Has Anyone's Hearing Improved with Medication?

[mfranks]

I know this may sound strange, but I am just starting trial medication(s) and noticed a profound change in my hearing ability!

I wasn't hard of hearing per se in the common sense of the phrase... I can hear a pin drop in the next room. However, I always have had trouble with hearing the lyrics of songs. I often needed a copy of the lyrics to learn a song or play a short segment over and over again to hear the words - I had a lot of trouble distinguishing a large number of the words. My wife was amazed that suddenly I can repeat back lyrics now.

Also, I have always had trouble learning languages because I had trouble "hearing" new words in the course of conversations... Everything seemed to run together.

Litterally, with the first dose of Concerta, I noticed that my Latin audio CD was suddenly clear to me! I could distinguish almost all the words! It's as if I was given a chemical hearing aid! As I mentioned elsewhere, it was similar to the feeling I had when I first put on a pair of glasses. All of a sudden, I could see more clearly and more sharply.

Has anyone else experienced this? This was totally unexpected and is very exciting for me.

Mark

[Uminchu]

Originally Posted by mfranks

I wasn't hard of hearing per se in the common sense of the phrase... I can hear a pin drop in the next room. However, I always have had trouble with hearing the lyrics of songs. I always needed a copy of the lyrics to learn a song and sing - I had a lot of trouble distinguishing a large number of the words. My wife was amazed that suddenly I can repeat back lyrics now.

It's great that medications have helped you to overcome this issue!

I am not on medications, but what you describe is very familiar to me. For years I thought I was hard of hearing. I even had my hearing tested twice, but tested normal both times.

I can also hear very small sounds, but when someone talks to me, I often can't hear half of what they are saying. I have to keep asking them to repeat themselves.

After learning about ADHD, this all started to make sense. My psych summed it up by saying it's not a problem with hearing per se, but on focusing on the words enough to understand them. You end up thinking you couldn't hear it.

I think this is one of the reasons why innatentive ADHD kids are often first tested for "auditory processing" issues -- because everything seems to go in one ear and out the other.

[Stabile]

We both experience some enhancement of the senses, particularly with Ritalin, including hearing and the sense of smell.

We see reasonably ordinary things that nobody else sees, too, even without meds, and that’s probably the best clue to what’s going on inside our heads.

Clearly, the difference when we see hawks soaring (for example) is that we notice them and others don’t. There are numerous other examples, most of which are on the ground and right there to be seen by anyone, but are missed by most nonetheless.

So in effect, the brain is processing information in a less filtered way, or at least getting more through the filters. This may be interpreted either as less general focus or more aggregate ability to maintain many individual threads, each with its own focus.

Once the trick is learned the differences persist regardless of whether we take the drugs. The onset of the effect on the sense of smell is more dramatically related to each instance of taking the drug, but we believe that’s only a reflection of its relatively unstructured character. Well-structured experiences like the subtle aromas of freshly roasted single-variety coffee retain their sharpness in the same way as the effects on vision.

The effects on hearing are somewhere in the middle, less structured in some ways but certainly more structured than the general sense of smell. I have that exact experience with lyrics, although I’ve long recognized that it’s related to what I see as important in the music: the logic of the melody and to an extent chord structure.

But Kay has no trouble at all picking out lyrics, mainly because she tends to relate songs to their verbal logical content. These biases are clearly related to our childhood experiences with music, and also the fact that while we both have been known to sing a tune, I primarily play various instruments.

None of this, of course, has diddly to do with actual problems with the hearing apparatus. It’s all in our heads, and once we’ve learned the trick by using the drugs, the change can be permanent.

--Tom and Kay

[Scattered]

Uminchu, explained it well. I've experienced the same thing, but especially with conversations. Off meds, I miss a lot of words. I had my daughter's hearing tested twice, because she seemed to be having troubles in that department. The hearing tests kept coming back fine -- the doctor mentioned it might be an attention problem -- it took me over a year to figure out she a meant attention problems as in Attention Deficit Disorder!

Scattered

[spoody_goon]

I think that most people are born with the ability to filter out unwanted things, weather it's sound, smell, etc. With medication I can finally understand how people can ignore other people or outside "noise".
I had a similar experience with the sense of touch. All the sudden I was able to notice thing like texture more clearly.

[barbyma]

I've actually been experiencing hearing loss since I started Adderall.

I think Adderall is contributing to an intermittent and short-duration (thank goodness!!) tinnitus I've been experiencing. I've also been having a devil of a time with sinuses, though, so my "stuffy ears" could be entirely that.....

[QueensU_girl]

I understand that Wellbutrin (bupropion) can cause tinnitus (ringing inthe ears). why not Adderall?


Both are also bad for tooth grinding and TMJ (jaw joint) problems/ear aches.

Emma

[Bob1951]

Tom and Kay,

I'd appreciate an elaboration on "the change can be permanent." I've been experiencing some weird things. I always had a hard time reading. Adderall fixed it. I don't mean fixes it while under the influence. I mean fixed it. I do not have any trouble reading at all any longer - drugs or otherwise.

In many other areas, I'm noticing something similar. I feel as if Adderall is enabling me to learn habits I couldn't learn without it. But once the new habit is a habit, don't need the Adderall any more.

What say you?

Bob

Originally Posted by Stabile

It’s all in our heads, and once we’ve learned the trick by using the drugs, the change can be permanent.

--Tom and Kay

[Carla B.]

OK, here's my unscientifically-tested postulate after hearing a whole lot of similar stories: In some/all of the people some/all of the time a stimulant med has the effect of increasing one's "bandwidth" for sensory input.

It's as if there was more juice to (some) brain circuits, which almost certainly there is (e.g. increased bloodflow due to vasoconstriction). So the notion that one might see/hear/feel more in the sensory system makes complete (common) sense to me, even if I can barely begin an atttempt to explain it anatomically.


On the hearing aspect specifically, it was a real eye-opener for me the first time I attended a workshop (at an ADD conference, circa '94 or so) about "CAPD". The eyeopening part was about (now, a small surprise) how there are several functions involved in detecting/decoding auditory input, not all of which relate to how well the ear can "hear" but how well the brain can filter, batch, sort, and separate simultaneous streams of sensory input.

It makes a lot of intuitive sense once you've heard it explained, but before then most of we non-scientists tend to think of hearing as a binary on/off function when, in fact, it is much more than that. Call it "dyslexic hearing" {grin}

Of course true dyslexia can't be "undone" by a stimulant med. But other, more basic, forms of "sensory scrambling" seem to be, perhaps by changing the thresholds at which an incoming signal is/is not perceived.

For me, personally, it seems I struggle to detect/decode at certain audible frequencies but not others. This is, of course, enormously inconvenient when/if an "inaudible frequency" belongs to your teacher or spouse {grin2}, but even then, it should not be assumed that the "not hearing" involves an emotional charge. Sometimes it really just is the particular voice.

[barbyma]

Originally Posted by QueensU_girl

I understand that Wellbutrin (bupropion) can cause tinnitus (ringing inthe ears). why not Adderall?

Oh, I think any psychoactive meds have potential for making changes to sensory systems. The tinnitus I attribute to Adderall. But, I have "stuffy ears" from sinus problems, so I think that's what's causing my current hearing loss.

I have been grinding my teeth since childhood, but I've notice that Adderall has increase this a little bit, too. I'll take it, though, since it's also completely eliminated RLS as well as greatly reducing my ADD symptoms.