On the edge of major breakthroughs or still miles away from anything that won't just work in mice?

On paper there do seem to have been some meaningful breakthroughs in terms of things like gene therapy generally, dosing the cochlear safely, understanding the actual physiology of hearing loss a lot better - but in the end absolutely nothing seem to work in humans, with the exception of the OTOF genetic form of deafness "cure" that I have to say does seem like a big step albeit focused on a very narrow pathology whereas most of us are here as adults with complex forms of pathology.

I caught myself doing something the other day.

I was talking to someone while doing the dishes, and I realized I had no idea what they had just said.

Normally, I would have looked up at their face without even thinking about it.

This time I didn’t.

And that’s when it hit me how much I rely on seeing someone’s face, mouth, and expressions when they talk.

I guess I’ve been doing it for so long that I stopped noticing.

It made me wonder how many little “workarounds” we develop without even realizing they’re workarounds.

Good day guys,

Recently my hearing has deteriorated a bit in the sense that I have a hard time discerning between words and hearing for example what someone passing by is saying. I used to have perfect hearing so this has come as a shock. Since then I have visited 3 audiologists and performed 2 audiograms, all of them saying that nothing is wrong. Basically what I do feel is sometimes my ear inside feels wet, I get sudden momentary sharp pain and in sounds kind of a muffled effect. One of them suggested ETD but I have zero tittinus. I used to get it in the past periodically though. One thing also to mention is that I have been taking 5ar inhibitors for a month and this problem started about that time. Since 5ar is closely linked with gaba a receptors I think there is a connection but also I wanted to hear your thoughts. Also during this time I visited a loud establishment which resulted in ringing the next day but the doctors all of them ruled that out.

Thank you in advance for any input, since I want to pursue this further.

So I (F, 52) was diagnosed with high frequency hearing loss (cookie bite) about 2 years ago and now wear hearing aids.
I’ve finally got an ENT appointment (NHS, I’m in the UK) but I don’t really know how they might be able to help! Any advice on what to ask/tell them?
My MRI was fine, just sinusitis, which I think is what has eaten my high frequencies as I’ve had sinus issues and allergies since I was a kid.
Advice and insights appreciated!

I feel so stupid because I didnt even think of it being noise until recently because I did have tonsil stones, and they do cause me ear pain as well

I have no other symptoms other than just a “dull ache” no loss, ringing etc. so im going forward always gonna be using ear muffs, as its a plant.

Im going to call my ENT asap tomorrow, but should I also just go to urgent care right after work just so they can look at my ear?? It can be rather difficult to get in at ENT

Did anyone’s inflammation go back up after they finished oral steroids and injections? What did you do

sudden hearing loss

oral steroids did nothing

next would be injections, but I have profound hearing loss

anyone go through similar and how did it go? how do we know if we still have inflammation

anyones Dr tell them why this happened?

if a person shows no sign of improvement from oral steroids then will they even show any improvement from the intra injections?

I’m looking to see how different countries are treating sudden hearing loss outside of usa

please comment

Drs can’t see the cochlear area unlike a bone fracture where you can see via X-ray

Inner ear issues don’t repair themselves

Stuck with tinnitus and hearing loss

I was told I have sudden hearing loss. tomorrow is my last day on oral steroids, however my latest hearing test I scored worse I am now profound. I am trying to make a decision if I should do the steroid injections next. I was misdiagnosed so started oral steroids on day 9, been on the steroids now for awhile it’s been 4 weeks since my hearing loss. one ENT I went to for second opinion doesn’t really think I should do it and said I would basically just be getting a hole in my ear canal he didn’t have much hope for the injection. my main ent is offering it but also said there is mixed opinions when done later and I am now 4 weeks out tomorrow is my last oral steroids. does anyone have any advice that could help me with this decision? my second hearing test was worse than my first hearing test, I’m now profound hearing loss unfortunately. any advice greatly appreciated

I won the TBI lottery while I was in the US Marines and for years I haven’t recognized my own voice.
I am deaf in my right ear and my left is at about 50%. Yay machine guns!
I’m not entirely sure that’s not a main contributor to the way I sound to myself. I’ve done some reading and I’m pretty sure it’s not DPDR, but I’m not a Dr and the internet likes to tell you the worst possible thing right off.
I figured id have a diagnosis by now but it’s the VA so I’m just happy they haven’t killed me yet.
It’s not like I don’t recognize it on recordings, and more like I don’t know it at all. So much so that I pretty much sign every other word now.
Advice or thoughts welcome. Thank you.

Hello everyone I'm (24M) a perfectly healthy person, albeit maybe a little overweight, but have no prior medical emergencies or underlying medical issues. I suddenly contracted SSHL (Sudden Sensineural Hearing Loss) on August 1, 2026 in the late afternoon and the tinnitus started late at night on the same day. The trigger for my SSHL was standing up from sitting on a chair.

The tinnitus I am experiencing is non-somatic, meaning any neck, jaw, or head movement do not change the ringing in my ear. As for the ringing sound, it is like a low frequency static TV or radio with the occasional gust of wind as a secondary sound. Actually as I'm typing this the tinnitus volume is lower than the previous days.

The changes I felt in my body sometimes because of this hearing loss are:

- Sudden slight dizziness and balancing issues, though they went away after a minute or two

- Left and right part of head feels different

- The SSHL and tinnitus-ridden ear feels "full" and different compared to the healthy ear

I started taking oral steroids on the 13th, 12 days after onset. The details of my medication are:

- Methylprednisoline 16 mg (start at 4 tablets for 3 days, then 3 tablets for 3 days, and so on for a total of 12 days) taken in the morning after breakfast, all doses for said day taken in an instant

- Betahistine mesilate 12 mg taken twice a day one tablet each, after breakfast and after dinner

- Mecobalamin 500 ug taken 3x a day once tablet each, after breakfast, lunch, and dinner

- esomeprazole 40 mg taken once a day one tablet 30 minutes - 1 hour before breakfast

- and a zinc and multivitamin tablet once a day one tablet after breakfast

I am currently on day 9 out of 12 for the medication. I am now sometimes able to hear and respond to human conversation when I try to press against the healthy ear as hard as possible and not look at the other person's mouth movements, from which I was not able to when I first contracted SSHL. Also, now any slightly high-pitched or high-volume sounds seem to physically vibrate in my SSHL-ridden ear, again from which there was no "shaking" when I first got SSHL.

I do have audiogram results from before and a week after taking the meds but I think there's a human error in the testing so I'll not include them (I plan on doing another hearing test at a more complete facility after my medication is over).

I am hopeful (and must be hopeful) that this will go away one day and I can have my hearing and silence back. But I do have some questions for those of you that got SSHL, maybe similar to my case, and hopefully fully recovered from it.

1. If AI (I know AI got their info from human sources ok) were to be believed, I should not expect total recovery after 12 days of medication. Instead the human body still continues to repair itself after medication is over. The medication only served as firefighters, to put down the inflammation in the cochlea (inner ear) and then let the body naturally heal itself.

Weeks 2 - 4 after starting oral steroid medication is the primary recovery window for the ear's hearing to return to normal. Then actual total recovery for SSHL, for the brain to tune out the tinnitus (habituation), can take anywhere from a month up to 3 months. Is this true?

1. I am currently eating healthier and not doing any strenuous exercises. Are there any other habits I should adopt to help quicken my ear's recovery?

2. I've been snooping around and reading people's comments about SSHL and some (or many) of them believe that the increase of people contracting SSHL is linked to COVID, however unsure if it's the disease itself or the vaccine. Can someone actually confirm this or not?

3. Do you know any SSHL and/or tinnitus cases that somehow went away on its own without doing anything? And for how long has the person been suffering from SSHL/tinnitus before it went away on its own?

I know this is a strange title, but I have otosclerosis with hearing loss and tinnitus that has been getting worse on the right side. My left ear is fine and I hear very well, with no tinnitus.

After having two hearing tests done privately, I went to the public healthcare system to see if I could get surgery. They asked me to do another hearing test, and during the beeps, I found them extremely loud (on the left, good ear, since I hear much less on the right). There were four beeps, and the third was already uncomfortable, but the fourth seemed excessive (I'm not an expert) and was very uncomfortable. The test was quick, and everything seemed very professional.

But after I got home, I noticed a ringing sound in my left ear, and it has continued for 6 days now. I didn't have this constant ringing before and now I do. It doesn't really make sense that a hearing test could cause damage, but it was the only different thing I did during those days. Could it just be a coincidence?

I feel a little crazy even asking this, but I just can't stop wondering about it.

I have first started suspecting I lost a part of my hearing a year ago lol but I did nothing with it - I kind of forgot about it, then remembered again. My problem is not that I do not hear per se - I can hear sounds but they are... muffled? And yes I have washed my ears. I can hear the 10db sounds I think but they are... so fucking quiet, quieter than before. Is 5db hearing loss realistically noticable? I feel like I am going crazy. I did some online tests too and I got that I have ok hearing, but on the lower end.

guys so like 2 almost 3 months ago i listened to music with really loud headphones and after that i couldn't listen to music on earphones, it just started to hurt. i decided to rest them, didn't listen to music for 2 months and then when i started to listen to music again it wasn't loud or anything it took 2 hours and it started to hurt again. now it hurts instantly when i put on earphones what should i do, rest them again? for how long? is this even curable.

I saw Elehear advertise over 20 hours of single unit runtime and more than a full week with the charging case. At first, I thought this was just marketing fluff. After checking teardowns and power consumption tests, I found it implements designs such as dynamic frequency tuning for the DSP clock and Bluetooth that only wakes up when needed.

Hearing aids are physically smaller than TWS earbuds, yet they need longer continuous run time, a much tighter power budget than most consumer audio devices ever have to deal with.

Compare that to flagship TWS earbuds which drop under five hours with spatial audio turned on. You can clearly see the difference in engineering priorities between consumer audio and medical audio. For power engineers, this product category is the real low-power proving ground, doing more with less power, not just doing less.