The Healing Ability of Your Body
While some injuries take longer to heal than others, the human body usually has no problem healing cuts, scrapes, or broken bones. But when it comes to repairing the tiny little hairs in your ear, you’re out of luck. At least, so far. Although scientists are working on it, humans can’t repair the cilia in their ears like animals can. That means, if you ruin these hairs or the hearing nerve, you could have irreversible hearing loss.
At What Point Does Loss of Hearing Become Irreversible?
The first thing you think of when you find out you have loss of hearing is, will it come back? Whether it will or not depends on several things. Basically, there are two kinds of hearing loss:
- Blockage based loss of hearing: When there’s something obstructing your ear canal, you can exhibit all the symptoms of hearing loss. Debris, earwax, and tumors are some of the things that can cause an obstruction. What’s promising is that once the blockage is cleared your hearing often returns to normal.
- Hearing loss caused by damage: But there’s another, more widespread type of hearing loss that accounts for around 90 percent of hearing loss. This sort of hearing loss, which is often irreversible, is known as sensorineural hearing loss. Here’s what takes place: When hit by moving air (sound waves), tiny little hairs in your ears move. Your brain is good at turning these vibrations into the sounds you can hear. But loud sounds can damage the hairs and, over time, permanently diminish your hearing. Sensorineural hearing loss can also be from injury to the nerve or to the inner ear. A cochlear implant could help restore hearing in some cases of hearing loss, especially extreme cases.
Whether hearing aids will help improve your hearing can only be figured out by getting a hearing exam.
Treatment of Hearing Loss
Sensorineural hearing loss presently has no cure. But it might be possible to get treatment for your loss of hearing. The following are some ways that getting the correct treatment can help you:
- Guarantee your all-around quality of life remains high or is unaffected.
- Protect and preserve the hearing you still have.
- Keep isolation away by staying socially engaged.
- Successfully deal with any of the symptoms of hearing loss you might be suffering from.
- Stop mental decline.
Depending on how extreme your hearing loss is, this treatment can have many forms. One of the most common treatments is pretty simple: hearing aids.
Why Are Hearing Aids a Good Treatment for Hearing Loss?
People who have loss of hearing can use hearing aids to detect sounds and perform as effectively as possible. Fatigue is the result when the brain struggles to hear because hearing is hindered. As scientist gain more knowledge, they have recognized a greater risk of mental decline with a persistent lack of cognitive input. By letting your ears to hear again, hearing aids assist the restoration of cognitive function. as a matter of fact, it has been demonstrated that wearing hearing aids can slow cognitive decline by as much as 75%. Contemporary hearing aids will also help you pay attention to what you want to hear, and drown out background noises.
The Best Protection Is Prevention
If you get one thing from this little lesson, hopefully, it’s this: you should protect the hearing you’ve got because you can’t depend on recovering from loss of hearing. Certainly, you can have any blockages in your ear removed. But that doesn’t decrease the threat from loud sounds, noises you may not even think are loud enough to really be all that dangerous. That’s why it’s not a bad strategy to take the time to safeguard your ears. The better you protect your hearing today, the more treatment options you’ll have if and when you are eventually diagnosed with hearing loss. Recovery likely won’t be an option but treatment can help you continue living a great, full life. To find out what your best option is, schedule an appointment with a hearing care specialist.