How Can You Bring Down or Lessen Your Hyperacusis?

I read somewhere that bringing down your hyperacusis can solve your reactive tinnitus or lessen it. I've got ambulance noises triggered from sound outside. My hyperacusis is not so strong, I can walk in a big city with loud trucks and so, but some noises hurt like knife and forks or a horn. Or a loud voice close to me.

How can I bring down my hyperacusis to solve the reactive part?

 

Apparently many people here are helped by ear light therapy for H. It doesn't work at all for T though.

 

I've searched for ear light therapy. Can't find it. What is it?

 

I would like to jump in here too. I'm pretty new to all this and having a hard time. I still have to go to work everyday and I work in Manhattan ! The last place you want to be with H ! My sound tolerance is changing all the time. Things that hurt before don't now but things that did not are now bothering me. Today my keyboard is hurting every time I type this. I've been to four doctors and three audiologists and no one has offered me any help at all. I went to NYU Hostipal and the guy was like good luck ! No pink noise therapy or steroids or anything were offered.

If anyone has ANY suggestions please I'd love to hear them too.

 

A combination of light therapy (Llllt , led ) and ear protection for 6 months will help to heal the nerves that are damaged.
Did work for me and I got H from shooting rifles , almost no H anymore .

 

How did you find out about this light therapy ? Can I do it on my own ? I am amazed that not one person I went to go see offered any advice whatsoever. I am in New York city and you would think that at least a few doctors would know something but I guess not and I went to very respected medical facilities. What a let down.

 

@Cityjohn @Bobby B While on topic here, you know I started using the red LED lights for therapy. However, I've been starting to look into Lllt. What is the difference between the laser and LED usage in this therapy? And, what in you opinion feel is the better selection with the devices that are currently on the market verses home made?

 

I take ativan every day. Eventually I'll have to stop though. Can't wait.

 

I was referring to what is known here as LLLT, low level laser therapy. Searching for LLLT here on the forum will yield a lot of results.

LLLT is still considered experimental, the reason for that is simply because the majority of doctors are not using it in healthcare. At university research groups however this has been used for about a decade to solve all sort of health issues. It is however better known among veterinarians for some reason whom use it to heal joint cartiledge and superficial wounds in horses for example.
I'm sure Harvard medical practices would know this, they pioneered the method.

Well personally I looked around to see what kind of light sources I could acquire on the open market and I had noticed that all the colors used for disc reading devices are readily available, like for CD and DVD players. But what I wanted was to find a light source tailored to the wavelength of the chromophores in the mitochondria, the peak wavelength for these has been shown multiple times to be centered on 600nm, p/m 25nm.
Then I had also discussed the issue of saturation with one of my teachers and we came to the conclusion that a wider spectrum source would be much more beneficial when confronted with large molecular structure excitation. Simply put a hydrogen atom, the simplest atom around, can only be excited by 4 very specific wavelengths. The more complex an atom becomes the more complex the lines get, as shown below.

Now by the time we get to complex molecular structures there's no longer lines but a continuous spectrum with peaks and drops. My goal therefor is to provide a wider spectrum that has 600nm in it, or at least much more than a 650nm laser diode would. A laser diode's light consists of only one single wavelength and no other, which means 650nm would miss the chromophore peak by almost 100%. This is not to say that 650nm would not do anything, but it would be considerably less.
In testing LED's I found them to have a preferred spectrum, much more closely resembling the 632nm of a Helium-Neon laser;


However it is worth noting that since a LED spreads out it's total power every single line within the peak get's much lower mW, about 2.5mW per unit wavelength. The perfect light therapy device for tinnitus would be a tunable 600nm light source which can be made but is expensive.. The Helium-Neon laser Dr. Wilden employs which seems to have helped in a lot of people gets close enough to the peak of the chromophores to have a big overlap, thus providing a lot of power where it is needed. A He-Ne laser is about 200,- to make so if LED LT does not work I'll go for that.

My T has gone down by about 20% since I've started doing my LT but it's worth mentioning I've also been taking Pyrolloquinoline quinone, an agent that increases mitochondrial and therefor chromophore count, and multivitamins every day to make sure no cell can run out of transcription factors. And I had also previously employed a 50W LED brain stem deep LT device which I found was stimulating superficial nerves so much it gave me terrible headaches.

TLDR:
So to sum up, a laser would need to be as close to 600 as possible, of which there are none other than He-Ne which is off by 30nm and provides nothing in 600nm. A LED spreads its spectrum and is therefor much weaker per line but it does contain everything from 600nm to 650nm, with its peak in 630 just like the He-Ne laser. Furthermore molecules have a weird and wide absorption spectrum and therefor it is much wiser to use a spread spectrum light source than it is to use a laser, not least because all that power in a single wavelength is unlikely to be used by the body.

I think my devices are a bit more clever than anything else on the market but I may be biased. Don't forget a nobel prize was won by students armed with nothing other than a crayon and some scotch tape a decade ago, so there's something to be said for simplicity. I Also bought the laser diodes initially and still have them but decided their spectrum was way off;

 

An excellent and relatively simple paper to read that will clarify most if not all questions concerning LLLT can be found here; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3288797/
It's a relatively easy read for anyone, there's no need to understand the formulas and all the medical terms, the general idea will still come across fine. It can be read in about 30min.

 

Hyperacusis;

I had forgot to mention my hyperacusis. I was at an indoors airsoft arena the whole day last Sunday with loud metal music and all sort of explosions and I didn't experience any discomfort. Whereas I can remember train tracks screeching and the refrigerators at the supermarket both hurt quite a bit. Where tinnitus is more likely a brain stem problem I believe hyperacusis is most definitely an inner ear problem therefor I had suggested "Ear" LLLT as a possible outcome.

 

@City John A BIG THANK YOU once again! I am going to continue to use the red LEDs in your honor. I am definitely noticing changes, so I am going to keep going with them. I am also taking PPQ and a basic multi-vitamin with the light therapy. I've also changed my diet and started exercising too. I do still have a little bit of vertigo, but it is nothing like the first time I using them. Are you still wearing them all day?

 

Yeah I put them in when I'm alone i.e nobody other than my partner is around which totals about 6 hours per day at the moment.

 

@Cityjohn can you tell me about what you're talking about? I am curious

 

That seems very interesting but if my wife see's me trying to build a laser to shoot into my ear I will be headed for divorce. I might already be heading there because of all this shit I'm suffering through. She just doesn't understand what it is really like and expects me to just be normal and not bring it up.

 

@Bobby B Hello I just saw your comment.

I have had tinnitus for 1 and a half year. Now I also have hyperacusis and it's very hard for me to cope with it. I never had hyperacusis before, I was just having problems in some very loud places like nightclubs, bars and similar places and I always wore earplugs.

However 1 month ago I was so naive and stupid to go in shooting range indoor. Even though I was aware how dangerous that is to the ears, especially my fragile ears, but I read somewhere that people with tinnitus can still shoot even with tinnitus but with double protection (earmuffs + earplugs).

I was doing simple math 33+20 dB reduction is 53 dB but after talking with some people I realised on algorithmic scale it's like 33+7 dB. Now I realise I was exposed to loud sound and damaged my ears even more.

I shot 40 rounds and my mother was shooting right next to me 20 bullets. Maybe 2 weeks after this event I developed severe hyperacusis. Now loud people talk, car horns and similar sounds are painful to me.

Did you have any help from lasers? I currently have Red Light Man LED device 830. I was using it for tinnitus and it didn't help me. However do you think that maybe I should start using this laser for hyperacusis?

 

That's a scam. Dont even waste the time.. or money.

 

I've seen enough people say it worked for them to consider trying it.

 

If it worked all public hospitals would offer that therapy. Public healthcare has looked into it and discarded it as a possible treatment.

 

You cant, it goes away or either stays permanent (as in my case).

 

Have you done an audiogram to determine if there is loss? Make sure to do up t0 16khz. I damaged my inner hair cells by doing some ear tests which were loud, thus have mild hearing loss in noisy areas now, also have loss on the audiogram as well. Please refrain from exposing your poor ears to loud sounds, we are at more risk for damage now, it is sad how quick we can damage our hearing.