Has Anyone Experienced a Transition from Fragile Hyperacusis Ears Back to Durable Normal Ears?

I have had tinnitus / hyperacusis for about 7 weeks. I have noticed what I think is a reduction in the tinnitus at a glacial pace, but I keep having setbacks from environmental noise, like a train passing by outside of my home and blaring it's horn. This causes ear ache/fullness/tinnitus spike, that seems like I am back weeks again in terms of progress.

It occurs to me that I need to go somewhere quieter in an attempt to heal, but this will all be for naught if my recovery has no durability. Without getting into whether it is indeed better to protect vs. expose the ears to TRT type white noise, which I know is a heated debate, has anyone here gone from very sensitive ears to "normal" ears so to speak, where you could expose them to regular noise again without structural setbacks? I myself have recovered from very very mild hyperacusis once before, which featured discomfort and no pain, but currently have tinnitus reactivity/distortion and some achey pain from noise. Even driving to a local nature reserve seems to create "damage" in the form of pain and a tinnitus spike that seems to hinder recovery.

I have read the success stories but would like to chat with someone on this topic who has been through it, if they are willing.

 

Following this as well. I don't have an answer since I only got hyperacusis/reactive tinnitus around the same time you did. Seems like it takes 2-3 years for a full recovery and then a loud noise can inflame the ears all over again and bring you back to step one. And that's ignoring the constant setbacks from daily normal noise. What's the point? Also thinking about all of the career paths automatically closed off and leisure activities like concerts, movies, bars, etc.

Does anyone have an answer besides hugs?

 

I got less sensitive to noise... When I started losing hearing due to very loud (objectively loud) one-off noises that were still more amplified due to severe hyperacusis.

 

Did/do you have any reactivity/distortion and did that change over time?

 

The first time I got an acoustic shock it was around 10 months before I saw a noticeable improvement. Then at 18 months I got so much better I was practically normal again. I got over confident with noise though and had another acoustic shock that's getting better pain-wise at almost the exact same rate. Its a bit different though this time because I can tolerate less of certain types of noise than the first time round. I just won't be getting too confident around sound again though even after I do hopefully get back to that much better level.

I got this really bad both times. My ear felt like an open wound, fizzing, hissing, all kinds of weird distortion. It calmed down over time both times though.

 

It got better over the years, partially due to developing hearing loss.

For people with a very bad case of hyperacusis or recruitment it is easy to test distortion. It is just a matter of grabbing the TV or HI-FI equipment remote control and start turning the volume up point by point. If at some point you suddenly perceive it super loud, that's the decibel threshold at which your ears are having trouble. If this is below 95 dB or so, it is a noise sensitivity problem, and if the threshold is around 70 dB or below this is hyperacusis. The lower the threshold, the worse the case of hyperacusis...

 

Thanks - for me when I say distortion it isn’t perceived loudness - for example when a plane flies over or the wind blows through the trees, I hear an annoying squeak ones to it. I wondered if you had any of those extra tones that don’t belong resolve over time.

 

That can be gone over time, but maybe it's gone due to hearing loss. I doubt it can get better in a severe case of tinnitus or hyperacusis, because this means underlying damage to hair cells or the cochlea, and this cannot be repaired. However, if these hair cells die (= hearing loss) there are no longer in the "bent hair cell limbo" and they stop firing so you stop getting that distortion or those additional tones.

 

That’s interesting. I did have distortion once but it only lasted a few days, and did go away. I’ve always thought of it as a nerve issue rather than the hair cells misfiring, although you could be right, in which case I am really really screwed...

 

In theory that should not be a nerve (retro-cochlear) issue... the most likely cause is it is cochlear, and this is damage to hair cells in the Organ of Corti.

 

If you learn from your mistakes (e.g., put on muffs when you are close to a train that might blare its horn), there is a good chance that your hyperacusis will go away. To answer your question - people get over hyperacusis all the time, it seems to happen for most.

 

Have an answer to what? You didn't ask a question.

Hugs are one of the ways people show support here. If you're looking for anything besides support on this forum, you may be disappointed as we are fellow sufferers who are also looking for answers.

 

Has this been proven that once the hair cells die the distortions will go? I haven't seen this stated as fact anywhere. We also don't know if these arise because of "bent hair cell limbo."

 

Or the synapses - this is also cochlear.

 

No, this is what I deduce in my particular case, from my personal experience. On top of this there is literature about bent hair cells misfiring, and also images of them...

 

What is the bent hair cell theory? I'm assuming it's the belief that some hair cells become bent after an acoustic trauma, leading to distortions since the respective hair cells can't transmit sound to the brain stem properly? In that case, would FX-322 do anything to help or not since the hair cells are frayed but not missing?

 

I'm not sure - to my knowledge, once the hair cells are damaged they are eventually expelled by the body and undergo apoptosis - @FGG is more knowledgeable on this than I am.

 

Hopefully this means distortion should eventually totally resolve, but I know for some it has not. My worry about these things is that if the issue is rooted in some mental programming, rather than the discrete structures of the ear which we seem to understand fairly well, then they are to some extent unreachable :/

 

I think the consensus is increasingly pointing to these problems being rooted in the ear and not the brain if that's any reassurance.

 

Speaking anecdotally, my own experience with distortions seems to mirror what @Juan has been describing here.

It makes sense also that a bent hair cell is sending incorrect signals to the brain, causing an over-sensitivity to a specific frequency when a particular sound is heard.

 

I hope so...

Can I ask in what way? For example, if someone were to tell me a small man in my head was shooting electricity into my ears causing tinnitus, I might have no more reason to believe it than that my hair cells are bent, or that my nerves are damaged, or that my brain is damaged. You sort of implied you had experience that guided you to hair cells specifically, so I’m just curious what that experience was.

 

After my noise trauma I had distortions from people's voices. It went away for a few days and then came back for a few days. Then it went away again, at which point I got tinnitus, albeit a very weak electrical type of signal. So what does this all mean?

I have some sound sensitivity but I don't think it's true hyperacusis.

Thanks.

 

It means your ears got messed up.

 

I remember when I suffered acoustic trauma one day, I had very loud ringing in my right ear.

The next day, the ringing went down a bit but was still loud, the part that freaked me out the most though was the distortion I had. My own voice would even set it off. The end of most words I said sounded like i was talking into a fan, giving it a robot twang at the end. Wind blowing by my head had a weird sound too. People's voices and lots of noises all had the weird buzzy, twang and it was very obvious.

It terrified me. I went to a clinic to have my ear checked and the doctor said I had a lot of fluid in behind my eardrum. He said it would take a week or 2 to drain and that would resolve the distortion. This was day 3. By day 4, I noticed the distortion went down by half. By day 7, the distortion was down to a level that I was content with. It still could be set off my some words I said but it wasn't too bad. It no longer terrified me.

Every 3 days, the problem got 50 percent better than what it was before. After a month had passed the distortion was gone and all that remained was classic tonal tinnitus in one ear which I basically now have to be in complete silence to hear.

The doctor basically didn't think I damaged my hearing and thought the tinnitus and distortion was all just from fluid release. However the tinnitus that has remained for over a hear indicates it was more than just fluid. However, he was right that the distortion would eventually subside. Not sure if the distortion was indeed from fluid or if it was bent hair cells that eventually either fixed themselves or peacefully died off or whatever.

So, maybe my distortion was due to vibrations echoing in fluid but it was pretty intense for a bit but went away after a month. I was also extra sensitive to certain noises, such as metal chairs being dragged on a wooden floor. The sensitivity last longer than the distortions but went away as well. This sensitivity did subside as well however.

So in my experience, I think I was quite lucky to have a scare which didn't seem to negatively affect me too much in the long run but made me religiously have ear plugs on me at all times.

By the way, EarPeace ear plugs are in my opinion, the best ones. Far better than EarDial earplugs.

 

Sadly this isn't representative of the majority of us :/

 

@GBB

ENT says that my tinnitus was more likely caused by stress and TMJ than the noise as it occurred nearly 3 weeks after incident. Still have no idea but it sucks. Hopefully we can be at peace with this. I'm learning slowly however sometimes it seems to be worse but really only in louder environments.

 

I apologize - I gave you a flip answer as I was having a bad tinnitus day. I didn't even remember writing it until I saw your response - some days you just see red with this tinnitus. If yours was caused by stress and TMJ, I hope it abates for you in time.

 

Thank you Bill, appreciate the positive post.

 

Hi Bill, in your wealth of knowledge reading the forums, does this also apply to pain hyperacusis as well as the loud variant?

 

I remember several users here whose hyperacusis involved pain, and who eventually got over their hyperacusis...