hearing loss after shooting range, is it permanent?

[granderson]

So i went to a shooting range yesterday, and stupidly didnt wear hearing protection.  shortly after it was pretty hard to hear quiet noises, i had it in both ears, but more in my right, after about an hour, my hearing got a bit better, my hearing was back to normal in my left ear but still not back completely in my right.  it sounds like my ear is stuffed up, if that makes sense.  like i can hear things, even quiet things pretty well, it just seem like the pitch is off slightly on some noises. that and i have a ringing noise in my right ear.  

its now been about 20 hours, and my hearing seems slightly better than last night. but very slightly if anything. and something strange is if i plug both of my ears for maybe 10 seconds or so, then unplug my ears, it seems like i can hear quite a bit better, like pretty much normal hearing in my right ear, left ear is fine. ive heard from friends who experienced the same thing that it can last a couple days before it returns to normal. i just want to make sure i shouldnt be worried about more permanent hearing loss, or if i should go see a doctor.  i dont feel any pain or anything.

any advice is greatly appreciated!

[granderson]

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..

[Nancy T]

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.

[granderson]

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?

[granderson]

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.  

[Nancy T]

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.

[granderson]

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.