Tinnitus & Hyperacusis Started While Taking Doxycycline

Hi all,

I am looking for some guidance on my recently acquired tinnitus. Now looking at the actual date of onset, I have had tinnitus for about 4 going on 5 weeks. Tinnitus started with fairly bad hyperacusis while I was taking Doxycycline for acne (should've done the full dive and got Accutane!). I took for about 5 days at 200mg/day one pill morning evening with food. It hit my stomach, but that was no big issue. I just noticed that everything got very loud, between the music in another room, the laundry machine, and a car idling outside I had to put on earplugs and everything felt weird. Long story short, I stop taking the Doxycycline after about a day and a half of tinnitus and two days of hyperacusis, saw an ENT about a week later. He told me just to let it recover, and it should recover to the point I can't really hear it. The hearing test showed effectively perfect hearing anyway. The test didn't go to very high frequency, but I have no doubt that that hearing remains as I am a little oversensitive to it still.

So, in the past weeks I have acquired a few extra pills to help cope with it and read several threads, which I will link.

I take:
Morning: Turmeric/Curcumin, B-complex, NAC, a multi, and Vit. D (unrelated).
Evening: Turmeric/Curcumin, B-12, NAC, Zinc and Magnesium (looking into getting the more bioavailable forms of the Zn and Mg).

I also exercise every couple days at least and hydrate well.

My symptoms have been improving. I'd say the tinnitus was at about a 4-6/10 when I was taking the Doxycycline and about a couple days after, and now has hit the point where not thinking about it +40 dB background noise it gets hard to hear. In a quiet room as I type this, it's noticeable and distracting, but not that bad. There were only a couple nights where it gave me trouble falling asleep. I went to the gym for 40 minutes a couple days ago and it definitely spiked it from a 1-2/10 to a 3-4/10, which I'm coming down from.

My hyperacusis is the most troubling, as my ears will begin to "cramp up" when overexposed to sound. I've thankfully been able to slowly increase the volume on my TV to where it was, but I find myself constantly adjusting up and down to make sure it's still in a comfortable range. The volume still needs to be low on most other things or it gets uncomfortable. I still have to be careful. My ears just always feel kind of tired.

All told, things aren't that bad, especially when in sight of what some of you guys have going on, but I was seeking some more treatment advice for my particular case. I cannot assign my tinnitus to acoustic trauma or any kind of allergy things in my case, I'm usually pretty safe with volume, despite some headphone overuse I recognize when my ears are getting tired.

So any suggestions for additional "must-have" supplements? I'm picking up ALCAR plus some better versions of Zn and Mg, but I'm open to other ideas. I have Ginkgo biloba on hand but not sure of it's efficacy.

Any suggestions of timelines for recovery? I will link the other two Doxycycline recovery cases I found on Tinnitus Talk.

@Samuel Taylor: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/posts/353447/ --- He has a story similar to mine. I think my timescale could be better since I was not on any other prescription meds. His took 3 years.

@ehrfried: https://www.tinnitustalk.com/posts/549523/ --- His posts are difficult to decipher sometimes, but he has a lot of good advice (check his other posts as well). I buy his approach that the Doxy screwed up the mitochondria in the ear for some reason and the solution is to detox them and not the body necessarily. I might pick up a couple of the supps he recommended, but CoQ10 is expensive.

Thanks in advance for any advice. I am optimistic about my recovery, but as long as this doesn't get much worse I fully believe I can deal with this long term.

 

Hi Toney,

Thank you for opening this thread!

I will follow it and hope I can help.

Note that my theories so far are also only guesses and that I would also very much like to find the "truth behind Doxycycline".

Count me in your team here .

 

How many years it took for your tinnitus to go away? I am almost 2 years in and feel hopeless at times.

 

@Toney, yay! Snap! I also developed tinnitus from taking Doxycycline! I’m a year and a half in. Tinnitus is still there, but whatever - damage is done. Can’t change it now.

Steph

 

Thanks for popping in so quickly. I purchased some CoQ10, and I'll start doubling up on that B-complex supplement. I'll try to get some better mineral caps soon. Thanks for the advice. I'm optimistic about clearing it out. It's able to go to the back of my head fairly easily if I "focus on not hearing it", but browsing this website too much doesn't help

Sorry to hear about your experience. That Sam Taylor mentioned 3 years for his recovery time, so remain optimistic, and it sounds like you have remained well and positive tooso good for you on that.

I'll report in that my ear pain is improving, and the threshold with which it starts to set in is seemingly decreasing, but not easy to control. The ear pain is primarily what prevents from "pushing the sound back", difficult to forget about it with all that pressure in your ear.

 

I'll update for 6 weeks past start date. I am definitely better able to push it to the back of my thoughts. Perhaps the volume has died down 10-20% and the tone is definitely thinner and flatter when, gauging by when I plug my ears. It's difficult to rate these things, but while I can't say anything was better than the previous day or the day before that, I can definitely say it is better than a couple weeks ago.

6 weeks is a very short timeframe, but I will say that I could MAYBE notice inflection points in my recovery when I taking Turmeric, B-Complex, and CoQ10. I started them all at different points, and the following few days felt like improvement. As was said, I think my ear cells are just unhealthy right now. That being said, some deeper reflection says that while I would only wear my headphones at max volume for 15 minutes, those OSHA hearing safety tables tell me it's probably bad enough that I did some damage, significant hearing loss or not. I had been enjoying heavy metal quite a lot recently from them and was cranking them up. It was definitely in excess of 100, or 105 dB. Really putting me in the red zone. I knew I was pushing it, but I always took them off when my ears got tired and couldn't notice any hearing loss. Nor had I gotten tinnitus beforehand... ever. I hardly went to concerts and rarely went to the louder bars. Anyways, pointless self-reflection.

I am in 2 week quarantine for travel right now. The 13-hour flight over was a constant 75dB. I had hearing protection on for most of the flight, but could definitely feel that I was challenging my still delicate ears. Thankfully, I might even think it did them some good. Hyperacusis feels negligible right now, though the headphones are still a bit much. I'm worried that my ears might have some problems if I can't have any regular droning sound exposure for the next two weeks. I think a good part of the rehab for this ototoxicity is working the nerves such that they can resume their normal function.

I will update again soon! Reading this forum is mostly bad for my tinnitus but so many interesting treatments are out there. Makes me wish I studied neurology!

 

I was taking Turmeric for a while and I think it may have decreased the volume of my tinnitus. I've also been testing Lipoflavonoid and I noticed at one point my tinnitus was nearly gone. I've since stopped both as I ran out and it seems to have come back.

We seem to have developed tinnitus around the same time frame as well.

 

Good to know! So I will give a 2.5 months update. I am starting to have periods of what can only be called silence! My ears do not feel the same as they once did, these periods of silence are accompanied by a rather full feeling in my ear, and it feels like I need to hold the tinnitus back in my head. Also the tinnitus is generally much quieter. When I can hear it in silence it is rather quiet.

I recently returned to the office. That is much much louder than working from home, but I think the constant medium noise is therapeutic and this helped jumpstart this recovery. I went to a bar last night. THAT was challenging. I had to put a bit of paper in my ears for an 80ish dB bar. My tinnitus feels slightly worse right now because of it. That might also be the hangover doing it. I figure at least my ears will tell me when a sound is too loud for them right now. I will say, being able to deal with volumes >70 dB comfortably has really been nice after a long time of sheltering.

Speaking of the hangover, inflammation HAS to aggravate tinnitus. On nights when I sleep funny or eat a lot of junk I can have major problems. That's why the Turmeric is so helpful. If I miss taking my Turmeric I definitely notice a difference. I have also been taking B-complex and Ginkgo as recommended by other people in this thread. I don't think that's been as helpful, but hey I still take them.

Another thing that I think has been helpful to me is doing the generalfuzz ACRN. Gives short term relief but I think if we're interested in rewiring the brain, we must be able to tell when our ear is HEARING the sound vs. MAKING the sound. So the relief from that kind of makes sense. I even like to put on the pure tone sound for a minute just to orient the brain.

Obviously the improvements come week by week with this. In retrospect, this problem must also be headphone related. I did listen to a lot of loud music on my headphones, even if it was for a short time it was certainly at dangerous volumes. Thankfully I'm only 24 so again I will say I'm bullish on my recovery. I am beginning to return to normalcy. One key to making tinnitus go away I find is NOT THINKING ABOUT IT. At certain volumes that's impossible, but for those of us more fortunate recovery must be an exercise in focus. Taking from what @norwaygirl did, this must be the case.

Sorry for my disorganized writing, I'm not good with the free form.

As far as next steps, if it doesn't improve more I MIGHT go for LLLT.

Oh, and let me add. I have been taking NAC as well. Seems to help resiliency.

What is the best way to get your ears to prevent against later spikes? I'm getting tired of this ear pain.

 

Alcohol can cause tinnitus to spike. My tinnitus has been decreasing in volume since I started fasting which is nice. It's much less noticeable. I wear noise cancelling headphones all day to avoid being exposed to loud sounds.

I also have this 'sensation of fullness'. My left ear doesn't feel quite right.

I'll have to go out and buy some tumeric again, It was working really well while I was on it daily.

I've set my computer to filter out all frequencies in the range of my tinnitus like the notched sound therapy. I think it works best with white noise and rain sounds. I've read that it makes it worse in some people though. I found it just kept lowering the pitch of my tinnitus until it wasn't so unbearably high.

For Linux users here's a hacked together way to remove the frequencies 14000 Hz and 15000 Hz if you have ffmpeg/ffplay installed. If you have some equalizer software installed that will probably work too.

Code:

# Get default audio output
HEADPHONES="$(pacmd list-sinks | sed -E '/\*/!d; N; s/.*name: <(.*)>$/\1/' )"

# Create a virtual audio output called processing
pacmd load-module module-null-sink sink_name=processing sink_properties=device.description=processing

# Set the default audio output to processing
pacmd set-default-sink processing

# Run processing virtual output through an audio filter and output to $HEADPHONES
PULSE_SINK="$HEADPHONES" ffplay -fflags nobuffer -f pulse -i processing.monitor -af "firequalizer=gain='if(between(f, 14000, 15000),-INF,5)'";

 

The effect of Doxycycline to the nerves is not ototoxicity. Doxycycline is not necessarily ototoxic. Furthermore, not everyone suffers from such severe side effects of Doxycycline. The ones who experienced tinnitus like symptoms probably experienced the following effect:



Detoxification in the human body is split into phase 1 (oxidation) and phase 2 (coupling). some people have a weakness in phase 2 that can lead to a slower dismantling of antibiotics. These people must avoid antibiotics in general, not only Doxycycline.

What Doxycycline probably did to your body was the following:

-Destroy microbiome in the gut

Resulting in an unbalanced microbiome, leading to:

-Flatulence
-Weight gain
-Leaky gut, leading to:
-An overloaded liver, leading to:
-Bad mood
-Less energy
-Decreased absorption of fat and sugar, leading to:
-Undernutrition of nerve cells in the body

Especially the last point (undernutrition) comes into play here. Hair cells and nerve cells in general require a lot of energy. What you experience is your hair cells "complaining”, or better having troubles because of lack of "fuel" (-> hair cells require energy to create silence in general).

If most of this applies to you, you are a great candidate for a leaky gut syndrome. The good news is that this is very easy to treat.

I would go to a decent healthcare practitioner to treat it.

He will most probably give you supplements like:

-Antioxidants
-Liver support
-Phosphatidylserine
-Amino acids
-Probiotics

All the best!

 

Wow, you've done your research! Thanks ehrfried.

I recently became lactose intolerant so Probiotics will be hard, but everything else feels taken care of besides Phosphatidylserine. I'll have to try to order that somewhere.

I'll give an update. My tinnitus is for all intents and purposes not a problem anymore. The level of noise required for me to not hear it has gone lower and lower, such that it only really becomes a problem in my room at night when there is no A/C going and the windows are closed. It appears that the tinnitus really just tries to fill the negative space, and now my brain is adapting to it. I've continued to take the supplements, but not all of them. CoQ10 was a bit of waste it seems, but I still take my Fish oil, Multivitamin, Vitamin D3 (for other reasons), and Turmeric. I take the Fish oil for supposed "neuroplasticity" enhancing effects. As stated, helping the brain rewire is the culprit.

The funny thing is that exposure to noise really really helps me. I've been to a couple of apartment parties and when I came back, my tinnitus spiked pretty bad. Usually I'm drunk enough to fall asleep OK, and then I wake up and tinnitus feels lower than it did. Recently I went to a club for a few hours, and I didn't hear tinnitus when I was going to bed at all, and the following morning it felt like the baseline had lowered as well.

I have gradually tried to build up tolerance to sound. The hyperacusis was really challenging for a while, but as I built up slowly it just got better. Now, it's 7 or so months later and it's not 100% better, but it really hardly bothers me anymore.

I like to think of my tinnitus in the % of the day that I hear it. If it's only like 1-5% of the day (bedroom and quite meeting rooms in office sometimes) it's really hardly any problem. Key is to not think about it. If you're not thinking about it you're not hearing it.

At the time, I was certainly giving my cells enough nutrition. I was working out like mad so I was eating like mad. I really blame it on the headphones. I think I was playing them too loud and too long, and the buzzing sound that the phones make when idle sank into my ears. I only played them at max volume for small spurts, but play them at max volume I did. I think the Doxycycline just made it hit the final step. VERY key info there that Doxycycline is not directly ototoxic. Perhaps it's interesting that I have had escalating indigestion the past months. I'll look into it.

I'll write another post that will give my conclusions in a more organized and complete fashion.

 

Thanks @Toney, and especially for your reports!

You may be right, but on the other hand there are many people who have taken Doxycycline and were not exposed to loud noise, so in my opinion it could well have done it on its own.

And, once you manage to treat your Doxycycline-intoxication so to say, I guess you will get rid of your tinnitus as well.

I did some more research and I have to admit that I was partly wrong: the part with the detoxification seems right, but the consequence of antibiotic intake can easily be a so-called acquired mitochondropathy. the resulting microbioma status may be on one hand due to the antibiotic, but also as a consequence of a broken citrate-cycle of the mitochondria's ATP generation process. Residual fat and sugar changes your stool and therefore also the orchestration of the microbioma species.

This is also treatable, however.

The best you can do if you want to change your situation in my opinion is to get your mitochondria status checked at a qualified lab. This costs a few hundred dollars, but then you know exactly what the issue is and a qualified doctor can help you treat it. Even if you Google for that, you can see that _acquired_ mitochondropathies are treatable.