Am I hearing things (you don't) ????

@firstnot

Yes, I share your experience.

It’s called "hyperacusis." A collapsed tolerance of sound, where sounds not normally perceived as "loud" by other people are perceived as loud by you. And usually this tends to occur in certain frequency ranges, typically upper frequencies, in just the range of clanging dishes as you describe. (Clanging dishes are a classic problem area for people with hyperacusis).

That is almost certainly the condition you are describing. Though you would be best advised to go to an ENT to be checked out to make sure it’s not being caused by something that needs to be taken care of.

But if your experience is like many with this rare condition, you will be told you have hyperacusis by the ENT. Unfortunately that’s often where ENT’s stop, saying "sorry you have it, you are on your own."

Fortunately there are people who know more about it. A good audiologists can tell you more and suggest strategies, though I’d say it’s even better to seek out audiologists trained specifically in treating tinnitus and hyperacusis.

The reason I am familiar with all this is that I have had loud tinnitus for decades, with bouts of hyperacusis. Hyperacusis first hit me around 2001 when I was doing sound effects for a fantasy TV show, creating the sound of a giant lizard hissing. I started to notice the hissing sounds I was working with were really irritating my ears. I didn’t think much of it until I got home and then it seemed everything, especially in the upper frequencies, seemed loud and irritating. Literally turning the pages of a book, the sound of my fingers rubbing the paper, "stuck out" to my ears in an annoying way. Same with dishes, cutlery, even the sibilance in people’s voices. Even watching TV was hard.

Suffice to say...it was pretty depressing. And the natural thing to do was research, which led to on-line tinnitus/hyperacusis groups, where I read about the problems and potential therapies.

Even back then there was a potential therapy for both tinnitus and hyperacusis. For tinnitus it was called "Tinnitus Retraining Therapy" or "TRT." It was based on the theory that ringing came from the brain’s reaction to ringing caused by hearing damage (even a tiny bit of damage) and that the noise was linked to the brain’s more primitive "fight or flight" and emotional responses, which are heightened and disturbed by the noise. Which is why tinnitus ringing is actually seen as a threat to the mind, even though the same volume of noise in the environment is not seen as a threat.

So the brain has to be "re-programmed" to not see tinnitus as a threat.
The therapy involves both cognitive therapy (counseling sessions to help ways of not reacting to tinnitus) and sound therapy. In the sound therapy, often little noise generators, like hearing aids, pump very quiet white noise in to the ear just below the level of the person’s tinnitus tone. What this does is give the brain a constant environmental stimulus right near the tone of the tinnitus (though not totally masking the tinnitus).

Over time, due to the plasticity of our brain, it "re-wires" to not see the tone as a threat including your tinnitus. After the therapy, the tinnitus is not "cured" in the sense the ringing has been removed. But rather you are habituated and no longer notice it (which, in practice, amounts to the ringing not really being there - you don’t perceive it when you don’t notice it).

A similar therapy is used for hyperacusis.

In that case, again it’s a combination of counseling and sound therapy.
In hyperacusis, they theory says, your hearing FEELS damaged, but it is not. This is shown by the fact that when you test most people with hyperacusis their hearing is fine...if not even better than most people’s hearing.

Rather, in hyperacusis, the theory goes that the brain has been stimulated at some point - often by exposure to noise (short and loud, or longer exposure to loud noise) to "turn up the volume." Usually this happens around the area of hearing decline or damage in a person. So if you have an audiology test and it shows a dip in your hearing, usually from noise exposure, you are most likely to be sensitive to sounds in that frequency range. The brain has "turned up" it’s volume to try to hear in that range, making the affected frequencies sound extra loud, uncomfortable, even distorted or painful. And since our hearing is usually damaged a bit in the upper frequencies, that’s usually the sensitivity in the hyperacusis sufferer.

In the therapy for hyperacusis, you do Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (counseling) to help understand your hearing is not in fact being damaged by sound, and to lower reaction to it.  And you can additionally do sound therapy with the noise generators.  They pump a quiet, pleasing white noise (actually personalized to the comfort of the individual's hyperacusis), which creates a constant stimulus.  The noise is increased in volume over time, allowing the person to habituate and "re-wire" the unconscious part of the brain responsible for seeing noise as a threat.

I never did the TRT because I just habituated to my Tinnitus myself over time. It can sound really loud if I give it my attention, but I’ve been able to sleep fine over the years. Also, my hearing has always tested as quite good.

I also didn’t choose to do the therapy for hyperacusis because for one thing it seemed more of an investment in time or money than I wanted to make (it can take up to 2 years of therapy). And fortunately I habituated over time and the hyperacusis essentially went away for most of the last 17 years, only making an occasional appearance but not lasting very long.

However, recently due to a very heavy, unforseen exposure to loud noise, my hyperacusis showed up again, as bad as when I first got it.

This time I decided to not wait. I’ve found a local audiologists who specializes in the hyperacusis/tinnitus therapy and have just begun the therapy (wearing the noise generators as I type this).
The audiologist certainly seems confident we’ll get good results, and in fact after only about a week in my hearing already seems to feel a bit better. So I’m feeling optimistic. (Which is also buoyed by the fact hyperacusis went away the first time).

So there you go: what I can tell you from my own experience.

Of course you shouldn’t let anyone diagnose you over the internet and as I say, you should see at least an audiologist with your problem, if not an ENT first. And also, hyperacusis varies - you can get it and it just goes away after a week, or month or two. Or it can stick around a long time (without treatment). No way to know at this point whether yours (if you have it) will just pass or not I guess.

If I could leave you with any takeaway it would be this:

IF you have hyperacusis....

Be careful about doing too much research, of the type that sucks you in to the various discussion boards devoted to tinnitus and hyperacusis. The reasons are various. For one thing, tinnitus and hyperacusis are very much an "attention" phenomenon. The more attention you give it, the more you will be aware of and suffer from it. The other is that discussion boards tend to collect people who trade grievances with one another. In other words, they tend to self-select for those who still have the condition and are struggling with it; you don’t see those who have habituated or put it behind them, because they tend to be just getting on with life, not inhabiting those discussion boards. So you can get a very depressing, sometimes "hopeless" sensation reading people just complaining about their hearing condition.

Finally, know that it is common for hyperacusis to get better over time. And if it doesn’t, there are therapies available that supposedly work. (The audiologist I’m working with has been treating people for many years, with apparently a very high success rate).

Sorry for the long post, but I thought you could possibly use it at this point.

Hang in there!

Interesting, andolink.

My tinnitus can be astonishingly loud.  Sometimes if I'm in silence, like lying in bed, it can give me the impression I'm at a Van Halen concert where feedback is just being pumped out at "11."

Which makes it all the more remarkable to me that I can actually ignore it and sleep and do other things.  And when I'm not paying attention to it...it isn't there.  For instance, even if I walk in to a silent room I won't hear it as I'm not trying to hear it.   It really does show how much of an "attention" issue tinnitus is in terms of it's effects on many people. 

Over the decades I've had tinnitus (since playing in a loud band in the late 80's) it has rarely, in of itself, impacted my listening to music or high end audio.  Usually I just can't hear it when I'm listening to music.  But sometimes it gets bad, what is called "reactive" tinnitus in which it reacts to loud sounds and gets subjectively louder.  During those periods it can actually be audible riding "over" the music almost no matter how loud I play it.  That's a real bummer when it happens, but fortunately also very rare.  I just take it easy when it happens and it's gone in a few hours or the next day.

The noise generators I'm using right now aren't strictly to treat the tinnitus (that's a slightly different protocol, though using the noise therapy).  Nonetheless, it still seems to have some effect on lowering my tinnitus.  When I take the generators off to sleep everything sounds so quiet, including my Tinnitus, that for short periods it's almost like I don't have it at all.  

 Geeze..who is making posts that have to be removed, in a thread on this subject???

Oh, I see.

Yes it’s understandable to not want to feel one is exposing too much.

It does feel a bit odd to talk about "hearing health" issues on an audiophile board. Some people could possibly be d*cks and try to put a negative spin on that.

But these issues ARE a concern for people, and one would think especially audiophiles, and since the issues naturally crop up now and again, I think it’s helpful to share what information we can.

In my case, if there is a silver lining to having had Tinnitus since the late 80’s, it’s that it got me protecting my ears early, and hence my audiogram is actually very good and hearing tone tests are excellent for my age - it’s more like the hearing of someone 12 years younger (I’m 54).

My audiologist was going through very minute adjustments of the white noise for my treatment, through the earbuds. When he’d adjust I’d tell him "you just slightly increased the sound around 4K."

He expressed amazement as he said he was adjusting by 1 or 2 dB increments, and no one had ever remarked on hearing the difference.
Fortunately I have good hearing and I do this for my living. I'm increasing various parts of the frequency range in a wide variety of sounds, by 1 to 3 dB all the time.

Now, I just want my hearing to get LESS sensitive :)

But as for hearing loss, as people have said, a large proportion of audiophiles are over 50 and definitely would have lost high frequency hearing, especially if you are more towards 60 and beyond. (My wife is 55 and did not live a life exposed to tons of loud sound, yet her hearing caps off somewhere around 10Kz or below). So many audiophiles can only brag so far about their hearing. But given much of what our brain cares about is actually below the frequency of age-related hearing loss, we can all still enjoy music and evaluate most aspects of high end gear.

Trust geoffkait to show up and troll even a thread devoted to hearing health.

D'ya ever think of taking a break?  Maybe try buying a puppy?

geoffkait,

Yes I'm rather a bit sensitive about this issue.  These are quite serious for some people (including me right now).  Your remark, clearly one of your usual digs at people's hearing perception of the type you always throw up in the controversial tweaks threads, is the type of thing that makes people here feel less comfortable about discussing hearing issues that can affect us audiophiles.

It's just a d*ck move on your part to import that crap in to a thread like this. 

If you want to add some of your authoritative content "about hearing" that you think *might actually help someone* why don't you go ahead.  Just...try!...not to be a d*ck about it by moving things to your usual hobby horse of taking the p*ss out of everyone.  

I wonder where firstnot disappeared to? 

I just find it strange that someone starts a thread asking for people’s experience with a concerning health problem he is having, he receives detailed and hopefully helpful replies....which includes people who have the same issue....and he doesn’t even show up again in the thread to acknowledge any of this.   Almost as if it wasn’t important in the first place.

I don’t get it.

Ah well, perhaps this thread has been of some interest or help to someone else.

@ron17

I’ve read a little about Desyncra before. Though it hasn’t had nearly the amount of discussion (that I’ve seen) as TRT-like treatments.

It seems based on a similar idea, though I’ve seen a bit of skepticism cast it’s way by some TRT experts. (But then, there are often disagreements in these fields).

The main difference may be put down to the type of effort each demands. If I understand Desyncra, it would involve a more "dedicated" section of time to listen to the tailored noise. 4 to 6 hours. And the sound generators (look like tiny hearing aids) are physically attached to a device that looks like a smart phone.

In TRT, you just wear the little sound generators (essentially the same as you’d see in the Desyncra videos), which have been programmed with the tailored white noise. They are wireless and you just wear them the full day (or you can use them less...depends on comfort and advice in the personal treatment).

My main concern was my current hyperacusis, so I’m being treated for that first. I can tell you about my experience thus far if it helps.

First, my hyperacusis got, at points about a month ago, REALLY bad.
In fact, the day before my appointment to begin treatment, I woke up with my hearing completely screwed up: one ear sounding "dull" and the other like someone had eq’d all the upper frequencies way up, and painfully so. Though in the "dull" ear even just running water sounded like shrill bursts of white noise. It was brutal! I’ve never had it quite that bad.

Fortunately it somewhat resolved during the day. But the thing that p#sses me off when the hyperacusis is bad is not just that sound (especially upper frequency) "hurts," but the sound, particularly in my left ear, actually sounds wrong - like a raw nerve where everything sounds brighter in that ear. That’s when I know I’m having a bought of hyperacusis (though, as I’ve said, it’s been quite rare since my first onset in 20010.

So when, after a recent really loud noise exposure, my left ear went in to that "super bright, harsh sound" mode, I knew the hyperacusis had been triggered.

So, first day of the treatment, mid day, I was fitted with the little noise generators. For treating hyperacusis, they discourage as much as possible using ear plugs, because that tends to make the brain "crank up" the volume even more to hear, and only exacerbates the noise sensitivity when you take out your earplugs. (Anyone can experience this if they just wear earplugs for a while - things will sound a bit brighter and louder for a bit, after taking them out). So the portion that goes in your ear is not meant to occlude (block) the ear like an earplug. It’s perforated with large open areas to keep direct sound going in to the ear, while allowing the tailored white noise to be pumped in.

The audiologist, using a computer program, dialed in the right tone and loudness level for my comfort, and then the earbuds were programmed for me. They have volume controls if you want to turn it up, or down due to discomfort. The combination of the choice of molded frequency...something like a very dull, steady tone almost like a steady cold wind...combined with the open nature of the earbuds, means that external sound doesn’t sound at all damped. Speech etc are all clear (I have the musician’s earplugs that are are supposed to produce flat noise reduction, and even those aren’t nearly as "invisible" sonically as these noise generators in the ears).

One of the ways the noise helps is it provides something of a base-line buffer for external sounds. So a sudden sound, like a dish suddenly put down beside you, is not as dynamic and shocking to the ear. So right off the bat, my hearing felt more calmed during the first day I wore them.

I did worry that pumping continuous noise in to my ears could exacerbate my tinnitus, which unfortunately can be "reactive tinnitus" (reacts, gets louder, with noise). I’m happy to say that hasn’t been the case. Even after the first day, in fact when I took the noise generators out, my tinnitus ringing actually seemed to be more quiet!

Part of the therapy is to also use a white noise generator they give you, to put at your bedside, set to a "calming" volume. Personally, I’m a very light sleeper and have always slept in silence, so getting used to ANY new noise was a bit of a bummer. But it seems I’ve gotten used to it and sleep pretty well. The idea is to keep the subconscious part of the auditory system constantly stimulated, even when sleeping, to keep that "re-wiring" going on.

It is daunting that one is supposed to be prepared for up to two years of treatment! However, apparently many people report substantial improvement within a few months, so I’m hoping that’s the case.

I can report that, after almost two weeks in to the treatment, my ears do indeed already feel better. It’s incremental, but distinct. So for instance, when I take out the noise generators my hearing no longer sounds "wrong." That wonky "brightness eq" in my left ear seems to be gone and sound seems much more even, smooth and normal as it was before my hyperacusis started. That doesn’t mean I’m out of the woods yet. Sounds in the certain upper frequency range of my hyperacusis still stick out and annoy me. So for instance, if I try to listen to some funky or latin music with a horn section, the horns still annoy my ears. But they don’t sound "off" as in extra brightened, as they did a few weeks ago. So that’s a very good thing!

I’m feeling optimistic. Will report back in this thread if I make good progress in a few months.

n80, (and others) thanks for your contribution!

As a Natural Born Skeptic, I've been wary of many of the claims for Tinnitus treatment (including ginkgo biloba and all sorts of other claims).

TRT doesn't have nearly the level of study and documentation I'd like to see for a treatment, but of all the available therapies, it at least has some in it's favour.  And there does seem at least an inherent plausibility to it, even from the experience of what it's like to have tinnitus.  The idea of habitation via tuning out the attention to it.

Even a few nights ago my tinnitus was, I noticed when going to sleep, screamingly loud.  Yet, as my mind drifted on to some other thoughts after a while I thought about my tinnitus again and...it was gone.  It had just completely receded from perception once my mind was on something else.  Even momentarily concentrating on it left it almost silent.  But as I thought about the tinnitus, listened for it, it slowly drifted back again until it was loud.  Then....drifted on to other thoughts and to sleep.   It's really amazing how much of an "attention-based" phenomenon it is.  And it also explains the variety of experience people can have with Tinnitus in terms of how much it affects their life or mood.  Some can have relatively minor T and be driven nuts, other quite loud T and just shrug their shoulders and go on with life.

I habituated quite well to pretty loud Tinnitus myself, though go through bouts of mild alarm when it seems triggered or louder.

I never used any masking sounds, just habituated and slept through it.