September 20, 2011 • 22 mins
Does the sound of someone smacking gum drive you crazy? It's possible you're just a cranky jerk, but science presents another possibility: misophonia. Tune in to learn more about the mysterious condition that makes some noises so difficult to cope with.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
do you even go to movie theaters anymore? Every once
in a while I'll show up. How do you How
do you cope with the sounds and not the sounds
(00:25):
of the movie, obviously, but the sounds of your your
fellow movie goers consuming all sorts of snack items and
opening cellophone containers and and then and slurping on drinks
and stirring around ice at the bottom of a container.
So you just want to lose it? That's um, that's
actually me. Ah, why do you have to have so
many snacks? Because it's expensive at the movie theater. It's
(00:47):
much more economical just to bring your own. Oh is
that so you're not even buying You're sneaking it in.
I'm sneaking it in. And of course, for some reason,
when you sneak it in, it's much louder. Have you
noticed this or maybe no, because you're playing by the
rules something by the rules, I'm not just sneaking stuff in. Well,
for some people it um, it not only just bothers them,
but it could possibly incite them to violence. This sound,
(01:09):
that's right. I mean, I I get upset by these noises,
but I don't. Actually I'm not actually driven mad by them. Um,
so you're not the person who threw the popcorn buck
it at me? No, that was not me, thank you.
I threw the gop stoppers yeah, lamb. Yeah, but I mean,
come on, it was a death scene and you're and
(01:29):
you were you were, you were eating I know, but
when i'm you know, when things get tense, that's when
I really go for the snacks. See, that's just it.
I mean, okay, so it's not to put off the
topic too much, but yeah, it's like it'll be like
some sort of like really serious thing happening on the screen.
It's one thing. It's a comedy or a kid's film.
It's like, I get it. You know, it's a good time.
Let's eat some popcorn. But eating popcorn while you're watching
(01:50):
people die and bloody death on the screen, it's weird.
It really isn't. Um. I commonly will eat dinner watching
True Blood, and I would like to hear from other
people who are watching intense scenes and turned to food.
I feel like I'm not the only one out there. Okay,
I guess I mean okay, I have eaten during True
Blood as well, but but still I'm not I'm not
thinking like, Okay, here comes another sex scene pestilasagna. Oh no,
(02:14):
I'm trying. I'm talking about sex scene. Oh just the
violent Yeah, I'm not talking about like I'm it's not
Seinfeld here and I like need to eat a sub
and watch watch a sex scene. Anyway, we should really
get back to the matter at hand, which is the sounds.
The subtlest sounds that we hear, the crunching of leaves
under our feet. That Harold fall, which I think is
(02:34):
a beautiful sound, could drive some people really bananas, and
in fact it does just the mere crunching of leaves. Yes,
the sound, or maybe even just someone with sniffles or
even breathing. Yeah right, Uh. This is something called miss aphonia,
and it means dislike of sound or hatred of sound. Yeah,
(02:54):
and now I feel like we all have levels of
of this outside of the movie theater. Even I find
that gum chewing is affects me on at least a
small level, to where if someone else is chewing gum.
It kind of annoys me. Yeah, but if I'm chewing
gum too, then I don't notice. Well, this is interesting
that you say that, because Misoponia UK is a support
(03:14):
group and they say that there's something called the continuum theory,
and the suggestion is that everyone has an intolerance to
sounds to varying degrees in various environments due to any
number of factors, which is kind of what you're talking,
Like you're trying to watch a movie, You're trying to
focus on something, or like sometimes it's like I wish
I was chewing gum. Why are you chewing? Yeah, your
your mind is distracted um. And according to this theory theory,
(03:36):
people presenting with clinical misophonia simply have a stronger reaction
to various sounds than the general population. But they say
that this is not necessarily true because people with miss
aphonia are they have emergence of a very clear set
of symptoms that are different from just saying you know,
that's distracting or annoying, right, It's it's generally the kind
(03:57):
of thing that they don't have control over because I
can't you know, It's like like me getting upset over
someone having gum. It kind of depends on my mood
whether it's actually gonna irritate me or not. And it's
one of those things that if I stop and think
about it, I can be like, stop being a jerk,
you know, don't get bit out of shape over somebody
chewing gum. That's ridiculous. But the people who are actually
suffering from this this condition, they don't have a really
(04:20):
any choice in the matter. It's an involutary thing, and
they end up having to like structure their lives around it, realizing,
you know, I can't actually go out and have dinner
with people because or or maybe it's like I can't
stand crunching, so only soup, or people who are like
I can't stand soup slurping, so only nachos or I mean,
there have been plenty of cases documented in which people
(04:40):
were saying, I can't eat in the same room with
as my spouse because he's driving me nuts with his chewing.
So I mean, yeah, I mean, this actually affects the
relationships jobs um. It's been called a Cinderella diagnosis because
it's a medical condition that tracks not so much professional interest.
There's not a lot of awareness or research funding. But
(05:01):
it's definitely one of those things that has come to
people's attention because of the Internet, because so many people
have found each other and said, actually suffer from this,
and it's something that's impairing my life. Yeah, And a
lot of these a lot of people were suffering from mesophonia. Um,
we're misdiagnosed to the kind as frequently misdiagnosed as as
(05:22):
different phobic disorders, of obsessive compulsive disorders, bipolar manic disorders,
anxiety disorders, um, and and so a lot of people
ended up going through a number of treatments that weren't
actually addressing the problem. Yeah, and we'll talk a little
bit about why we think it's happening, um, But I
think it's really interesting to talk a little bit more
(05:42):
about some of these triggers. Yeah, Like I mean, we
can all get I think, like the gum chewing or
the or the noisy eating kind of thing to a
certain extent, But then it's other other things too, like
the explosive p in some what words, you know, like
like you can't stand to hear somebody use P words
perfect perfect, like that would drive someone just just to
(06:04):
apocalyptic apocalyptic, The apocalyptic platypus perfected. It's a persona you know,
like that kind of sentence would just drive people off
the wall. It would in s sounds too, yeah, super um.
And even laugh tracks, well those are annoying. Yeah, I'll
give you that. Um. And then of course you talked
(06:25):
about the breathing thing, coughing, sniffling, plastic bag rustling, water pouring,
really water pouring, water pouring, chewing, kissing. I could see
the kissing thing because if that got really you know, smacky,
that could be, especially if you're not like the kiss
kisser would using as a cat noise like you know,
like you know, to get the cat. That's the noise
(06:47):
we use with our cat. So I'm not judging. Yeah,
um yeah, any sort of subtle noise really is the
problem here. I read it. Even footsteps, yes, which if
you're in a museum. I was, My wife and I
were at a friend went to the High Museum here
in Atlanta recently, and somebody like, I understand, you know,
(07:08):
you're going out to a museum. You want to sometimes
you want to wear fancy footwear. I get it that,
you know, test the footwear before you go to a
quiet museum because somebody had like the loudest clumping. I
don't know if they're like wooden shoes or something, but
but it was just like thonkthunkthunk. You know, everybody's trying
to look at art. Yes, squeaky shoes in the office.
That's that's always a problem. I will say that's that's
(07:28):
not a mesophonia thing. But I'm pretty sure that everybody
has their own sort of like office because my shoes,
I think kind of squeak. Yeah, mine are definitely squeaking,
which is here because they're nice shoes, and you know
it's not I'm not wearing jellies or anything. Uh really,
those aren't jellies. No, they're not. They're just really purple. Okay, yeah, well,
I mean they're they're fetching um. But I mean there's
(07:48):
all sorts of auditory things that of course we're talking
about more subtle things, but we all understand this on
some level. If you've ever had an office mate that
was clipping their nails in the office in the morning
when it was quiet, then you can maybe understand what
it would be like for someone when with miss aphonia
to to sort of erupt in their emotions. And this
(08:08):
is from audiologist Dr Marcia Johnson. She says what they
experience is kind of a Mount St. Helen's eruption of
emotions and feelings associated with these sounds. So it's not
just like man that's annoying, it's it's actually on a
scale of like zero to ten. They've they've got a
scale of of someone actually acting on this. And we'll
talk a little bit about this in a bit. Now.
(08:29):
There are a couple of other related kind of sound
irritation um phenomenons that we've we've also encountered out. One
is called hyperacusis, which is a health condition characterized by
over sensitivity to certain frequency ranges of sound. And then
there's another one that's particularly interesting called autophonia. And this, uh,
this involves and is characterized by an over loud hearing
(08:49):
of your own voice. Yeah, and this is actually part
of mesophonia, right. The audiophonia is the intolerance of the
sound of one's own voice, which has got to be awful, right. Yeah,
there was an account I was reading took place back
in ve You had this British born French horn player,
so living in Germany thirty five years old, played the
French horn, which I have played the French horn, by
(09:09):
the way, not not very well, but I I played it.
And anyway, so he's living in Germany and one day
he's practicing his French horn and something feels difference, like
he can hear the noise inside his skull. He said
that it was like he was playing the horn inside
his brain and it'd just be that was gonna go away,
you know. He's like, all right, well, this is you know,
taking a nap, and I'll get over it. But it
just continued and continue, and he got stronger and stronger.
(09:31):
He was having involuntary eye movements caused by sound. At
one point he was waking up in the night because
he heard mice. He thought he heard mice moving around.
He was hearing the sound of his his eyelids, his
eyes moving his eyelid so and eventually he had to
stop playing the French horn. But they were able to really,
you know, settle Down really diagnosed this and they realized
(09:53):
it had to do with the superior canal. At this condition,
known as a superior canal, this instants basically revolve around
the the canals that are filled with fluid in the
human ear. Uh, they're kind of like the little vials
of fluid that you see in a level, you know,
they kind of is the fluid moves that lets the
brain know that you're moving, and those were disrupted. It's
(10:13):
a defect in the inner deear caused by the thinning
of the bone separates the superior canal from the brain.
So in this guy's case, there's only this thin memorane
between this fluid and his brain, so it was like
it was basically touching his brain and transmitting all the
sounds from his body right into his head. Okay, So
in this particular case of misophonia, which is sort of
this autophonia, yea subside of it um, which is interesting
(10:36):
because that that's so specific, but for the general mesophonia,
which by the way, one of the biggest triggers. By
the way, they were able to plug the hole and
the guy was able to play happy ending Okay, good
good um, and it's not you know, it's not me.
It's okay yeah, yeah, you said, thirty five year old
I'm at all the clues here, British living in German. Yeah, okay,
(10:57):
it's not you for sure. In any case, they're not
necessarily m hip to what exactly is going on in
general misophonia. There is a neuroscientist by the name of A. R. Mueller,
and he's at the University of Texas at Dallas, and
he believes the condition is hardwired like right or left handedness,
and probably uh, not an auditory disorder, but a physiological
(11:20):
abnormality that resides in the brain structure is activated by
process sound. So that's sort of a gobbledygook answer for
We're not quite sure yet, but it's certainly an area
that they keep looking at. And I keep thinking the
s Ramachandrens has got to get on this right. Uh.
This is the guy who, um we talked about in Doublegangers,
and I just I feel like I need to send
(11:41):
him an emails like, come on, let us know what's
going on here. Um. But as you said, though, it
has been mistaken for other things, and um, just in
a moment here we're going to talk about the severity
of reactions to this, not just annoyances we've talked about,
but but what happens um inside people inside their heads
and how they out. So we'll be right back right
(12:01):
after this. This podcast is brought to you by Intel,
the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel,
we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join
us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers to
life's questions. And we're back, so let's talk about it.
(12:24):
What happens? Okay? The reactions can include revulsion, rage, sadness, panic,
attacks in decision, loss of cognition, physical itching or crawling,
sensations urged to flee or fight. And this is really
important to these last bits because it really is engaging
(12:44):
to flight or fight response. So it's like they're hearing
their their friends slurp their suit and they're just overwhelmed
by the feeling that they need to either punch them
in the face or run out of the restaurant. Yeah. Yeah,
And that's why they've got this scale, this misophonia action scales.
You're at a ten. All these different sort of things
that they do to try to alleviate themselves from this discomfort,
(13:06):
and that can even lead to something called ecolega, which
is mimicking the offensive sound. Oh yeah. This this is
what I found really interesting because I mean, on one level,
this is a situation where if you if you let
the condition or lead I you know, not to I
don't want to imply that people are completely introl with
the situation, but in this condition, but on one level,
(13:28):
you're wanting to to distill it. You want to head
it off because you don't want to punch your friend
in the face or otherwise act like a jerk. Right, um,
But some of the coping mechanisms could be misinterpreted. Is
acting like a jerk because because the because the you're
basically like mimicking an annoying sound. So it's like if
someone were chewing their gum, you would I'm assuming you
would have to start going like making a fake gum
(13:50):
chewing you You would actually get up in someone's face.
This is the thing, right if your friend is let's
say that they're chewing in their gun, I would hope
they are a close understanding friend. Right you would get
in their faces, like going back on them, and right
you would you would hope that there would be that
understanding of, oh, you just need to act this out
in order to release your feelings. Yeah, I would hope
That's not good practice for a blind date. But yeah,
(14:12):
but of course this has been confused to with autism, right,
because this looks a little bit like autism, although it
has not been studied in terms of finding a link
between autism and misophonia. But you can understand how if
you didn't have a context for this, you might be
a little bit surprised as the person who is triggering
this reaction and this other person. Another weird aspect of
(14:35):
this is that some people will actually become sexually aroused
when they hear a trigger, and that is because they're
over activation of hormonal circuits during the rage panic stage
are sort of dovetailing with the adrenaline and then nora adrenaline,
and of course that's involved with the flight or fight,
(14:55):
and that's that's being sort of confused, and so a
person can be sort of I guess you would say
incidentally aroused by this. I don't know how common this is, Yeah,
I mean it's interesting to think about because it it
really takes a soup slurping scenario and puts it into
an even stranger place. Well, and I was just thinking
even something like the shuffling of papers, yeah, you know, well,
I mean, I don't know shuffling of papers that it's
(15:17):
kind of sexy, but it could be it could be
accidentally sexy. You know, we haven't always thought about that
with the shuffling of papers. But if you've got mesophonia.
But what all this is pointing to is that it
really is very uncomfortable for the person because this is
an unwanted, an unwanted thing. It's not you know, it's
(15:37):
easy to make to potentially make jokes here, but but
we and we we're not really this is this is
actually something that if you are um, if you're experiencing
this has got to be awful, right because it's just
sort of another outed level of anxiety and the day
to day push it, just like I can't stand the
sound of that they're slurping their soup and great now
I'm aroused, wonderful, and then you have to eat the
(16:00):
restaurant exactly. So now you know why that person got
up right, Yeah it wasn't you, but it was you. Um,
So how do you treat this? You know? This is
the question? Um, And this is something that they're still
trying to uncover. Audiologists actually the physicians who practice this
sort of medicine, audiological medicine, and they've tried some autogenic
(16:22):
training like relax and relaxation techniques like self hypnosis, meditation, biofeedback.
But there's not really a magic bullet here. Yeah, it
seems like a lot of the regiments of treatment that
I mentioned on the website, and there are a number
of things brought together, a lot of them sort of
trained on looking at yourself and being cognitive of what's
going on and being able to stop, which I mean
(16:44):
to a certain extent, if you don't suffer from this
condition and you get irritated it's the sound of somebody
chewing gum, that's a fine treatment there, like stop and
think about what you're doing. But in this situation that
the goal is to all right, well, acknowledge that this
condition is present, you have to confer your feelings, confront
the feelings and uh and and that's just one of
the steps you can take. Yeah, Apparently just avoiding them
(17:06):
I'm trying to pretend like it doesn't exist, would actually
exacerbate the condition. I tell you, that's a fascinating topic.
And I couldn't help but think possibly because we're about
to get into Halloween shortly and talking about recording some
Halloween themed episodes, I was wondering, do you think Edgar
Allan Posts suffered from this because well there's the beating heart. Yeah,
where the guy keeps hearing the sound of a heart
(17:26):
beating under the floorboards until of course he actually killed it, dude.
But but eventually he just loses it and he's like,
all right, tear up the boards. There's a heart beating
under there, and I can't stand it anymore, taking me
to prison. But then there's the bells to remember with,
you know, keeping time time time, and a sort of
runic rhyme to the throbbing of the bells of the bells, bells, bells,
the stopping of the bells, keeping time time time. You know.
(17:47):
It's kind of like you were about to real Well,
it's interesting. There's time time time Folksinger US sixties of
Folksinger phil Oaks the base of song on the bells.
I'm not gonna sing it, but people can YouTube that
if they here. Okay, okay, musical, and I think we
need a mix on it, That's what I'm hearing. I
think there's there's some potential here. I don't know. Maybe
(18:07):
Pope was trying to work this up. Maybe you have
miss aphonia would be interesting to see. I did I
just did a quick search, so I don't know if
anyone has actually looked into it, but I would be
it would be interesting too. It would be interesting if
they were the case. Uh you know, it's like those
are the only those are just two examples. So I'm
not making a strong case for the for for Edgar
and Poe having this condition. But anyway, I couldn't help
(18:29):
but think about it as we were researching it. And
I think it is interesting too that it is. It's
it's very own thing. It's not just someone that has
the sound sensitivity. It's just it's manifesting itself in a
physiological way. Yeah. So, um, by all means, if you
find yourself experiencing this, uh in any way, shape or form,
consider going to a doctor about it if it seems
(18:49):
like it's a little stronger than just you get irritated
at things. Yeah, and also check out miss aphonia uk
dot org. It is a great resources. Yeah, it really
can help people just sort of better understand, um, how
difficult this is to live with. Yeah, and there are
absolutely no mini songs playing in the background of the website,
(19:10):
which I thought was a very smart choice. Yeah. Uh so, hey,
we have a little bit in the way of listener
mail here. Um. First of all, uh, and speaking of mixes,
I had a listener on the Facebook page was at
I think I've mentioned a decision fatigue that I listened
to a number of music and mixed podcasts and they
are wondering what I listened to, and I listened to
(19:32):
way too many, and that I'm way more than I
should and way too many to list here. But I
can just mention a couple of like really good ones.
Every one called Parasity Days, which is indeed out of Paris, France,
and each week they'll put up a new mix. It
really runs the gambit, which ips like funk and soul
and uh, a lot of world sounds. So if you're
if you're looking for more like kind of a low
(19:53):
fi or a funky kind of vibe, that is as
a great podcast, uh and well worth checking out. And
they've been doing it for several years, so they have
a big catalog, you know, all of it free of course. UH.
And then the other podcasts I listened to, there's one
called L A L A which is spelled A L
L e Z, so it's a L L eazy uh
dash A L l Eazy and they do a podcast
each week that I really enjoy because it's kind of
(20:14):
a um it varies too. I mean there are different
guys doing it each week for the most part, but
there'll be some nice mix of sort of new, uh
you know, cutting edge sounds with some cool retro stuff.
So I would recommend that. And so when you say
that this came out of a comment about decision fatigue.
This was the whole thing about how sometimes we seed
our decisions to other people because we're trying to clamp
down our mental energy. And so if we've got something vetted,
(20:35):
so there you go, you've got some vetted resources. Yeah, exactly.
Instead of think things like, oh what am I gonna
listen to for the next two hours, I can just go, well,
Pristiges generally does me right. L A l A generally
does me right. So they have a new mix. I'm
gonna listen to that and I'm not gonna think about it.
So so that was the context of that that. Um,
let's see other listener feedback that we received. We've received
a lot of cool stuff about dreams, a lot of
(20:57):
a lot of it is a lot longer than we
have time to talk of would We had one person
um a listenermill name of Corey who wrote in with
experiences with like UFOs and a demon camp and shadow people.
That was pretty crazy and uh, what was one of
what was one of the other ones. We had a
bunch of really cool ones. Yeah, yeah, way more than
(21:17):
we we have have time to mention satellite, but I
was really impressed with everyone's dream live scary that they were. Yeah,
and we got a we also got an email, a
real short one from Jim and he was talking about
cubed Earth, yeah, which we recently did, and we talked
about Picasso and cubism and sort of made a joke
there and he said, well, what have you know Picasso
(21:38):
lived on the cute Earth, he would have invented spherism. Whoa,
that's pretty crazy. Yeah, uh and I think so. We
also had a couple of listeners are right in about Minecraft,
which I've never played, so I don't have a lot
of experience with this. But it's like a kind of
a pixelized world like mind stuff. And then I mean,
I think everybody's more less familiar with the if not
(22:00):
is the cube. Yeah, it's like a cute looking things
somebody sitting a picture like a cube planet them in mindcraft,
and that was pretty pretty interesting. So, um, if you
guys have stuff you want to share with us, you
can find us on Facebook and Twitter. We'll blow the
Mind on both of those. We'd love to hear from you,
your experiences, your experiences with irritating sounds, and uh even
(22:23):
if you just have some cool studies or news items
you want to share with us and the other listeners,
let's know about it, and you can also send us
your thoughts to via email at blow the Mind at
how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
(22:43):
Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and
perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
do you even go to movie theaters anymore? Every once
in a while I'll show up. How do you How
do you cope with the sounds and not the sounds
(00:25):
of the movie, obviously, but the sounds of your your
fellow movie goers consuming all sorts of snack items and
opening cellophone containers and and then and slurping on drinks
and stirring around ice at the bottom of a container.
So you just want to lose it? That's um, that's
actually me. Ah, why do you have to have so
many snacks? Because it's expensive at the movie theater. It's
(00:47):
much more economical just to bring your own. Oh is
that so you're not even buying You're sneaking it in.
I'm sneaking it in. And of course, for some reason,
when you sneak it in, it's much louder. Have you
noticed this or maybe no, because you're playing by the
rules something by the rules, I'm not just sneaking stuff in. Well,
for some people it um, it not only just bothers them,
but it could possibly incite them to violence. This sound,
(01:09):
that's right. I mean, I I get upset by these noises,
but I don't. Actually I'm not actually driven mad by them. Um,
so you're not the person who threw the popcorn buck
it at me? No, that was not me, thank you.
I threw the gop stoppers yeah, lamb. Yeah, but I mean,
come on, it was a death scene and you're and
(01:29):
you were you were, you were eating I know, but
when i'm you know, when things get tense, that's when
I really go for the snacks. See, that's just it.
I mean, okay, so it's not to put off the
topic too much, but yeah, it's like it'll be like
some sort of like really serious thing happening on the screen.
It's one thing. It's a comedy or a kid's film.
It's like, I get it. You know, it's a good time.
Let's eat some popcorn. But eating popcorn while you're watching
(01:50):
people die and bloody death on the screen, it's weird.
It really isn't. Um. I commonly will eat dinner watching
True Blood, and I would like to hear from other
people who are watching intense scenes and turned to food.
I feel like I'm not the only one out there. Okay,
I guess I mean okay, I have eaten during True
Blood as well, but but still I'm not I'm not
thinking like, Okay, here comes another sex scene pestilasagna. Oh no,
(02:14):
I'm trying. I'm talking about sex scene. Oh just the
violent Yeah, I'm not talking about like I'm it's not
Seinfeld here and I like need to eat a sub
and watch watch a sex scene. Anyway, we should really
get back to the matter at hand, which is the sounds.
The subtlest sounds that we hear, the crunching of leaves
under our feet. That Harold fall, which I think is
(02:34):
a beautiful sound, could drive some people really bananas, and
in fact it does just the mere crunching of leaves. Yes,
the sound, or maybe even just someone with sniffles or
even breathing. Yeah right, Uh. This is something called miss aphonia,
and it means dislike of sound or hatred of sound. Yeah,
(02:54):
and now I feel like we all have levels of
of this outside of the movie theater. Even I find
that gum chewing is affects me on at least a
small level, to where if someone else is chewing gum.
It kind of annoys me. Yeah, but if I'm chewing
gum too, then I don't notice. Well, this is interesting
that you say that, because Misoponia UK is a support
(03:14):
group and they say that there's something called the continuum theory,
and the suggestion is that everyone has an intolerance to
sounds to varying degrees in various environments due to any
number of factors, which is kind of what you're talking,
Like you're trying to watch a movie, You're trying to
focus on something, or like sometimes it's like I wish
I was chewing gum. Why are you chewing? Yeah, your
your mind is distracted um. And according to this theory theory,
(03:36):
people presenting with clinical misophonia simply have a stronger reaction
to various sounds than the general population. But they say
that this is not necessarily true because people with miss
aphonia are they have emergence of a very clear set
of symptoms that are different from just saying you know,
that's distracting or annoying, right, It's it's generally the kind
(03:57):
of thing that they don't have control over because I
can't you know, It's like like me getting upset over
someone having gum. It kind of depends on my mood
whether it's actually gonna irritate me or not. And it's
one of those things that if I stop and think
about it, I can be like, stop being a jerk,
you know, don't get bit out of shape over somebody
chewing gum. That's ridiculous. But the people who are actually
suffering from this this condition, they don't have a really
(04:20):
any choice in the matter. It's an involutary thing, and
they end up having to like structure their lives around it, realizing,
you know, I can't actually go out and have dinner
with people because or or maybe it's like I can't
stand crunching, so only soup, or people who are like
I can't stand soup slurping, so only nachos or I mean,
there have been plenty of cases documented in which people
(04:40):
were saying, I can't eat in the same room with
as my spouse because he's driving me nuts with his chewing.
So I mean, yeah, I mean, this actually affects the
relationships jobs um. It's been called a Cinderella diagnosis because
it's a medical condition that tracks not so much professional interest.
There's not a lot of awareness or research funding. But
(05:01):
it's definitely one of those things that has come to
people's attention because of the Internet, because so many people
have found each other and said, actually suffer from this,
and it's something that's impairing my life. Yeah, And a
lot of these a lot of people were suffering from mesophonia. Um,
we're misdiagnosed to the kind as frequently misdiagnosed as as
(05:22):
different phobic disorders, of obsessive compulsive disorders, bipolar manic disorders,
anxiety disorders, um, and and so a lot of people
ended up going through a number of treatments that weren't
actually addressing the problem. Yeah, and we'll talk a little
bit about why we think it's happening, um, But I
think it's really interesting to talk a little bit more
(05:42):
about some of these triggers. Yeah, Like I mean, we
can all get I think, like the gum chewing or
the or the noisy eating kind of thing to a
certain extent, But then it's other other things too, like
the explosive p in some what words, you know, like
like you can't stand to hear somebody use P words
perfect perfect, like that would drive someone just just to
(06:04):
apocalyptic apocalyptic, The apocalyptic platypus perfected. It's a persona you know,
like that kind of sentence would just drive people off
the wall. It would in s sounds too, yeah, super um.
And even laugh tracks, well those are annoying. Yeah, I'll
give you that. Um. And then of course you talked
(06:25):
about the breathing thing, coughing, sniffling, plastic bag rustling, water pouring,
really water pouring, water pouring, chewing, kissing. I could see
the kissing thing because if that got really you know, smacky,
that could be, especially if you're not like the kiss
kisser would using as a cat noise like you know,
like you know, to get the cat. That's the noise
(06:47):
we use with our cat. So I'm not judging. Yeah,
um yeah, any sort of subtle noise really is the
problem here. I read it. Even footsteps, yes, which if
you're in a museum. I was, My wife and I
were at a friend went to the High Museum here
in Atlanta recently, and somebody like, I understand, you know,
(07:08):
you're going out to a museum. You want to sometimes
you want to wear fancy footwear. I get it that,
you know, test the footwear before you go to a
quiet museum because somebody had like the loudest clumping. I
don't know if they're like wooden shoes or something, but
but it was just like thonkthunkthunk. You know, everybody's trying
to look at art. Yes, squeaky shoes in the office.
That's that's always a problem. I will say that's that's
(07:28):
not a mesophonia thing. But I'm pretty sure that everybody
has their own sort of like office because my shoes,
I think kind of squeak. Yeah, mine are definitely squeaking,
which is here because they're nice shoes, and you know
it's not I'm not wearing jellies or anything. Uh really,
those aren't jellies. No, they're not. They're just really purple. Okay, yeah, well,
I mean they're they're fetching um. But I mean there's
(07:48):
all sorts of auditory things that of course we're talking
about more subtle things, but we all understand this on
some level. If you've ever had an office mate that
was clipping their nails in the office in the morning
when it was quiet, then you can maybe understand what
it would be like for someone when with miss aphonia
to to sort of erupt in their emotions. And this
(08:08):
is from audiologist Dr Marcia Johnson. She says what they
experience is kind of a Mount St. Helen's eruption of
emotions and feelings associated with these sounds. So it's not
just like man that's annoying, it's it's actually on a
scale of like zero to ten. They've they've got a
scale of of someone actually acting on this. And we'll
talk a little bit about this in a bit. Now.
(08:29):
There are a couple of other related kind of sound
irritation um phenomenons that we've we've also encountered out. One
is called hyperacusis, which is a health condition characterized by
over sensitivity to certain frequency ranges of sound. And then
there's another one that's particularly interesting called autophonia. And this, uh,
this involves and is characterized by an over loud hearing
(08:49):
of your own voice. Yeah, and this is actually part
of mesophonia, right. The audiophonia is the intolerance of the
sound of one's own voice, which has got to be awful, right. Yeah,
there was an account I was reading took place back
in ve You had this British born French horn player,
so living in Germany thirty five years old, played the
French horn, which I have played the French horn, by
(09:09):
the way, not not very well, but I I played it.
And anyway, so he's living in Germany and one day
he's practicing his French horn and something feels difference, like
he can hear the noise inside his skull. He said
that it was like he was playing the horn inside
his brain and it'd just be that was gonna go away,
you know. He's like, all right, well, this is you know,
taking a nap, and I'll get over it. But it
just continued and continue, and he got stronger and stronger.
(09:31):
He was having involuntary eye movements caused by sound. At
one point he was waking up in the night because
he heard mice. He thought he heard mice moving around.
He was hearing the sound of his his eyelids, his
eyes moving his eyelid so and eventually he had to
stop playing the French horn. But they were able to really,
you know, settle Down really diagnosed this and they realized
(09:53):
it had to do with the superior canal. At this condition,
known as a superior canal, this instants basically revolve around
the the canals that are filled with fluid in the
human ear. Uh, they're kind of like the little vials
of fluid that you see in a level, you know,
they kind of is the fluid moves that lets the
brain know that you're moving, and those were disrupted. It's
(10:13):
a defect in the inner deear caused by the thinning
of the bone separates the superior canal from the brain.
So in this guy's case, there's only this thin memorane
between this fluid and his brain, so it was like
it was basically touching his brain and transmitting all the
sounds from his body right into his head. Okay, So
in this particular case of misophonia, which is sort of
this autophonia, yea subside of it um, which is interesting
(10:36):
because that that's so specific, but for the general mesophonia,
which by the way, one of the biggest triggers. By
the way, they were able to plug the hole and
the guy was able to play happy ending Okay, good
good um, and it's not you know, it's not me.
It's okay yeah, yeah, you said, thirty five year old
I'm at all the clues here, British living in German. Yeah, okay,
(10:57):
it's not you for sure. In any case, they're not
necessarily m hip to what exactly is going on in
general misophonia. There is a neuroscientist by the name of A. R. Mueller,
and he's at the University of Texas at Dallas, and
he believes the condition is hardwired like right or left handedness,
and probably uh, not an auditory disorder, but a physiological
(11:20):
abnormality that resides in the brain structure is activated by
process sound. So that's sort of a gobbledygook answer for
We're not quite sure yet, but it's certainly an area
that they keep looking at. And I keep thinking the
s Ramachandrens has got to get on this right. Uh.
This is the guy who, um we talked about in Doublegangers,
and I just I feel like I need to send
(11:41):
him an emails like, come on, let us know what's
going on here. Um. But as you said, though, it
has been mistaken for other things, and um, just in
a moment here we're going to talk about the severity
of reactions to this, not just annoyances we've talked about,
but but what happens um inside people inside their heads
and how they out. So we'll be right back right
(12:01):
after this. This podcast is brought to you by Intel,
the sponsors of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel,
we believe curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join
us at curiosity dot com and explore the answers to
life's questions. And we're back, so let's talk about it.
(12:24):
What happens? Okay? The reactions can include revulsion, rage, sadness, panic,
attacks in decision, loss of cognition, physical itching or crawling,
sensations urged to flee or fight. And this is really
important to these last bits because it really is engaging
(12:44):
to flight or fight response. So it's like they're hearing
their their friends slurp their suit and they're just overwhelmed
by the feeling that they need to either punch them
in the face or run out of the restaurant. Yeah. Yeah,
And that's why they've got this scale, this misophonia action scales.
You're at a ten. All these different sort of things
that they do to try to alleviate themselves from this discomfort,
(13:06):
and that can even lead to something called ecolega, which
is mimicking the offensive sound. Oh yeah. This this is
what I found really interesting because I mean, on one level,
this is a situation where if you if you let
the condition or lead I you know, not to I
don't want to imply that people are completely introl with
the situation, but in this condition, but on one level,
(13:28):
you're wanting to to distill it. You want to head
it off because you don't want to punch your friend
in the face or otherwise act like a jerk. Right, um,
But some of the coping mechanisms could be misinterpreted. Is
acting like a jerk because because the because the you're
basically like mimicking an annoying sound. So it's like if
someone were chewing their gum, you would I'm assuming you
would have to start going like making a fake gum
(13:50):
chewing you You would actually get up in someone's face.
This is the thing, right if your friend is let's
say that they're chewing in their gun, I would hope
they are a close understanding friend. Right you would get
in their faces, like going back on them, and right
you would you would hope that there would be that
understanding of, oh, you just need to act this out
in order to release your feelings. Yeah, I would hope
That's not good practice for a blind date. But yeah,
(14:12):
but of course this has been confused to with autism, right,
because this looks a little bit like autism, although it
has not been studied in terms of finding a link
between autism and misophonia. But you can understand how if
you didn't have a context for this, you might be
a little bit surprised as the person who is triggering
this reaction and this other person. Another weird aspect of
(14:35):
this is that some people will actually become sexually aroused
when they hear a trigger, and that is because they're
over activation of hormonal circuits during the rage panic stage
are sort of dovetailing with the adrenaline and then nora adrenaline,
and of course that's involved with the flight or fight,
(14:55):
and that's that's being sort of confused, and so a
person can be sort of I guess you would say
incidentally aroused by this. I don't know how common this is, Yeah,
I mean it's interesting to think about because it it
really takes a soup slurping scenario and puts it into
an even stranger place. Well, and I was just thinking
even something like the shuffling of papers, yeah, you know, well,
I mean, I don't know shuffling of papers that it's
(15:17):
kind of sexy, but it could be it could be
accidentally sexy. You know, we haven't always thought about that
with the shuffling of papers. But if you've got mesophonia.
But what all this is pointing to is that it
really is very uncomfortable for the person because this is
an unwanted, an unwanted thing. It's not you know, it's
(15:37):
easy to make to potentially make jokes here, but but
we and we we're not really this is this is
actually something that if you are um, if you're experiencing
this has got to be awful, right because it's just
sort of another outed level of anxiety and the day
to day push it, just like I can't stand the
sound of that they're slurping their soup and great now
I'm aroused, wonderful, and then you have to eat the
(16:00):
restaurant exactly. So now you know why that person got
up right, Yeah it wasn't you, but it was you. Um,
So how do you treat this? You know? This is
the question? Um, And this is something that they're still
trying to uncover. Audiologists actually the physicians who practice this
sort of medicine, audiological medicine, and they've tried some autogenic
(16:22):
training like relax and relaxation techniques like self hypnosis, meditation, biofeedback.
But there's not really a magic bullet here. Yeah, it
seems like a lot of the regiments of treatment that
I mentioned on the website, and there are a number
of things brought together, a lot of them sort of
trained on looking at yourself and being cognitive of what's
going on and being able to stop, which I mean
(16:44):
to a certain extent, if you don't suffer from this
condition and you get irritated it's the sound of somebody
chewing gum, that's a fine treatment there, like stop and
think about what you're doing. But in this situation that
the goal is to all right, well, acknowledge that this
condition is present, you have to confer your feelings, confront
the feelings and uh and and that's just one of
the steps you can take. Yeah, Apparently just avoiding them
(17:06):
I'm trying to pretend like it doesn't exist, would actually
exacerbate the condition. I tell you, that's a fascinating topic.
And I couldn't help but think possibly because we're about
to get into Halloween shortly and talking about recording some
Halloween themed episodes, I was wondering, do you think Edgar
Allan Posts suffered from this because well there's the beating heart. Yeah,
where the guy keeps hearing the sound of a heart
(17:26):
beating under the floorboards until of course he actually killed it, dude.
But but eventually he just loses it and he's like,
all right, tear up the boards. There's a heart beating
under there, and I can't stand it anymore, taking me
to prison. But then there's the bells to remember with,
you know, keeping time time time, and a sort of
runic rhyme to the throbbing of the bells of the bells, bells, bells,
the stopping of the bells, keeping time time time. You know.
(17:47):
It's kind of like you were about to real Well,
it's interesting. There's time time time Folksinger US sixties of
Folksinger phil Oaks the base of song on the bells.
I'm not gonna sing it, but people can YouTube that
if they here. Okay, okay, musical, and I think we
need a mix on it, That's what I'm hearing. I
think there's there's some potential here. I don't know. Maybe
(18:07):
Pope was trying to work this up. Maybe you have
miss aphonia would be interesting to see. I did I
just did a quick search, so I don't know if
anyone has actually looked into it, but I would be
it would be interesting too. It would be interesting if
they were the case. Uh you know, it's like those
are the only those are just two examples. So I'm
not making a strong case for the for for Edgar
and Poe having this condition. But anyway, I couldn't help
(18:29):
but think about it as we were researching it. And
I think it is interesting too that it is. It's
it's very own thing. It's not just someone that has
the sound sensitivity. It's just it's manifesting itself in a
physiological way. Yeah. So, um, by all means, if you
find yourself experiencing this, uh in any way, shape or form,
consider going to a doctor about it if it seems
(18:49):
like it's a little stronger than just you get irritated
at things. Yeah, and also check out miss aphonia uk
dot org. It is a great resources. Yeah, it really
can help people just sort of better understand, um, how
difficult this is to live with. Yeah, and there are
absolutely no mini songs playing in the background of the website,
(19:10):
which I thought was a very smart choice. Yeah. Uh so, hey,
we have a little bit in the way of listener
mail here. Um. First of all, uh, and speaking of mixes,
I had a listener on the Facebook page was at
I think I've mentioned a decision fatigue that I listened
to a number of music and mixed podcasts and they
are wondering what I listened to, and I listened to
(19:32):
way too many, and that I'm way more than I
should and way too many to list here. But I
can just mention a couple of like really good ones.
Every one called Parasity Days, which is indeed out of Paris, France,
and each week they'll put up a new mix. It
really runs the gambit, which ips like funk and soul
and uh, a lot of world sounds. So if you're
if you're looking for more like kind of a low
(19:53):
fi or a funky kind of vibe, that is as
a great podcast, uh and well worth checking out. And
they've been doing it for several years, so they have
a big catalog, you know, all of it free of course. UH.
And then the other podcasts I listened to, there's one
called L A L A which is spelled A L
L e Z, so it's a L L eazy uh
dash A L l Eazy and they do a podcast
each week that I really enjoy because it's kind of
(20:14):
a um it varies too. I mean there are different
guys doing it each week for the most part, but
there'll be some nice mix of sort of new, uh
you know, cutting edge sounds with some cool retro stuff.
So I would recommend that. And so when you say
that this came out of a comment about decision fatigue.
This was the whole thing about how sometimes we seed
our decisions to other people because we're trying to clamp
down our mental energy. And so if we've got something vetted,
(20:35):
so there you go, you've got some vetted resources. Yeah, exactly.
Instead of think things like, oh what am I gonna
listen to for the next two hours, I can just go, well,
Pristiges generally does me right. L A l A generally
does me right. So they have a new mix. I'm
gonna listen to that and I'm not gonna think about it.
So so that was the context of that that. Um,
let's see other listener feedback that we received. We've received
a lot of cool stuff about dreams, a lot of
(20:57):
a lot of it is a lot longer than we
have time to talk of would We had one person
um a listenermill name of Corey who wrote in with
experiences with like UFOs and a demon camp and shadow people.
That was pretty crazy and uh, what was one of
what was one of the other ones. We had a
bunch of really cool ones. Yeah, yeah, way more than
(21:17):
we we have have time to mention satellite, but I
was really impressed with everyone's dream live scary that they were. Yeah,
and we got a we also got an email, a
real short one from Jim and he was talking about
cubed Earth, yeah, which we recently did, and we talked
about Picasso and cubism and sort of made a joke
there and he said, well, what have you know Picasso
(21:38):
lived on the cute Earth, he would have invented spherism. Whoa,
that's pretty crazy. Yeah, uh and I think so. We
also had a couple of listeners are right in about Minecraft,
which I've never played, so I don't have a lot
of experience with this. But it's like a kind of
a pixelized world like mind stuff. And then I mean,
I think everybody's more less familiar with the if not
(22:00):
is the cube. Yeah, it's like a cute looking things
somebody sitting a picture like a cube planet them in mindcraft,
and that was pretty pretty interesting. So, um, if you
guys have stuff you want to share with us, you
can find us on Facebook and Twitter. We'll blow the
Mind on both of those. We'd love to hear from you,
your experiences, your experiences with irritating sounds, and uh even
(22:23):
if you just have some cool studies or news items
you want to share with us and the other listeners,
let's know about it, and you can also send us
your thoughts to via email at blow the Mind at
how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out
our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
(22:43):
Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and
perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
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