You know the drill if you live with hyperacusis. Bad news is the norm. We’re often told we’re exaggerating by friends or family and that we need to “tough it out.” Even the medical community can’t seem to agree on what hyperacusis is (it gets confused with misophonia), or how common it is, and routinely brush us off.
The good news is that a new study, co-authored by Hyperacusis Central’s scientific advisor, Dr. Kelly Jahn, is trying to fix these problems. The researchers are introducing a brand new framework called “Sound Hypersensitivity Phenotypes.” By establishing “Sound Hypersensitivity Disorder” as a distinct medical syndrome, they’re drawing a hard line between mild sound annoyance and the kind of life-altering pain we deal with every day.
We’re grateful for all the work Kelly and the researchers are doing! You can read the full study by clicking HERE.
REFERENCES
Lopez-Escamez, J. A., De Ridder, D., Jahn, K. N., Langguth, B., Sedley, W., Song, J.-J., & Vanneste, S. (2026). Sound hypersensitivity phenotypes and sound hypersensitivity disorder. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 188, Article 106796. doi.org.
Dr. Kelly Jaun and all the other researchers, thank you for everything you are trying to do to help all of us who are suffering with Hyperacusis and Noxacusis. About the only thing keeping us going is the hope of there soon being treatment that can give us our lives back.
Everything has been taken away from me. My children, my job, you name it. I can’t even have air conditioning because it causes pain. I can’t even open and close my fridge door because it causes pain. My social life, being able to be a mother, everything has been taken away from me.
There is no life in being bedridden and homebound.
Myself and lots of others can say we are no longer living life, we are just trying to survive it.
I would to add another thing to my previous comment.
Anyone reading this who doesn’t have Hyperacusis and/or Noxacusis I want you to imagine how horrible it must be to not even be able to cry!
When you are completely depleted and so severely depressed from these conditions taking every single bit of your life away, all you want to do is fall on the floor and just sob as loud as you can. It takes every single bit of me to hold it all inside because even burying my face deep into a pillow doesn’t mask the sounds of my sobbing.
I don’t think it gets any more sinister than that.
I hope and pray with everything I have left in me that there is soon an effective treatment that will give myself and everyone else who is suffering their lives back and that until that time gets here, no one else takes their own life.
Trust me, I know how hard hanging on is.