Prednisone for Noxacusis Spike? What's the Suggested Dosage?

Hi there! I've been dealing with noxacusis symptoms for just over a month now. I've been having stabbing pain in my ear canal, slight burning pain, frequent spasms of my middle ear, ear fullness, and huge tinnitus spikes. It feels like I have a middle ear infection with a sensitivity to sound. I've also been having tinnitus that's mimicked sounds, and continued throughout the days after. All the symptoms besides the pain, fullness, and sensitivity to sound have popped up in the last week or so. Also, I feel my sound tolerance has drastically dropped, because of a lack of protecting when I didn't know what my condition was and exposure to loud sounds.

I'm now in double hearing protection 24/7. Yet I feel it continues to worsen, as I live in a basement apartment and can't isolate myself from every sound, especially sounds from outside. We've been doing slight construction on our bedroom, in an attempt to make a quiet spot for myself, but because of the sharp noises over the last few days, I feel like my condition is worsening. The pain and burning sensation is becoming a little worse in my outer ear.

Should I take Prednisone? I've had it prescribed to me for asthma. It's 50 mg for 14 days.

Thank you!

 

Great username and profile picture by the way!

The general consensus on Tinnitus Talk in regards to noxacusis is complete silence, anything that is giving you pain you should refrain from. It’s a bit of a debate whether silence is detrimental for your loudness hyperacusis, I think that would seem to be the case but it’s only my opinion. Given that noxacusis can be a lot harder to deal with, it’s probably best to focus on that and stay in silence, focus on the loudness aspect afterwards.

I’ve had the ear spasms which aren’t directly related to noxacusis, mine didn’t last too long fortunately. In the first month I definitely spiked very easily with my tinnitus and I relate very much to the mimicry. I’m now either having a good couple of days or this shit is starting to subside.

Again this is just my personal opinion, but I recall @Brian Newman getting temporary relief from Prednisone if I remember correctly. I don’t see how it would help noxacusis in your situation but I am not an expert in the slightest. My mental health plummeted whilst on the course of Prednisone and it made my tinnitus fluctuate even wilder but it did give me some nice quiet days also.

 

Hi @Hardwell, thank you, it's important to keep some level of high spirits, ya know?

Yeah, I'm really trying to avoid all sounds pretty much, my tolerance is crazy low at this point, but it really is impossible until I can move. But even then I need to be stable enough to make it in the car ride lol.

Yeah I saw a couple posts of Brian's too, I think he's dealing with noxacusis as well, and I'm almost sure I am. So I think it might help since Prednisone is a big anti-inflammatory, and I think the constant ear fullness means I'm always inflamed if I'm not mistaken.

I really just wanted to make sure that it was somewhat safe for me to try some. I've heard of it sometimes increasing hyperacusis and tinnitus and I definitely don't need that lmao. Also I wanted to see if people knew the specific dosage, since I didn't get it prescribed for this specifically. I might just take 50 mg for a week and see? But I think you need to taper off it and I have nooooo idea how to do that.

@Hardwell, did you find that after stopping Prednisone, the tinnitus fluctuations went away?

 

So sorry to hear about your struggles; this really is such an incredibly challenging & frustrating condition to deal with!

Re: the Prednisone, I've personally never been on it, but I know it's a powerful drug that can have some serious side effects, & from what I've read here on Tinnitus Talk, yeah, it has the potential of worsening both tinnitus & hyperacusis. So it's an option I would consider the pros & cons of depending on my situation (e.g., with hearing loss or a significant noise trauma I might give it a go).

You mention feeling as though you might have an ear infection... do you think it might be worth it to get checked out by a doctor? If you do have an infection, perhaps a milder med might help resolve the issue.

On another note, I wonder, do you feel some sort of pain (e.g., burning, stabbing) all the time, or does it come & go?

Take good care,
Maddy

 

@MadeleineHope, yes, I'm having really horrible noxacusis symptoms. They're not getting better even with double hearing protection.

Burning and stabbing pain pretty frequently, my ear is always full, and my middle ear muscles go crazy.

 

Prednisolone is not recommended in the UK unless you have sudden hearing loss defined as >30 dB on at least 3 frequencies. It should not be used willy-nilly.

 

@haha ear go eeee, does the burning/stabbing subside after some time spent in hearing protection? I don't have a lot of experience with noxacusis (about 7 months worth of), but if you have periods of time where you don't experience any burning/stabbing, I would humbly suggest to remove the hearing protection for some time, or at least lower it. Then when you encounter the burning/stabbing again, you can go back to the double protection (or whatever layer(s) of protection you need). The idea behind this is to very slowly desensitize your auditory system & prevent even more sensitization. The exposure can be very brief to start if needed - just seconds. In fact, there is a user who used to post here - RonnieThailand - who recovered from severe pain hyperacusis. He spent the first year heavily protecting & unable to make any substantial progress until he started "baby-stepping" back into sound.

@Marin here also used a similar approach combined with homeopathy & a carnivore diet.

Just thought I might share in case it helps!

Maddy