Ear Nose & Endocrine Disorders

Hyperacusis is a medical condition wherein the person’s tolerance for normal sound in his environment is lowered. This lowered tolerance is manifested by the person’s sensitivity to otherwise normal sounds in his surroundings. As a result, he feels as if the whole world is screaming at him. The dripping of water in the faucet, a child crooning to himself, a radio playing from a distance, car horns from the road outside – all these sounds are perceived by the person with hyperacusis as loud and blaring.

The bad thing about having hyperacusis is that the person has no way of “turning the sounds off.” Hyperacusis is a chronic disorder and tends to come and go. People who suffer from hyperacusis may also tend to suffer from tinnitus. Tinnitus is the ringing that you hear in your ears. However, hyperacusis may occur in people who have no other hearing problems.

So what can you do to if you have hyperacusis? Sad to say, but the progression of this disease is quite unpredictable. As of now, the only sure thing that researchers know is that exposure to loud noises contributes to the progression of the disease.

Pink noise and white noise are commonly used to treat patients. They are quite similar to each other although for pink noise, the sounds with lower frequencies are louder than those with higher frequencies. On the other hand white noise has the same amplitude for all frequencies. The importance of these two types of noise is that they increase the tolerance for the normal range of noise that we hear everyday.

There are some therapy regimens that patients with hyperacusis can go through. One such therapy is the use of special hearing aids for several hours a day. These special gadgets work by desensitizing the ears to sound. This treatment is called Tinnitus (Hyperacusis)Retraining Therapy or TRT. Another way to treat hyperacusis is to listen to a pink noise CD. This also serves to desensitize the ears to sound.

Though these procedures have proven to be successful in helping many people suffering from hyperacusis, they are not considered as cures. The best course to take when you suddenly find yourself suffering from “loud” noises is to visit your healthcare professional as they can better determine your specific needs.

Most people know of only one type of hearing impairment – deafness. Hearing no sound at all can be very difficult but looking at the opposite side of it, hearing too much may also prove to be as hard. Hyperacusis is defined as the intolerance to normal and everyday sounds.

To give you a concrete illustration of hyperacusis, take for example a glass being put down on top of a desk. To ordinary people, the sound produced by such an act is hardly noticeable. For someone who is suffering from hyperacusis, such sound may be described as loud, even disturbing.

Symptoms of hyperacusis include pain or pressure in the inner ear. Because of the added noise they hear, individuals with this ailment may find it difficult to adapt to the flow of everyday life and may be deemed as socially unfit.

When someone suffers from hyperacusis it would be likely that he or she would soon develop tinnitus. Tinnitus is an odd sensation in your ear that is coupled with a ringing or whistling sound. Phonophobia is also a disorder that is associated with this condition. This is characterized with the fear of exposure to sounds that may do damage to their hearing. In such situations, a person with hyperacusis may be under a lot of stress. This would be evident in how one performs in the workplace, at home and in social gatherings. Lack of sleep is also attributed with such stress.

Hyperacusis is said to be caused by a malfunction in the sound regulatory system of the brain. It can also be a result of a serious head injury, over fatigue or epilepsy. Disease such as Bell’s Palsy and Lyme disease is also related with such hearing impairment. Intake of synthetic drugs could also have some negative effects that can cause hyperacusis.

One popular treatment for hyperacusis is sound desensitization. In this procedure, a patient is exposed to pink noise (a term referred to a random noise with equal amount of energy in one octave) at a volume lower than one’s discomfort level. He would be subject to such process for about two hours everyday. Results will not be achieved in a snap of a finger, but with enough support from family and friends, one should be in the path of full recovery in about six months.

Hyperacusis makes life in a noisy and fast paced world really difficult to those who have it. Traveling, communicating and working can all become a challenge with so much noise around them. For example, traveling to and from work on a train will seem impossible without some sort of ear protection such as ear muffs. Even so these are not enough to block out certain frequencies.

So imagine your life not being able to go watch a movie at a cinema, or not being able to travel by planes and not even being able to attend big social events all because it’s ‘too’ noisy. How would your life be? Many people have to go through everyday life with this because of their condition.

Those with hyperacusis cannot simply walk away from noisy places because the volume of the entire environment is perceived as heightened and elevated from what any normal person would hear. This is where it starts to get painful.

Many people regard recruitment to be similar to hyperacusis, but the truth couldn’t be any farther. Recruitment is an abnormal growth of the awareness of volume surrounding a person thus making noisy environments seem uncomfortable. Also with recruitment comes a loss of hearing. Hyperacusis however, is a whole different story. Unlike recruitment where noisy surroundings and environments are perceived as uncomfortable, hyperacusis makes all sounds too loud.

Most patients of hyperacusis suffer from inner ear aches, ear pressure and bad headaches when their surroundings become too noisy to handle. This extra sensitive hearing condition causes many problems in the lives of people who unfortunately end up with it. Some of these are problems in relationships, family, social life and professional lives.

So as a patient of hyperacusis, life is not easy to cope with as things can get really noisy and painful. Also worth mentioning is that currently doctors have a very limited knowledge and understanding of this condition. This alone can make hyperacusis patients feel alone when in their struggle with this rare condition.

Hyperacusis is a particular condition, in which the tolerance for various audible frequencies is collapsed. Hyperacusis is not a congenital condition; it develops in the later stages of life. Hyperacusis has to be clearly distinguished from other hearing impairments, to practice adequate treatment strategies. Patients do not have any considerable hearing loss, but only uncomfortable to common sounds. The normal bearable sound range is 100 decibels and the characteristic problem of hyperacusis is the false perception of common sounds, even in lower decibels as loud sounds and inability to adjust the sensitivity according to loudness. The disease, hyperacusis has significant relevance in modern life, as the day to day environment is flooded with a variety of large and moderate sounds.

The risks associated with it mainly include the difficulty of the patient to pursue his life. They feel the normal sounds such as speaking, walking and even combing, as very loud disturbing voices, depending on the seriousness of disorder. This will lead to them to many psychological disorders such as phonophobia, the fear of sound, anxiety, depression, and loss of sleep. The chance for the occurrence for other complicated disorders, as a result of the manifestation of underlying cause of hyperacusis, is also a major risk factor. The complications of the diseases such as Lyme disease, Temporomandibular Joint Syndrome, Bell’s palsy, Tay-Sach’s disease, and post trauma effects of head injury can affect the patient since these diseases can be actual reasons for sudden outbreak of hyperacusis. The collapsed sound conditions and associated manifestations will ultimately lead the patient to total deprivation from social living.

The incompatibility of the patient with normal life depends on the level of hyperacusis and its impact on life. Hyperacusis is generally categorized into five levels, according to the sound tolerance level. The category zero patients do not experience any difficulty in normal living, even though they experience sounds above 85 decibels as very loud. The category one patient may have mild impact since they require ear protectors to bear sounds in the range of 80 to 85 decibels. Category 2 patients are moderately affected by hyperacusis as 65+ decibels sounds such as of normal conversation, seems to them very disturbing. They consider mainstream living as a challenge and prefer isolation. The category three patient suffers even from whispering sound in range of 50+ decibels. The patients have the chances to develop associated diseases such as anxiety, depression, phonophobia, and insomnia. Hyperacusis patients in category four are very critical. These patients cannot proceed a main stream living and resorts to complete isolation. The condition becomes impossible as they cannot even tolerate own voice. They are also at the risk of all associated diseases.

The improvements in the medicine have formulated efficient diagnostic tools, and effective medication to cure hyperacusis. The combined use of psychotherapy and medicine will definitely help the patient to overcome the condition.