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Extra sensitive hearing


Sound Sensitivity Causes and Treatment

Written by Michelle Konstantinovsky

  • What Is Hyperacusis?
  • Symptoms of Hyperacusis
  • Hyperacusis Causes and Risk Factors
  • Hyperacusis Diagnosis
  • Hyperacusis Treatment and Home Remedies

What Is Hyperacusis?

Hyperacusis is a hearing disorder that makes it hard to deal with everyday sounds. You might also hear it called sound or noise sensitivity. If you have it, certain sounds may seem unbearably loud even though people around you don't seem to notice them.

Hyperacusis is rare. It affects 1 in 50,000 people. Most people who have it also have another condition called tinnitus, which is a buzzing or ringing in your ear.

Hyperacusis is a hearing disorder. But a lot of people who have it also have normal hearing.

Symptoms of Hyperacusis

The symptoms of hyperacusis can affect your everyday life and include:

  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Ear pain
  • Relationship problems
  • Trouble connecting with others (social isolation and avoidance)

Some sounds that might seem louder than they should include:

  • A running faucet
  • A kitchen appliance, like a refrigerator or dishwasher
  • A car engine
  • A loud conversation

Some people are only mildly bothered by these sounds. Others have severe symptoms such as a loss of balance or seizures.

Hyperacusis Causes and Risk Factors

Your ears detect sounds as vibrations. If you have hyperacusis, your brain confuses or exaggerates certain vibrations. So even if you get the same signals as someone else, your brain reacts differently to them. That's what causes the discomfort.

People aren't typically born with hyperacusis. It usually results from certain diseases or health issues. The most common ones are:

  • An injury to your head (for instance, one caused by an airbag)
  • Damage to one or both ears because of medications or toxins
  • A viral infection that affects your inner ear or facial nerve (Bell's palsy)
  • Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorder
  • Lyme disease
  • Tay-Sachs disease
  • Migraine headaches
  • Using Valium regularly
  • Certain kinds of epilepsy
  • Chronic fatigue syndrome
  • Meniere's disease
  • Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • Depression
  • Autism
  • Surgery on your jaw or face
  • Williams syndrome

Being around a loud noise also can cause hyperacusis. Something like a single loud gunshot can trigger the condition. But it also can come from being near loud noises over a long period.

Hyperacusis Diagnosis

If you think you have hyperacusis, you'll see an ear, nose, and throat doctor (ENT, or otolaryngologist). They'll ask about your medical history, look closely at your ears, and give you a hearing test to confirm it.

Hyperacusis Treatment and Home Remedies

Treatment will depend on what caused it. In some cases, like with injuries to your brain or ear, the sound sensitivity might get better on its own.

If it doesn't, the doctor might suggest something called sound desensitization. You'll work with a specialist who’ll help you learn to deal with sound. You'll listen to very quiet noises for a certain period every day and build up gradually to louder sounds.

Most of the time, you’ll wear a device on your affected ear or on both ears. It puts out a sound like static, so it shouldn't bother you or cause pain. It can take 6 months to a year or more to get the full benefit of the therapy.

There hasn't been enough research done on other hyperacusis treatments to know if they're helpful. These include acupuncture and relaxation exercises. Another option, auditory integration therapy (AIT), is often used in autism treatment. It involves listening to music at different volumes for a period of time every day.

Your doctor also may give you medicine to help you manage the stress the condition can cause.

If you have hyperacusis, you might be tempted to use earplugs to muffle sound or stay away from social situations where there might be sounds that bother you. While these can give you short-term relief, they can, over the long term, make your symptoms worse. That's because when you eventually remove your earplugs or go into a social setting, the sounds can seem even louder.

Sound Sensitivity Causes and Treatment

Written by Michelle Konstantinovsky

  • What Is Hyperacusis?
  • Symptoms of Hyperacusis
  • Hyperacusis Causes and Risk Factors
  • Hyperacusis Diagnosis
  • Hyperacusis Treatment and Home Remedies

What Is Hyperacusis?

Hyperacusis is a hearing disorder that makes it hard to deal with everyday sounds. You might also hear it called sound or noise sensitivity. If you have it, certain sounds may seem unbearably loud even though people around you don't seem to notice them.

Hyperacusis is rare. It affects 1 in 50,000 people. Most people who have it also have another condition called tinnitus, which is a buzzing or ringing in your ear.

Hyperacusis is a hearing disorder. But a lot of people who have it also have normal hearing.

Symptoms of Hyperacusis

The symptoms of hyperacusis can affect your everyday life and include:

  • Depression
  • Anxiety
  • Ear pain
  • Relationship problems
  • Trouble connecting with others (social isolation and avoidance)

Some sounds that might seem louder than they should include:

  • A running faucet
  • A kitchen appliance, like a refrigerator or dishwasher
  • A car engine
  • A loud conversation

Some people are only mildly bothered by these sounds. Others have severe symptoms such as a loss of balance or seizures.

Hyperacusis Causes and Risk Factors

Your ears detect sounds as vibrations. If you have hyperacusis, your brain confuses or exaggerates certain vibrations. So even if you get the same signals as someone else, your brain reacts differently to them. That's what causes the discomfort.

People aren't typically born with hyperacusis. It usually results from certain diseases or health issues. The most common ones are:

  • An injury to your head (for instance, one caused by an airbag)
  • Damage to one or both ears because of medications or toxins
  • A viral infection that affects your inner ear or facial nerve (Bell's palsy)
  • Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorder
  • Lyme disease
  • Tay-Sachs disease
  • Migraine headaches
  • Using Valium regularly
  • Certain kinds of epilepsy
  • Chronic fatigue syndrome
  • Meniere's disease
  • Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • Depression
  • Autism
  • Surgery on your jaw or face
  • Williams syndrome

Being around a loud noise also can cause hyperacusis. Something like a single loud gunshot can trigger the condition. But it also can come from being near loud noises over a long period.

Hyperacusis Diagnosis

If you think you have hyperacusis, you'll see an ear, nose, and throat doctor (ENT, or otolaryngologist). They'll ask about your medical history, look closely at your ears, and give you a hearing test to confirm it.

Hyperacusis Treatment and Home Remedies

Treatment will depend on what caused it. In some cases, like with injuries to your brain or ear, the sound sensitivity might get better on its own.

If it doesn't, the doctor might suggest something called sound desensitization. You'll work with a specialist who’ll help you learn to deal with sound. You'll listen to very quiet noises for a certain period every day and build up gradually to louder sounds.

Most of the time, you’ll wear a device on your affected ear or on both ears. It puts out a sound like static, so it shouldn't bother you or cause pain. It can take 6 months to a year or more to get the full benefit of the therapy.

There hasn't been enough research done on other hyperacusis treatments to know if they're helpful. These include acupuncture and relaxation exercises. Another option, auditory integration therapy (AIT), is often used in autism treatment. It involves listening to music at different volumes for a period of time every day.

Your doctor also may give you medicine to help you manage the stress the condition can cause.

If you have hyperacusis, you might be tempted to use earplugs to muffle sound or stay away from social situations where there might be sounds that bother you. While these can give you short-term relief, they can, over the long term, make your symptoms worse. That's because when you eventually remove your earplugs or go into a social setting, the sounds can seem even louder.

What is recruitment and how to deal with it in case of hearing loss. What is hyperacusis? cause serious discomfort.

How is this possible? As paradoxical as this situation may seem, it is not unique.

Audiologists have come up with a special term for it - "recruitment" or the phenomenon of increased volume increase

Recruitment: the best is the enemy of the good

The hair cells lining the ear canal are extremely sensitive and easily damaged. With age-related hearing loss or other types of sensorineural hearing loss, their ability to respond to sound waves is reduced, which is the reason for the development of auditory disorders. However, this process does not happen overnight: some of the hair cells retain their function and continue to convert sound waves into electrical impulses. The problem starts when the sound gets too loud: in this case, intact cells try to compensate for the absence of their failed "colleagues" and react to the stimulus with a disproportionate intensity. The body recruits them, as it were - hence the name of the phenomenon.

Inadequate response to the sound stimulus of "recruited" hair cells can be unpleasantly surprising with its harshness and cause noticeable discomfort

A typical picture: a person with a recruitment phenomenon does not react in any way to the remarks of his interlocutor, who unsuccessfully tries to speak at a normal volume level. But as soon as the volume of speech rises, it begins to seem to the hearing-impaired person that they are shouting at him. Thus, when recruiting, the line between “I can’t hear anything” and “Stop screaming” is very thin.

What is hyperacusis

Hyperacusis (increased auditory sensitivity) is a pathologically increased perception of ordinary sounds. This is a phenomenon similar to recruitment, but unlike the latter, it is not associated with sensorineural hearing loss, but has slightly different causes. So, increased auditory sensitivity is often found in children with autism. Hyperacusis also occurs in adults.

The peculiarity of hyperacusis is that, despite the increased perception of ordinary sounds, the hearing acuity of a person as a whole, as a rule, remains normal.

Treatment of hearing loss aggravated by recruitment

Eliminating the discomfort caused by rectum is a completely solvable task, but only an experienced and qualified audiologist is able to accurately determine the cause of sound hypersensitivity. If you suffer from recruitment hearing loss, a properly fitted and fitted pair of hearing aids will compress sound in a given frequency range where the greatest problems occur.

Super-budget hearing aids and conventional amplifiers available at AliExpress are practically useless for recruitment, because their functionality does not allow to compress the sound in the required frequency spectrum

It should be borne in mind that recruitment may not appear immediately: you may notice an increase in hearing sensitivity years after the start of wearing a hearing aid. In this case, you must immediately inform the audiologist about this, who will select a new hearing aid or adjust the settings of an existing sound amplifying device. In some cases, the problem with recruitment can be solved by a specialized set of therapeutic measures, which is used for tinnitus (ringing in the ears).

Author of the article

Tatyana Legostaeva

Audiologist-otorhinolaryngologist, manager of the hearing center

Work experience: since 1996

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