Spikes, Tingling, and Pain — What's Happening? Noxacusis? Noise-Induced Trigeminal Neuralgia?

I've been browsing this forum for most of the day to try and figure out what's wrong with me, and I'm starting to spiral into anxiety, so I figured I'd make a post to see if anyone has had a similar experience.

Basically things started this past Wednesday. I noticed my tinnitus was spiking, which was worrying to me since I hadn't done anything to make it spike. This is a few days after I started taking Solgar's Super Ginkgo biloba supplement, and about a week after I got my second shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. I'm not sure if either of these things are connected.

I then noticed that I was beginning to get tingling in my face, particularly along my jaw and teeth, as well as around my right ear, and I began to experience some pain as well, mostly intermittent pain in my jaw and in/around my ear. FWIW, the area around my ear is quite sore and I've found several muscle knots there that I've been massaging.

I've been dealing with vestibular migraine for many years now, so at first I brushed these symptoms off as just a migraine attack, since that usually involves facial/jaw tingling and pain for me. After reading some posts on this forum though, I've realized that I might actually be developing noxacusis or noise-induced trigeminal neuralgia.

Any thoughts on what's going on here? and what should I do now? I'm wearing ear earmuffs in my apartment so my AC doesn't bother me, but I'm not sure what else to do other than to cut off all noise from my life and hope for the best.

 

I've had the same problem for a year now after an acoustic shock. It started out as a bit of fullness and developed into jaw pain, ear pain, fullness, numbness and tingling in my ear and face.

My advise is dont panic about it! Giving it attention and researching your condition will lead you down a very dark rabbit hole like it has for me.

Also don't over protect. Get the earmuffs off in your apartment. All you do is make your ears more sensitive which will lead to more problems. The AC is not going to damage you! Obviously protect from loud noises.

My thoughts are that most pain hyperacusis (read MOST) is caused by the 2 tiny ear muscles going into contraction and innervating the trigeminal nerve either from acoustic shock or TTTS (although I think both are one and the same). I read the papers by Myriam Westcott and my symptoms all fit. I think the anxiety makes us fear sound which makes our brain tense the muscles to protect the ear which causes symptoms and more anxiety. It's a loop of anxiety and symptoms hence why I say try not to be fearful of sound. I'm not saying anxiety is the cause but it certainly doesn't help.

A lot of people will tell you you have nerve damage and damaged affluent nerve cells or some such like... This is only theory and nerve actually been proven so again try not to feed into negative stories.

Cheers,
Shaun.

 

How are you now? Symptoms any better?

 

Thank you for your reply, and I'm sorry you're going through this too. I'll definitely look into the Myriam Westcott papers and see if that matches what I've been experiencing. Trying to stay calm/not get anxious but that's definitely easier said than done.

 

Just woke up, so kinda hard to say. My tinnitus is a bit quieter, and I don't have any ear pain at the moment. Still some tingling in my face, but again, that's also a migraine symptom for me so I'm not sure if that's more migraine related or tinnitus related. Planning on taking things easy for the next week or so and hopefully that will help.

 

My symptoms have changed over the year. I used to have constant burning and fiercer aching. Also more fullness and tingling.

Now I have constant jaw and face ache. My ear burns on and off. It also feels full on occasion. ENT and doctor insist nothing wrong with hearing or ear and that it must be anxiety.

Doctor has prescibed Lyrica which does nothing but space me out.

Exhausted from all this.

Shaun.