I shot a 12-guage one time once without hearing protection and it ruined my hearing for life--I've have tinnitus, hyperacousis, and distorted hearing ever since, and I'm certain it's permanent. Guess the rest of you guys were more lucky than I?
I want to add that exposure to excessive noise can sneak up on you despite best intentions. I went to an indoor shooting range yesterday. I used both earplugs and 30 db Howard Leight electronic (large dome) muffs. Yet I have ringing and diminished hearing 24 hours later. What happened? 1) I had not realized that the plugs I used had only 2 gaskets, not 3, and were Hocks filters. One side wasn't plugged and I did not notice that until later, so I did not get full protection. They are probably only 16 db plugs in that configuration. 2) I wear glasses, so the seal on the muffs is imperfect; 3) the guy on one side was shooting a 10mm handgun, on the other a 30-30 and (ridiculous in an indoor range) a 30-06. So despite taking what I thought were appropriate precautions, my hearing was injured. I'm angry at myself for not being even more careful. Lesson: nothing less than perfectly fitting 30db foam plugs; nothing less than best-possible fitting 33 db muffs on top of that. Those electronic muffs would be fine outdoors at a range with more space between shooters, but not indoors. If, even with protection, the environment seems too loud to you, IT IS. Leave the premises.
30 hours after shooting a Remington 870 12 gauge shotgun twice with no hearing protection my hearing is back to normal. About 12 hours of the blown speaker sound and then about 18 hours of the stuffed up ear reduced hearing. I shoot right handed and it was the left ear that was the worse. The right ear only had a few hours of the stuffed up ear reduced hearing. I was out in a field, so I got off easy. Don't shoot without hearing protection if you can help it. Tie some ear plugs to your shotgun! Don't shoot in a ravine without excellent hearing protection. The sound bounces off the walls of the ravine and makes the damage worse. i.e. A huge ditch might seem like a safe place to shoot your gun; but it is harder on your ears if you go down into a big ditch and shoot your gun.
Thanks for sharing. I am 3 weeks into a similar story.I have 49 days to wait for an appointment with UK NHS. I will try and go private after reading this.
THANKS MAN! I'm experiencing the same thing and this really helps me. My ********* classmate popped a balloon in my ear (I guess my ears are sensitive) and reading this helps me know someone else understands. God bless :D
Thanks for updating this. I went to an indoor shooting range on Thursday, wore ear plugs (they no longer issued the big headphone looking ear protection). I went out of the shooting range several times because there were a couple of guys shooting really big guns and the noise from them was bugging me. I felt weird afterwards, kind of like cotton in my ears. That went away, and my hearing is normal except when I burp (causing a bit of pressure in the ear, I am assuming) I hear what sounds like a distant train whistle in my left ear only, the ear that was closest to the big guns...I know how weird is that?
It is now Monday, and it's still here. I will start dosing with Magnesium, but I wonder if it's too late for Prednisone. I kind of don't want to take a steroid anyways.
Did the ringing ever stop for you?
hey im soldier going through the same thing was shooting m-4 carbine rifle or ar-15 had foam ear protection in but my right ear started ringing which is weird cause i shoot left handed anyway i didnt know that it was that serious and i consume alcohol and fatty foods its been ringing for a 9 days i started taking vitamins and wearing a ear plug my question did i prolonged the situation with what i ate and should i stay away from those foods and some tips to help me
I have experienced something similar. Went shooting (12 gauge) and .22. The ringing and the hearing was a lot worse after shooting, but now my hearing has almost returned to normal and I hear frequencies the same now but the ringing has not stopped, it has gotten better than it was 2 days ago. It's been 4 days now. What should I do?
Wow did not see all these replies, sorry I didnt update. anyways, yes my hearing did get better, back to 100%, at least as far as I can tell, i dont notice any negative effects.
Took me over 2 weeks before the problems went away, I was given a steroid prescription, and took plenty of vitamins/supplements that are supposed to assist. If i remember right magnesium was the big one.
If anyone else has this problem, my advice would be to get a steroid prescription immediately, the sooner the better and after i believe 48 hours it doesnt have much effect. same with the magnesium and other supplements.
The histology of acoustic trauma hearing loss involves the damaged cilia cells of the inner ear swelling and becoming incompetent and eventually after 6 months dying of hypoxia. Thir rehabilitation can occur naturally and spontaneously or through assistance by drugs and hyberbaric oxygen if intervention occurs early, less than two weeks from the traumatic event.
O2 treatment....not likely. I have literally thousands of chamber runs ( commercial diver) with high PP O2 and they have done nothing to help my damaged hearing. You have fried some of your hearing, accept it and take steps not to be ,frankly, so stupid in the future.
O2 treatment....not likely. I have literally thousands of chamber runs ( commercial diver) with high PP O2 and they have done nothing to help my damaged hearing. You have fried some of your hearing, accept it and take steps not to be ,frankly, so stupid in the future.
Just shot a few rounds off some last night, and got the exact same muffled "stuffy ear" thing going plus the tinnitus ringing, but only in my left ear (odd, I shoot right handed). Shot a simple 9mm in a clearing in the deep woods at a friends property.
Last time I shot without ear-pro the muffled ear and ringing lasted about an hour or so, but now I'm on 8 hours and still no change. All I want to know is about how long did the muffled stuffy ear part last, since that bothers me the most that only one ear is fine and the other is plugged up (the feeling and sound, I mean). I honestly can care less about the tinnitus, I already intermittently experience it in either ear since I have been 3, and I'm now 25, so I'm used to it.
Has your ringing stop I've had it for 3 days straight I can hear now but the ringing doesn't stop
Any update on your situation, has it gotten any better, completely gone? Similar situation here and it has been a week.
Any update on this? I'm in your exact situation but am only at day four after my right ear hearing "trauma" caused after firing off a few rounds from a .380. I'm on a steroid from an ENT and am praying for recovery. I can't stop reading about the things I can do to help heal myself. I don't think I'll even mow the grass again with out hearing protection! I would love to hear how your recovery is 6+ months later.
im no expert either but from what ive read it sounds like the hair cells die over time. they get damaged and either die, or regenerate. i think they can just die right away, and thats when you have a big perminant hearing loss, even then i think it takes time for them to completely die.
anyway ive read a lot of different things ranging from a couple weeks to a couple months is the time frame you have to regenerate those hair cells, a lot of the time it happens on their own, but if you act quickly you have a better chance.
and i think that is for noise induced HEARING LOSS, which i dont think im experiencing, or maybe just very slightly. really it just seems to me like part of my hearing is not functioning properly. ive done any online test i could find and i can hear all through the frequency range in both ears the same. at quiet levels too. and that part of my hearing thats not functioning properly is whats making the buzzy sound.
what the marines said makes sense, because i have literally spent like 10+ hours the last 4 days researching noise induced hearing loss, and i have not found one study or anything that mentions this buzzy/ broken speaker sound after noise induced hearing loss. not sure what they mean by the hairs are laying down or if thats actually happening, but that would make sense as to why they arent functioning properly. either that or the swelling in my ear is preventing those hair cells from functioning normally, or something like that.
If you can afford the oxygen therapy and anything else, yeah, why not go for it? Anything that doesn't hurt. Better to try everything while the chances for recovery are better (i.e., earlier).
I did not know about the inner ear losing oxygen after noise-induced hearing loss; I am definitely not an expert and haven't done any (lay) research lately, but I thought those little hair cells in the cochlea are immediately broken beyond repair by excessive noise. But as I said, I'm only remembering some stuff I heard or read a long time ago.
I don't know whether you should ask the doctor to up the prednisone; since it was an ENT who prescribed it, the chances are he's up to date. The main recommendation when it happened to me many years ago was starting at 60 mg per day, but only for 3 days, I think, after which you start tapering off, and again that dose was not set in stone or proven to be the best, I don't think. Prednisone is not good for you in some ways (blood sugar, bone loss, etc. if overused) so perhaps the doc has a good reason for the dosage.
well i just talked to two ex- marines today, both of them said they experienced the same thing multiple times. said they shot for two years almost all the time without ear protection, including cannons, and their hearing is fine now. one even said he got knocked out and lost his hearing completely for two days from a cannon blast. they said the buzzing im hearing is because the hairs in my ears are laying down flat and not picking up sound in their normal way. its supposed to go away in about a week.
anyway sure makes me feel better about this. i still want to do whatever i can to help my ears recover, almost more so i do as little cumulative damage to my ears as possible.
ive done some research about the hyperbaric oxygen treatments, and i think it might be worth a shot. it makes sense to me and my dad whos a doctor too. he's used it to treat something that has a hard time healing. the general idea is that your inner ear looses oxygen in the time following noise induced hearing loss, and this increases the amount of oxygen in your ear to 600% and it stays at a somewhat high level an hour or so after the treatment. the statistics within 10 days of hearing loss were decent, of those who did the treatment something around 55-60% of people recovered or significantly improved. and for those who didnt the number was around 35% recovery or significant improvement.
your inner ear also looses blood flow after a noise induced hearing loss, and thats what the steroids, magnesium, and some other suppliments are supposed to help. so i figure i might as well do all i can its not gonna hurt.
i may very well be over reacting, but id rather do as much as i can rather than ignore it. as far me and my dad can tell i caused very slight damage to my inner ear, as opposed to people who suffer actual hearing loss. so if what is damaged in my ear isnt damaged as significantly, theres a better chance for recovery. obviously neither of us are ear specialists, but it makes sense, at the least it can keep me positive.
anyway the doctor gave me a 40mg daily prescription to prednisone. do you think he could/should up it?
I don't really know anything about the supplements you are taking or the hyperbaric oxygen treatments (thought I've heard of it). I think all of these things are speculative and unproven.
The problem is that there simply are no good, proven treatments for hearing loss; even the steroids that your doc gave you (I'm assuming high-dose prednisone? like starting with 60 mg per day?) are not very well proven, and in any case I haven't heard that those might be helpful for noise-induced hearing loss (but rather if it's from an autoimmune cause).
In cases of sudden hearing loss, ENTs will often throw everything at it (steroids, antivirals, sometimes supplements) and hope something sticks. Because there just aren't any good proven treatments. Steroids are usually the best hope, but again, I've never seen anything suggesting they are useful for NOISE-INDUCED hearing loss. Usually it's just a matter of waiting and seeing what happens over the subsequent weeks. You get it back or you don't.
I don't know of anything else I can recommend to you... just wait and keep your fingers crossed! Good luck.
one more question, are there any medications other than what im taking (vitamin a,c,e, magnesium, acetyl carnitine, alpa lipoic acid, glutathione, c0q10. and a steroid prescription from the doctor) that i could try? any change in my diet? or anything else i could do to increase the chances of recovery?
ive heard of hyperbaric oxygen therepy used for hearing loss and tinnitus. i know now might be the time to try something like this since i havent given much time to see how i will recover. but the treatment makes sense, i could see it being effective especially because im not experiencing a big hearing loss. im willing to do a lot to increase my chances..
I went to see the EMT today and on the way there i listened to the radio, at the same volume i listened to it yesteday when i could hear a lot of buzzing, but today it was almost nothing, maybe a very tiny amount if anything. when i was talking to the doctor it did it when he talked, but not too bad. but like i said i still get it when i talk. anyway, i dont seem to have any significant hearing loss, atleast nothing noticeable. i did a hearing test today online that went through a wide range of frequencies, did it with both ears open, then again plugging one at a time, i could hear all frequencies out of both ears equally as well.
the EMT did say that my problem is an inner ear problem, and is from damaging my inner ear. he said that since its improved slightly already, give it a couple weeks and see, it could be gone completely. but its never for sure. he gave me steroids, and im taking a lot of vitamins, vitamin a, c and e, and magnesium. which a lot of people say can stop and help hearing loss, as well as acetyl carnitine,alpa lipoic acitd, glutathione, and coQ10. which was said to help stop and reverse, hearing loss. (if thats possible) just thought i might as well try!
anyway i hope you are right. if i do end up with a somewhat permanent buzz in my ear, hopefully my mind just gets used to it. i was reading about recruitment, and after awhile your ears just learn to adapt to what they have and can fix the hearing loss.(though that was more talking about loosing the ability to hear certain frequencies)
anyway thanks for your help! i really appreciate it!