Hearing things - could be your drugs

[btdt]

http://www.hearinglosshelp.com/articles/ototoxicupheaval.htm

Drug induced Ototoxicity

 

Tho this post may seem long I have cut and pasted only part of it... more at the link. 

 

Auditory hallucinations: At least 30 drugs can cause you to hear phantom sounds—voices and music that are not there. Another 338 drugs can cause hallucinations, some of which may be of the auditory variety.⁴Most of these hallucinations seem to be the result of a damaged auditory system rather than the effects of a mental illness. 

 

 

• Distorted hearing: Some drugs, instead of causing hearing loss (or in addition to causing hearing loss), cause hearing to be distorted so we do not understand some (or much) of what we are hearing.
   
• Hyperacusis: Hyperacusis is a condition where normal sounds are perceived as being much too loud. It is as though the body's internal volume control is stuck on "high." At least 53 drugs can cause this condition.⁴
   
• Feelings of fullness in your ears: You can experience this feeling for a few reasons. One, because your ears really are blocked by a middle ear infection or by earwax. Two, because your ears feel "blocked" because of sudden hearing loss. Three, exposure to loud sounds can result in a feeling of "fullness" too.

Tinnitus, commonly called "ringing in the ears," is the number one indicator that you may be damaging your ears from an ototoxic drug. At least 550 drugs are known to cause tinnitus.⁴ Tinnitus can manifest itself as a wide variety of sounds. It may be a ringing, roaring, beating, clicking, banging, buzzing, hissing, humming, blowing, chirping, clanging, sizzling, whooshing, rumbling, whistling or dreadful shrieking noise in your head. It may also sound like rushing water, radio static, breaking glass, bells ringing, owls hooting or chainsaws running.³ You can download and read the latest (2013) list of the 550+ drugs that can cause tinnitus here. 

 

 

Ototoxic Side Effects

Ototoxic side effects can damage our ears in many different ways. You may experience one, several or no side effects from taking any given drug. The average ototoxic drug exhibits about 3.5 ototoxic symptoms.⁴ Here are a number of the ototoxic side effects you could experience.

When you know which ototoxic side effects can occur, you can watch for them. If they do occur, immediately contact your physician, stop taking the offending drug (with your doctor's consent—of course) to try to limit the damage to your ears.

1. Cochlear side effects

• Tinnitus: Tinnitus, commonly called "ringing in the ears," is the number one indicator that you may be damaging your ears from an ototoxic drug. At least 550 drugs are known to cause tinnitus.⁴ Tinnitus can manifest itself as a wide variety of sounds. It may be a ringing, roaring, beating, clicking, banging, buzzing, hissing, humming, blowing, chirping, clanging, sizzling, whooshing, rumbling, whistling or dreadful shrieking noise in your head. It may also sound like rushing water, radio static, breaking glass, bells ringing, owls hooting or chainsaws running.³ You can download and read the latest (2013) list of the 550+ drugs that can cause tinnitus here. 
   
• Hearing loss: More than 400 drugs are known to cause hearing loss.⁴Hearing loss can range from mild to profound and may be temporary or permanent. One of the insidious things about ototoxic drugs is they generally first destroy hearing in the very high frequencies which are not normally tested (those above 8,000 Hz). Thus, you're not even aware you are losing your hearing until it is too late to do anything about it.
   
• Distorted hearing: Some drugs, instead of causing hearing loss (or in addition to causing hearing loss), cause hearing to be distorted so we do not understand some (or much) of what we are hearing.
   
• Hyperacusis: Hyperacusis is a condition where normal sounds are perceived as being much too loud. It is as though the body's internal volume control is stuck on "high." At least 53 drugs can cause this condition.⁴
   
• Feelings of fullness in your ears: You can experience this feeling for a few reasons. One, because your ears really are blocked by a middle ear infection or by earwax. Two, because your ears feel "blocked" because of sudden hearing loss. Three, exposure to loud sounds can result in a feeling of "fullness" too.
   
• Auditory hallucinations: At least 30 drugs can cause you to hear phantom sounds—voices and music that are not there. Another 338 drugs can cause hallucinations, some of which may be of the auditory variety.⁴Most of these hallucinations seem to be the result of a damaged auditory system rather than the effects of a mental illness. 
   

2. Vestibular Side Effects
 

• Dizziness: Dizziness is the most common ototoxic symptom. At least 728 drugs have this ototoxic side effect.⁴
   
• Vertigo: Vertigo is the perception of movement (normally a spinning sensation) when the body is really not moving. At least 560 drugs are known to cause vertigo.⁴
   
• Ataxia: Ataxia is the loss of your ability to coordinate your muscles properly and can be a result of a damaged vestibular system. As a result you may walk with a staggering gait, just as though you were drunk. At least 350 drugs can cause this side effect.⁴
   
• Nystagmus: Nystagmus is abnormal rapid rhythmic back-and-forth involuntary eye movement, usually from side to side. Although technically an eye problem, it fundamentally is the result of a damaged vestibular system. At least 117 drugs can cause this side effect.⁴
   
• Labyrinthitis: Labyrinthitis is a catch-all term that simply means something is wrong in your inner ear (cochlear and vestibular systems).
   
• Loss of balance/equilibrium disorder: Some drugs cause a person to lose their balance. These terms too, are mostly catch-alls for various kinds of balance conditions.
   
• Oscillopsia: Oscillopsia is "bouncing vision." This is the result of damage to the vestibular system such that it no longer works together as the vestibulo-ocular reflex. Oscillopsia can result when your vestibular system in both ears is severely damaged.
   
• Emotional problems: When you lose much of your sense of balance, emotional problems such as anxiety, frustration, anger and depression can surface^.7 Your feelings of self-confidence and self-esteem may plummet.
   
• Fatigue: Damage to the vestibular system can result in exhaustion, because you now have to consciously work at maintaining your balance.
   
• Memory problems: Memory problems can result because areas of your brain that were previously used for thought and memory, must constantly work on keeping you balanced. As a result, you may grope for words, forget what was just said, be easily distracted or have trouble concentrating.
   
• Muscular aches and pains: Another seemingly-unlikely result of vestibular ototoxicity are muscle pains due to failure of the vestibulo-spinal reflex (the reflex dictating automatic muscle changes in response to changing movement). If the reflex fails, you have to consciously control it. You may make your muscles rigid as you strain to keep your balance.
   
• Nausea: Nausea is a relatively common side effect of vestibular damage that results from your brain's confusion over vestibular sensory inputs.
   
• Visual problems: A host of visual problems can result if the vestibulo-ocular reflex (the reflex that stabilizes your eyes in space) is damaged. As a result, you may have trouble reading since everything seems blurry or fuzzy. You may have trouble focusing your eyes—particularly on moving or distant objects.⁶
   
• Vomiting: Vomiting is a common result of a damaged vestibular system. Often vomiting and vertigo go together.
   
• Vague feelings of unease: Sometimes you can't put your finger on exactly what is wrong, but you feel vaguely uneasy. You may feel that things seem wrong or unreal.⁷ This too, can be a result of a damaged vestibular system. 
   

3. Central Nervous System (CNS) Side Effects
 

• Central auditory processing disorder: Sounds may enter our ears and be processed correctly, but these sound signals may be delayed or scrambled after they leave our inner ears. This scrambling can occur as the sound signals are processed by the neuronal networks that make up our auditory nerves, or in various parts of our brains. When this processed sound reaches the conscious levels in our brains where we "hear," we may hear a bunch of gibberish. This is known as a central auditory processing disorder. Several ototoxic drugs/chemicals have this effect. 
   

4. Outer/Middle Ear Side Effects
 

• Ceruminosis: Some drugs cause excessive ear wax production. This excess wax can block our ear canals and cause temporary hearing loss.
• Ear pain: Medically called otalgia, ear pain is typically the result of middle ear infections. 218 drugs have ear pain associated with their use.⁴
   
• Otitis externa; O. media: Otitis is typically an opportunistic infection of the outer (O. externa) or middle (O. media) ear. Many of the drugs listed as having otitis as an ototoxic side effect do not directly cause these conditions. Rather, these infections come in and take over when an opportunity presents itself—i.e. an ototoxic antibiotic killing off the "good bacteria" in the ear canal, leaving it wide open to an opportunistic invasion of "bad bacteria." 209 drugs are associated with otitis.⁴

^{A sample list of drugs that can cause this:  not them all} 

It is even more alarming when you realize we are just talking about a handful of ototoxic drugs in 2 of the more than 210 classes of ototoxic drugs!

Ototoxic Drugs are Everywhere!

There are at least 743 drugs that are known to be ototoxic.⁴ Here are just 84 of them. This gives an inkling of just how all-pervading ototoxic substances are in the medications we take without having a clue that these drugs may be harming our ears.

• ACE INHIBITORS such as Enalapril (Vasotec),² Moexipril (Univasc),Ramipril (Altace)
   
• ACETIC ACIDS such as Diclofenac (Voltaren), Etodolac (Lodine),Indomethacin (Indocin), Ketorolac (Toradol)
   
• ALPHA BLOCKERS such as Doxazosin (Cardura)
   
• AMINOGLYCOSIDES such as Amikacin (Amikin), Gentamicin(Garamycin), Kanamycin (Kantrex), Neomycin (Neosporin), Netilmicin(Netromycin), Streptomycin, Tobramycin (Tobradex)
   
• ANGIOTENSIN-2-RECEPTOR ANTAGONISTS such as Eprosartan(Teveten), Irbesartan (Avapro)
   
• ANTI-ARRHYTHMIC DRUGS such as Flecainide (Tambocor), Propafenone(Rythmol), Quinidine (Cardioquin), Tocainide (Tonocard)
   
• ANTI-CANCER DRUGS such as Buserelin (Suprefact), Carboplatin(Paraplatin), Cisplatin (Platinol), Vinblastine (Velban), Vincristine(Oncovin)
   
• ANTI-CONVULSANT DRUGS such as Carbamazepine (Tegretol),Divalproex (Depakote), Gabapentin (Neurontin), Tiagabine (Gabitril),Valproic acid (Depakene)
   
• ANTI-MALARIAL DRUGS such as Chloroquine (Aralen), Mefloquine(Lariam), Quinine (Legatrin)
   
• ANTI-RETROVIRAL PROTEASE INHIBITORS such as Cidofovir (Vistide),Ganciclovir (Cytovene), Ritonavir (Norvir)
   
• BENZODIAZEPINES such as Diazepam (Valium), Estazolam (ProSom),Midazolam (Versed)
   
• BETA-BLOCKERS such as Atenolol (Tenormin), Betaxolol (Betoptic),Metoprolol (Lopressor)
  Note: A medical doctor once phoned me because he had a weird set of symptoms. A few times a year he would suddenly get loud tinnitus in one ear that seemed to come out of nowhere and for no reason. Then his hearing would begin to fade away. This would last an hour or two, then his tinnitus would fade away and his hearing would come back. This scared him. He had been to his doctors, and ear specialists, and had an MRI done, but no one could help him, so he contacted me. After asking him a number of questions, I discovered that he had been taking Atenolol for some years. Something clicked in my mind. I realized that the Atenolol he had been taking was almost certainly causing these weird events based on other people telling me similar stories. He agreed and told me he was immediately going to phone his doctor and get his prescription changed.
   
• BICYCLIC ANTI-DEPRESSANTS such as Venlafaxine (Effexor)
   
• CALCIUM-CHANNEL-BLOCKERS such as Diltiazem (Cardizem), Nifedipine(Adalat), Nisoldipine (Sular)
   
• COX-2 INHIBITORS such as Celecoxib (Celebrex), Rofecoxib (Vioxx)
  Note: Vioxx was recalled in 2004 after causing more than 100,000 heart attacks and an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 deaths. Let me emphasize that I’m only considering the ototoxic side effects of drugs here, but you have to watch out for all the other side effects too because if you kill your body, you won’t hear anything either!
   
• H1-BLOCKERS such as Cetirizine (Zyrtec), Fexofenadine (Allegra)
   
• IMMUNOSUPPRESSANT DRUGS such as Cyclosporine (Neoral),Muromonab-CD3 (Orthoclone OKT3), Tacrolimus (Prograf)
   
• LOOP DIURETICS such as Ethacrynic acid (Edecrin), Furosemide (Lasix),Torsemide (Demadex)
   
• MACROLIDE ANTIBIOTICS such as Clarithromycin (Biaxin),Erythromycin (Eryc)
   
• OPIATE AGONIST DRUGS such as Codeine (Codeine Contin),Hydrocodone (Vicodin), Tramadol (Ultram)
   
• PROPIONIC ACIDS such as Flurbiprofen (Ansaid), Ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin), Naproxen (Anaprox)
  Note: Just because a drug is sold over the counter such as Ibuprofen (Advil) doesn’t mean it is safe for your ears. For example, Ibuprofen can cause temporary or permanent damage to youour ears.
   
• PROTON PUMP INHIBITORS such as Esomeprazole (Nexium),Lansoprazole (Prevacid), Rabeprazole (Aciphex)
   
• QUINOLONES such as Ciprofloxacin (Cipro), Ofloxacin (Floxin),Trovafloxacin (Trovan)
   
• SALICYLATES such as Aspirin, Mesalamine (Asacol), Olanzapine(Zyprexa)
   
• SELECTIVE SEROTONIN REUPTAKE INHIBITORS (SSRIs) such asFluoxetine (Prozac), Fluvoxamine (Luvox), Sertraline (Zoloft)
  Note: A psychiatrist once contacted me and explained that a patient of hers had several psychiatric problems, but the one thing bothering the patient above all else was severe hyperacusis. The patient had tried hyperacusis remedies without improvement. The psychiatrist asked me if there was anything I knew that might help her patient.
  
  I asked what medications the patient was on, and what medications she had been on at the time the hyperacusis began. When I received the list of medications, I discovered that this patient was taking not just one, not just two, but three drugs known to cause hyperacusis such as these two drugs here! No wonder she had hyperacusis!
   
• SEROTONIN-RECEPTOR AGONISTS such as Almotriptan (Axert),Naratriptan (Amerge), Sumatriptan (Imitrex)
   
• THIAZIDES such as Bendroflumethiazide (Corzide), Indapamide (Lozol)
   
• TRICYCLIC ANTI-DEPRESSANTS such as Amitriptyline (Elavil),Clomipramine (Anafranil)
   

[Sofa]

Hi, i just wondered if you know this can go away?

 

I think the drugs have given me central audio processing disorder and hearing distortions!

 

I am scared that this will be forever!

[arbor]

Dear @Sofa

 

After reading the Success Stories, I have the sense that hearing distortions do fade and even disappear, but these symptoms may be some of the last to heal.  I've been hearing good things about walking as it might stimulate the brain in repairing itself.

https://www.asahq.org/brainhealthinitiative/news/articlesandnews/jayzemelresearcher

 

Sending you healing wishes,

Arbor