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Here's What It Means If You're Freaked Out By The Sound Of Someone Eating

Here's What It Means If You're Freaked Out By The Sound Of Someone Eating

You're not alone.

Mark McGowan

Mark McGowan

One of the things I'm sure most of us will all agree on is that loud chewing is an absolute travesty that should earn you a one-way ticket to the depths of hell.

Hearing someone chomping wildly on a Big Mac or slurping their morning coffee to the point where they might inhale the cup can make you feel like your head is about to explode.

You're not alone if these sounds trigger you to the point where you want to throw a chair at them, because it's a genuine condition called Misophonia.

This translates directly to 'hatred of sound', which to be honest is accurate for most of us. The sound of other people's voices can literally send us into meltdown.

However, it doesn't mean that you are just a hater to anything that makes a sound and would rather be deaf, it just means that there are certain noises that'll make you descend into spates of anger and uncomfortable scenarios.

Olana Tansley-Hancock suffers from the condition and has done since she was eight years old with sounds like breathing and eating setting her off, according to the BBC.

"I feel there's a threat and get the urge to lash out - it's the fight or flight response," she said. "Anyone eating crisps is always going to set me off, the rustle of the packet is enough to start a reaction.

"It's not a general annoyance, it's an immediate 'Oh my God, what is that sound?' I need to get away from it or stop it'."

The condition, in it's most severe cases, will ultimately alter your life in many ways because you'll go to great limits to try and avoid certain places where awful sounds are rife.

People will also have to avoid channels like ITV, where people like Katie Hopkins appear.

Olana stopped going to the cinema because of the amount of popcorn which is chewed and the quantity of annoying voices that come from the back row.

She told BBC News: "I spent a long time avoiding places like the cinema. I'd have to move carriages seven or eight times on 30-minute train journeys, and I left a job after three months as I spent more time crying and having panic attacks than working."

Scientists scanned the brains of 42 people in the UK, with 20 suffering from Misophonia and 22 without the condition, to find out why it occurs.

While in a MRI Scanner, people were played a range of noises such as rain, unpleasant sounds like screaming and people's trigger sounds.

Publishing the findings in the journal Current Biology, it was revealed that the the anterior insular - part of the brain that joins our senses with our emotions - was overly active in Misophonia.

"They are going into overdrive when they hear these sounds, but the activity was specific to the trigger sounds not the other two sounds," Dr Sukhbinder Kumar from Newcastle University said. "The reaction is anger mostly, it's not disgust. The dominating emotion is the anger - it looks like a normal response, but then it is going into overdrive."

Since the condition is well-known and not so rare, there are ways of coping with it. Olana, for example, uses earplugs.

Featured Image Credit: PA