Your Body’s Capacity to Heal
The human body typically can heal scrapes, cuts, and broken bones, even though some wounds take longer than others. But you’re out of luck when it comes to fixing the tiny little hairs in your ears. At least, so far. Animals are capable of healing damage to the cilia in their ears and recover their hearing, but humans don’t have that ability (even though scientists are working on it). What that means is, if you injure these hairs or the hearing nerve, you may have permanent loss of hearing.
At What Point Does Loss of Hearing Become Irreversible?
When you find out you have loss of hearing, the first thing that most people think is will I get it back? And the response is, it depends. Basically, there are two types of hearing loss:
- Hearing loss caused by damage: But there’s another, more widespread type of hearing loss that makes up nearly 90 percent of hearing loss. This kind of hearing loss, which is usually permanent, is known as sensorineural hearing loss. Here’s what occurs: there are little hairs in your ear that vibrate when hit with moving air (sound waves). Your brain is good at turning these vibrations into the sounds you hear. But loud noises can damage the hairs and, over time, permanently diminish your hearing. Injury to the inner ear or nerve can also cause sensorineural hearing loss. A cochlear implant may help restore hearing in some cases of hearing loss, specifically severe cases.
- Loss of hearing caused by a blockage: When there’s something obstructing your ear canal, you can have all the symptoms of hearing loss. This obstruction can be caused by a wide variety of things, from earwax to debris to tumors. The good news is that after the blockage is cleared your hearing usually goes back to normal.
Whether hearing aids will help restore your hearing can only be determined by having a hearing exam.
Hearing Loss Treatment
So currently there’s no cure for sensorineural hearing loss. But it might be possible to get treatment for your hearing loss. actually, getting the proper treatment for your hearing loss can help you:
- Successfully deal with any of the symptoms of hearing loss you might be experiencing.
- Stay engaged socially, keeping isolation away.
- Stop mental decline.
- Protect and preserve the hearing you have left.
- Guarantee your all-around quality of life is unaffected or remains high.
Based on how extreme your hearing loss is, this treatment can take on many forms. One of the most basic treatments is also one of the most common: hearing aids.
How is Hearing Loss Treated by Hearing Aids
Hearing aids help the ear with hearing loss to hear sounds and perform to the best of their ability. Fatigue is caused when the brain strains to hear because hearing is hindered. As scientist acquire more insights, they have identified a greater risk of mental decline with a persistent lack of cognitive input. Your cognitive function can begin to be recovered by using hearing aids because they allow your ears hear again. as a matter of fact, it has been shown that wearing hearing aids can slow cognitive decline by as much as 75%. Modern day hearing aids can also help you pay attention to what you want to hear, and drown out background sounds.
Prevention is The Best Defense
If you take away one thing from this little lesson, hopefully, it’s this: you can’t count on recovering from hearing loss, so instead you should concentrate on protecting the hearing you’ve got. Certainly, if you get something stuck in your ear canal, more than likely you can have it extracted. But that doesn’t decrease the threat from loud sounds, noises you may not even think are loud enough to really be all that harmful. That’s why it’s not a bad idea to take the time to protect your ears. If you are eventually diagnosed with loss of hearing, you will have more treatment options if you take measures now to safeguard your hearing. Treatment can help you live a great, full life even if recovery isn’t a possibility. Contact a hearing care expert to find out what your best choice is.