{"id":239,"date":"2019-07-22T17:42:37","date_gmt":"2019-07-22T21:42:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fredericksburgent.fm1.dev\/what-is-misophonia\/"},"modified":"2019-12-31T14:22:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-31T19:22:00","slug":"what-is-misophonia","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hearingresourcecenterllc.com\/tinnitus\/what-is-misophonia\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Misophonia?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Hearing\ndisorders take many different forms. An estimated 15 percent of adults are\nextremely bothered by everyday noises that most people don\u2019t even give a second\nthought. The name for this condition is misophonia, and it can impact many\nfacets of your daily life \u2013 but help is available. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Common misophonia triggers include oral sounds such as chewing, throat clearing, coughing and nose blowing; finger or keyboard tapping, clicking a pen, humming and even breathing. Sometimes, small repetitive motions \u2013 somebody fidgets, wriggles a foot or accidentally brushes against you \u2013 are enough to provoke an exaggerated response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Doctors\naren\u2019t sure what causes misophonia, and up until a few years ago, it didn\u2019t\neven have a name. Patients were often diagnosed with mood disorders, especially\nwhen they displayed anxiety or depression \u2013 emotions that often accompany\nmisophonia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A recent study,\nwhile small in scale, offers some insight into the mechanisms that trigger\nmisophonia. Researchers from the University of Iowa examined 20 adults with the\ndisorder and 22 without. Their results, published in Current Biology<\/em> in 2017, indicate that the brains of people with\nmisophonia appear to respond differently to certain sounds. Each group was asked\nto rate the unpleasantness of a variety of different sounds, including common\ntriggers such as eating and breathing, universally-disparaged negative sounds\nlike the aforementioned nails on a chalkboard and neutral sounds such as\nfootsteps or chirping birds. Participants responded to the neutral and negative\nsounds in the same ways, but those with misophonia rated the eating and\nbreathing sounds as \u201chighly disturbing\u201d while those in the control group did\nnot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nindividuals with misophonia also displayed signs of physical stress when\nexposed to the trigger sounds. Their reactions included an increased heartrate\nand sweaty palms. Furthermore, brain scans showed unusual activity in the parts\nof the brain where emotions are processed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many experts\nfound the study interesting but pointed out several problems including the\nsmall sample size and self-reported questionnaire rather than a face-to-face\ninterview with a trained clinician to specifically diagnose the disorder.\nStill, it\u2019s a start, providing researchers with some target areas in the brain\nto focus on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Treating Misophonia<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Treatment of\nmisophonia is a challenge for several reasons. The condition still isn\u2019t\nwidely-known or universally-accepted. The National Institutes of Health list it\nas chronic disorder on their rare diseases website but it isn\u2019t an\nofficially-recognized mental disorder in the DSM-5, making it difficult for\ndoctors to diagnose and rare for health insurers to cover the cost of\ntreatment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those with\nmisophonia are likely to achieve the best results by taking a\nmulti-disciplinary approach to treating it. This might involve a combination of\nsound therapy, breathing exercises and counseling that focuses on coping\nstrategies. Antidepressants may be prescribed for some individuals, as well.<\/p>\n\n\n
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