups and downs but I'm still overall better than the time when I first made this thread.

I am not a strong person but I can say that the resilience I've been showing has been surprising to me. I'm kind of proud of myself, as stupid as that may sound. I am and will always be pro-choice when it comes to death with dignity but I really don't want to have to make that choice as much as possible. And I guess it's true, humans have a huge capacity to endure suffering because survival instinct is hard to overcome.

Nevertheless, I am still in pain. I'm not out of the woods yet as there are times when all I want is to die. How I wish that relief can come in an instant! But I have to be patient. I have to take care of my body and let it heal to an extent. I have to give myself the chance to get better.

 

@Lex Have you managed to get back to work again ?

 

Yes, I've been back to work for a few weeks now, but I asked to be transferred to a corner tucked away from most noises. I feel lonely sitting there sometimes but oh well.

 

@Pomme

Just want to add, it helps that I'm a writer, my office is already relatively quiet because most employees are software developers busy coding at their desks, and my flat is only 300 meters away which translates to a five-minute walk with my earplugs and earmuffs on. I can also tolerate wearing earplugs for most of the day. That's why I can do this for now. That's also why I suggested the same thing to you in your thread, to find a quiet job you can do in front of a computer, ideally at a workplace near where you live -- or better yet, a work-from-home setup -- if your current job is too harsh on your ears. It's not exciting, but if it pays the bills, go for it!

 

@Lex Thanks for all the advice. It's very much appreciated. I can work from home for three days a week but I have to confront getting into a busy city centre at least twice a week via the train. I am building up the courage to do a 'test run' but keep putting it off. I will just take plugs and muffs and see what happens. Not much choice.

 

I'm following an anti-inflammatory diet and taking lots of anti-inflammatory supplements at the urging of my bf. I've been on it for more than a week now.

The T is loud as ever and the H is still as sensitive but the pain has further dialed down.

Of course I want to get rid of T and H altogether but at this point, effective pain management is my goal.

 

I truly feel for you. Every day is a survival. Those musics the shops and malls play is unnecessarily loud and it is so in the bus& subway announcement and bell sounds(well, at least in my country). I had a time when I wasn't like this, but I keep asking to my self to the people around me, 'Aren't you feeling the slightest pain in your ear? Why aren't you recoiling? Oh, you look mighty comfortable with it whatsoever....'

 

Update: Pain is still there, but more as a timely reaction to loud sounds. I can predict what sounds can cause it, so I can manage my environment much better.

I will have to cancel my trip next month, though. That's the third flight I won't go on this year. Maybe next year, I'll feel comfortable enough to get on a plane again.

 

I have further improved since my last post in this thread. But the lingering pain is still there. I would consider myself recovered from this setback if I go back to baseline (instant pain reaction to sound and no lingering/delayed reaction)

 

How long does it linger for? How many times a day do you get this pain?

It is good to know that after three months, you are feeling a lot better.

 

Seconds to minutes. I get it when I encounter high-pitched sounds, especially metal clanging.

 

Does it happen often?

 

Depends on where I am. Inside my flat, no. When I'm outside trying to live a life, yes.

 

I’m sorry for taking so long.

@Lex

I don’t know why you show me that article. Do you think the article is related to your earlobes issue?

I read the article you mentioned two years ago. Fuchs identified the type II neurons some years ago. Then, he wanted to make his discovering meaningful, and associate it to disorders or symptoms without a known etiology in the scientific literature. But this type of neurons remains intact when hair cells die, and he can’t explain what is important, that is: what is changed in people with “sound-induced” pain, or how this nerve cells became more sensitive. So the relationship between this type II afferents and pain is remote (or inexistent). Also, he can’t explain why symptoms change all the time, or why sufferers get better, or have setbacks, or recover completely, or why certain sounds with rapid attack are more problematic, or why almost all of them have tensed or moving tensor tympanis, and sometimes other tensions or abnormalities around the TTs, or headaches, nausea, or an accentuated startle reflex, or why some of them are depressed or obsessed (and before their ear problems), and a lot of things more. Fuchs is just pushing a conclusion to make his microscopic discovery meaningful, without understanding the problem in a real and intimate manner. The same happened with “hidden hearing loss”.

Liberman and Fuchs (and the whole cochleocentric troupe) are technicians, and they could be good for looking through a microscope, or for provoking acoustic shocks to rats in a fish tank, like the US government does in Guantanamo and other CIA prisons. But definitely they are not good for reaching conclusions, because they don’t know what they are talking about.

It is not by chance that Pollard likes these researchers, when he wrote four newsletters without a single mentioning to the tensor tympani, like playing a football match without ball (How could Messi score three goals in a game without a bloody ball?) Pollard doesn’t understand the problem, and he is interested in raising money for experiments, when he doesn’t need any money, at least not before he tries to think properly.

In my opinion, you won’t find an answer to your questions in the cochleocentric troupe.

This is not what you told me in the other thread, some months ago, that you have a random pain even in silence. You wrote “I feel a sharp, stabbing pain inside my ears, usually on the right, but my left ear gets that, too. It happens randomly, even when I'm in a quiet place and haven't been exposed to sounds.” And in this very thread, you wrote: “The pain now is there almost 24/7, even in silence.” So it is not clear. How is this?

 

Hi @Fabrikat.

“Hidden hearing loss” is not a syndrome. It is just a visual microscopic observation.

Kujawa and Liberman only counted the bloody synapses. The only thing that is probable, if their experiments are well made (and I wouldn’t take this for granted), is that these synaptic terminals are apparently a bit less resistant to strong sounds than hair cells. Then they chose a pretentious and inexact name, “hidden hearing loss”, when there is nothing hidden, and began to use peyote and trip around. Liberman and his friends like to play with the new toy and want this supposed drop of synaptic density to explain everything that doesn’t have an explanation for them, like hyperacusis, tinnitus, auditory disorder, age-related hearing difficulties, you name it. They are like kids. Liberman has money invested in the developing of a drug, so his pragmatic reductionism is functional to the increasing of his private property. But if he was really interested in people’s health, he would engage actively in preventive medicine (the best way to avoid ear problems).

As I said in a previous post, most people have a gradual loss of hair cells, due to very loud sounds, drugs, or simply as the natural consequence of aging. But if synaptic terminal loss is more probable to happen, and it is primary to a secondary hair cell loss, and this situation produces poor speech recognition in noisy environments, then even more people would have this problem. And this is not the case, as far as I know. I have a bit of hearing loss, and I don’t have poor speech recognition in noisy environments. Do you, Fabrikat?

So you asked me: “how would you explain people who present with good audiograms in the speaking frequencies, but poor speech recognition in noisy environments?“

My answer is: How could I know? I didn’t study the subject, although the problem could have to do with a poor processing of sound, or with a deficit of attention. I can only say that Liberman and Kujawa are not convincing, and if they are right on this particular subject, shouldn’t the problem be massive? Maybe I am not getting something.

P.S. I find the paper that Liberman wrote about “hyperacusis” pretty barbaric. Hickox and Liberman show all their skills as cochleocentric junkies, serial rat torturers, and professional reductionists, designing tests with the only purpose of making tendentious conclusions to add another sad chapter to the history of “hidden hearing loss”.

 

And then again, if we follow Liberman’s logic, everybody would have “hyperacusis”. But “hyperacusis” is not a disease, it is “merely discomfort on a beep beep test in a cubicle”, as someone said. I suspect almost all people in this forum who report “sound discomfort” (or “dysacusis” or “auditory dysesthesia”) have a tension or abnormality in the tensor tympani mechanism, or “ttts”, as Klockhoff called it, which is the root of their discomfort and explains all its particularities, and its comings and goings. In some people, like Lex and Sen, the problem is spread physically in the zone nearby, and probably the trigeminal nerve gets irritated. And sometimes the tension or abnormality of the TT could be an indirect consequence of another physical issue, like “tmjd” or an infection, or a result of an external factor, like a punch in the face.

The discomfort could be present with or without sound, so the term “hyperacusis” is not accurate. What happens is that sufferers hear through a mechanism that is not normal. And this situation could lead to an increase or distortion of the internal sound, because of a natural mechanism of protection, or because fear and overprotection of the sufferer (using earplugs too much or when it is not necessary). Internal volume is naturally very plastic; this is normal, not pathologic. Other factors which contribute to confusion are: tinnitus, hearing loss, emotional state, misinformation. People with a tinnitus that is not tolerated could become phonophobic and could have distortion in the internal volume, without “ttts”. Or they could gradually develop “ttts”, or experience otalgia.

At least this is what I learned from my own experience and reading some medical texts and anecdotes in forums.

 

Prednisone is a strong drug and it is not indicated for anxiety. Besides, Lex wasn’t talking about tinnitus, but about pain.

 

@Sen, I don’t know exactly what you mean. Ask Yastrepov. What is this threshold? Cochlear damage happens in the conditions I described in my first post in this thread, and this is not my opinion, it is mainstream knowledge. As far as I know, TRT agrees with this. But TRT doesn’t understand the problem properly and so it is full of contradictions and misinformation, and it is functional to a business.

TRT is an obscure lodge, anyway.

 

Before setback: random pain. Immediately after setback: almost 24/7 pain.

This very thread is about that setback if you took time to comprehend what I had written before you spouted off with so many things. Is that clear enough for you or do you need further explanation?

And the pain I experience is burning and tingling and stabbing, similar to neuropathic pain. It spreads out sometimes which is why I think facial nerves are affected but most of the time, the pain is deep inside and around the ears. It also responds to nerve meds like pregabalin, which I take.

 

You said that the threshold for the onset or worsening of hyperacusis has nothing to do with cochlear damage. But the noise threshold for cochlear damage is what Jastreboff's "normal sounds cannot worsen hyperacusis" mantra is based on. Allegedly, if a sound cannot cause cochlear damage, then it also cannot induce or worsen hyperacusis.

If the onset or worsening of hyperacusis has nothing to do with cochlear damage, why does your cochlear need to be damaged by noise for hyperacusis to be inducted or worsened?

My apologies if I've made an error in what you believe. I haven't read the entire thread.

 

How can you say that's not the case? What is your sample size?

HomeoHebbian made an interesting thread touching on this topic:

https://www.tinnitustalk.com/thread...trouble-hearing-conversations-in-noise.17763/

The paper does have some problems, but it's still an important finding. It just raises more questions than answers.