Path to Hyperacusis

So I have been reading a lot and I am seeing patterns when the H develops.
It seems like all those people who get T initially get really stressed but they slowly get used to their new reality and try things to fix their T or make it better. What is interesting that after few weeks H shows up. The H i am talking about here is the sensitivity to sounds like car brakes, water sink, plastic bags, louder city sounds. Sensitivity that creates more T or broken speaker effect when it happens, but fades away when externals sounds fade away. So i wonder if H did not start with T why it happens? Is it typical path to H? Is it the stress in muscles that leads to it or it just some kind of reaction that happens after T becomes present?

 

Ok, my hypothesis is that hyperacusis in general is the brain's way of protecting itself from further damage following acoustic trauma. ie. you sprain your ankle, it gets swollen so u can't step on it until it heals up.
Now, i would say in some instances when H starts without acoustic trauma, it might be to a brain malfunction triggered by an external stressor - life stress, medication, a blow to the head, etc. - just like tinnitus can start without an apparent reason, so can hyperacusis.
Leading researchers (even non-leading ones such as Dr.Jastreboff) all agree that H is caused by increased gain in the auditory brain pathways, so its not an "ear" thing, its a brain thing. Now of course ear things can also arise such as TTS and ear pains, but those are secondary effects caused by inner ear parts.
I would even go as far as saying that T and H are caused by the same disorder (ie. potassium channels out of whack, thalamic dysregulation, etc)
Of course if the researchers are wrong, this whole theory goes down the crapper.

Hope that helps.

 

Try crushing a empty or half full water bottle in your hand. To me every slight click of the plastic sound like a high pitched explosion. And the fading away after the external sounds fade away,....the next time you go for a hearing test have your emissons checked. It said that all my "hairs" are there, but they are not responding correctly.

 

Just wondering if you exposed to a high pitched loud sound?

 

Are you asking about the cause of the T?

Before I got t four things happened to me:
- neck issues
- root canal
- 2 audio listening sessions at bestbuy for 1h at 75-100db levels.
- tried few times to check limits of high frequency hearing with tone generator

Interesting is that I noticed T once day for 5 min and it went away.
Then I noticed it again and it got stuck with me.

 

Was the tone generator loud? how far were you from the sound. How long were you doing that for?

 

Not unusual at all. Mine left me for a minutes at a time in the first month, at one point seemed almost to go away for more than a day, then came back and stayed back.

On hyperacusis, here's my take. It's somewhat unusual since I have unilateral tinnitus. I think tinnitus and hyperacusis are two reactions to the same stimulus. Our brains have lost the ability to regulate sound - to turn down background noises and focus on what we want to - due to hyperactivity in the auditory pathways of the brain. It's like clubbing piano keys with your fist instead of tapping delicately with your fingers. You get sounds you don't want and the sounds you do want are loud and discordant. As a result, everything the ear hears it sends to the brain, without the layer of filtering that healthy listeners have to decide if something is important or trivial, threatening or benign, and if it should therefore be perceived as gentle or alarming. Without that filter we hear what's really there, and to some extent magnify what's there so it's all alarming. The worse the hyperacusis, the more fight or flight is amplifying the volume.

I say my unilateral tinnitus gives me a different take on this because I recently discovered that if I plug my right ear, I no longer perceive moderate noises as loud. The nerves connecting to my left ear are fine, and still doing their filtering thing. It's only those nerves on the left that are overacting and giving me noises and amplified volume.

By the way, I've said on other threads that I cured my hyperacusis with trigger point massage. I'm not changing that statement. It's just that after I made that discovery about plugging one ear, I noticed that I do get more volume and jangle from the right. It's only a very mild case of hyperacusis, but I can tell the difference.

 

Headsets for few seconds at medium volume. But I tried to increase the volume two or three times to check if i can hear above 16000 and with higher volume I got to 18400. I did the test with higher volume really fast but who knows.
I did not notice anything when i tried that. Not sure if this has anything to do with my t. T happened around the time when I was concentrating on different sounds to see if I can hear difference in quality. All was at moderate volume. 70-80db I would say. I still hear the same and I can distinguish slight differences in audio quality between audio up to 16000hz and one up to 22000hz. But now I got this ringing crap and all that sensitivity.

 

Thx for the explanation.
Makes a lot of sense.
I am currently reading a book about trigger points and experimenting myself with it hoping to cure it.