Treatment for Hyperacusis

The following is for general informational purposes only. Please consult your hearing care provider with specific questions about your auditory health and healthcare.

Currently, there is no standard medical treatment.

Hyperacusis often improves on its own, with time and quiet, over many months or years—but improvement is deceptive and people can easily suffer a setback, with their progress wiped out by just one further noise insult. Avoiding setbacks is important for improvement. 

Some mild loudness hyperacusis patients improve from sound therapy, which uses very soft broadband sound to build tolerance. 

Many people with pain hyperacusis, on the other hand, have found that this approach often worsens their pain hyperacusis because they need to manage their sound exposure and protect their ears against risky or surprise sounds. (See treatment insights from audiologist Shelley Witt, M.A., CCC-A, of the University of Iowa.)

Few medical professionals are deeply familiar with hyperacusis and may give advice or prescribe tests that ultimately do more harm than good. Patients are often told that ordinary sounds cannot hurt them, for example, but learn through unfortunate experience that the opposite is true for them. 

There is also a potential, reported by a number of individuals with pain hyperacusis, that tests like the “loudness discomfort level” (LDL) test, which is sometimes given to measure tolerance, can worsen hyperacusis symptoms. There is similar concern about other noisy tests, like MRIs. It is important to discuss the need for any such tests with your healthcare providers and how to best mitigate harm if you experience any symptoms of hyperacusis.

Hearing protection—the proper use of earplugs and earmuffs whenever people are at risk of a surprise noise or are in a noise environment above their tolerance—is essential not just to manage the discomfort and pain of hyperacusis, but to prevent worsening. Quiet promotes healing.

 

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