How Many of You Have Had "Sudden Hearing Loss"?

[WickedCarnival]

Have you experienced fluctuations or permanent hearing loss in the past or currently?

I have been doing a lot of reading and I learned that psychological stress such as chronic or acute anxiety, and other forms of stress during life events or periods could be an actual CAUSE (or at least confounding contributor) to "sudden sensorineural hearing loss" and that tinnitus is often a symptom (especially when the loss is in the high frequencies that standard audiograms do not reveal). It is believed that stress causes blood circulatory issues around the nerves connected to the cochlea and that if the nerves become inflamed whether it is by stress-induced cardiovascular stuff, or if a virus sneaks by the weakened immune response due to the existing psychological stress, that the nerves become pinched and damaged. Another theory is that other important fluids in the cochlea also become compromised and that the hair cells themselves actually die because of that.

Here are plenty of resources which seem to back that up and I can also attest to my own experiences in the past after a traumatic event, and current stress during cold and flu season (stress also lowers immune strength) could combine together to create a high risk factor for "idiopathic tinnitus", which is really just the symptom of what I explained. I've had periods of high stress followed by low stress where in between I would experience my left side hearing completely drop out with loud tinnitus flare ups, and then recover again in the same day or the next, depending on how I recover from the stress. I can rule out Meniere's disease because it doesn't exist in my family either.

Anyways, my point is that if you have access to resources, counselling, therapy, etc. for stress in general, please make use of them. If you are in a bad relationship, have bad friends, or strongly hate your job/career, that can also contribute to high levels of stress.

https://www.earq.com/for-physicians/conditions-that-can-lead-to-hearing-loss

https://sites.google.com/site/sudde...-sudden-hearing-loss-stress-as-the-root-cause

http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/Default.aspx?id=39139

https://www.healthline.com/health/sensorineural-deafness

https://www.hear.com/hearing-loss/sudden/

https://helpingmehear.com/why-single-sided-hearing-is-a-symptom-you-should-never-ignore/amp/

https://www.nexgenhearing.com/sudden-deafness-important-things-to-know/

https://www.hearinglink.org/your-hearing/sudden-sensorineural-hearing-loss/

http://www.tinnitusjournal.com/articles/stress-and-the-onset-of-sudden-hearing-loss-and-tinnitus.pdf

http://phb.secondsensehearing.com/content/relationship-between-hearing-loss-and-stress

https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/sudden-deafness

 

[jmasterj]

This is interesting. I never really could explain my increase in tinnitus (no noise exposure). It was a rather stressful time for me from a relationship standpoint. The normal 8Hz audiogram showed no change in hearing from my initial loss in 2011. Also, interesting in most of the Neuromod testimonials they most point to their tinnitus starting due to a stressful time in their lives.

 

[Contrast]

if you lose hearing outside of human speech range you are fucked, doctors won't care enough to give you a predisone steroid.

It's considering clinically unconcerning even if you had no hearing whatsoever OVER 9000hz!!!

 

[JohnFox]

I lost all hearing in my right ear suddenly while sleeping. I went to bed with no hearing issues at all. I awoke in middle of the night to a bubbling popping noise in my right ear and a very plugged feeling and also realizing that I could no longer hear anything with my right ear.

That happened the night of Feb 27th 2019. I have had pretty severe Tinnitus on my right side ever since also with Hyperacusis with my good ear, which in my case means that my Tinnitus (hissing static noise) is greatly aggravated by sounds I hear through my good left ear.

The ENT and my GP doctors can not come up with any reason for my hearing loss with this event that happened in middle of night. I had a MRI of my head which showed nothing abnormal. However, four months prior to my sudden hearing loss event, I was in a very serious motorcycle accident that almost killed me. I broke seven bones including a compound fracture of my right Tibia, two fractures of right Fibula, broken left collar bone, broken right thumb, and two cracked vertebrae. No concussion or head/neck/ injuries. I received two blood transfusions, and was in a wheel chair for a couple of months after two surgeries and am still in recovery. Naturally, this brought a lot of stress into my life, and I cant help but wonder if this ultimately was the cause for the sudden hearing loss event almost four months after the accident.

BTW, this is now the biggest challenge of my life I am going through. With the help of a strong social network, my devoted wife, my faith, and my overall generally good health, I have been able to still enjoy life and for the most part avoid falling into depression even though life is a bit different now. I am retired, which helps. It would be very trying to have to go to work every day with this constant noise in my head.

On the bright side, I do find myself more and more with the realization that I just spent an hour or maybe even two hours where I more or less forgot about the noise in my head even though it is still quite loud when I listen to it. In other words, I didn't notice it during that hour, or whatever. I am hopeful that those moments will increase to half days or maybe even full days in the future. Even just that hope of a better future seems to help lower the stress and anxiety which in turn helps with the Tinnitus. What a life! ;-)