How Your Body Rebounds From Injury and Sickness
The human body can usually heal scratches, cuts, and fractured bones, though some injuries take longer than others.
But you’re out of luck when it comes to repairing the little hairs in your ears.
At least so far.
Animals can repair damage to the hair cells in their ears and get their hearing back, but human beings don’t possess that ability (although scientists are tackling it).
That means you might have a permanent loss of hearing if you damage the hearing nerve or those little hairs.
When is Hearing Loss Irreversible?
The first thing you think about when you find out you have hearing loss is whether it will return.
Whether it will or not is dependent on a variety of factors.
Two principal types of hearing loss:
- Blockage-related hearing impairment: If your ear canal is partly or completely obstructed, it can mirror the symptoms of hearing loss.
Debris, earwax, and tumors are a few of the things that can cause a blockage.
Your hearing typically goes back to normal after the blockage is eliminated, and that’s the good news. - Hearing loss due to damage: But there’s another, more widespread kind of hearing loss that accounts for approximately 90 percent of hearing loss.
Known clinically as sensorineural hearing loss, this kind of hearing loss is often irreversible.
Here’s how it works: tiny hairs in your ear move when hit with moving air (sound waves).
Your brain transforms these vibrations into auditory signals that are heard by you as sound.
Prolonged exposure to loud noises can, however, lead to permanent damage to your hearing.
Sensorineural hearing loss can also be triggered by injury to the inner ear or nerve.
A cochlear implant can help restore hearing in some cases of hearing loss, especially in extreme cases.
A hearing test can help in identifying if hearing aids would enhance your ability to hear.
Solutions for Enhancing Your Hearing
Sensorineural hearing loss currently has no cure.
But it might be possible to get effective treatment.
The following are a few ways that getting the right treatment can help you:
- Ensure your general quality of life is unaffected or remains high.
- Effectively manage any of the symptoms of hearing loss you may be dealing with.
- Preserve and safeguard the hearing you still have.
- Keep solitude away by staying socially active.
- Stop mental decline.
The type of treatment you receive for your hearing loss will vary depending on the severity of the problem.
A typically encouraged and relatively straightforward solution is the use of hearing aids.
How is Hearing Loss Managed by Hearing Aids
Individuals who have hearing loss can use hearing aids to help them perceive sounds, allowing them to work as efficiently as possible.
Fatigue occurs when the brain has to work harder to process sound.
Researchers have come to recognize that prolonged mental inactivity presents a considerable risk to mental health, as new discoveries shed light on the importance of continuous mental stimulation.
Hearing aids help you recover your mental function by allowing your ears to hear once more.
Studies have shown that using hearing aids can substantially delay cognitive decline, with some studies indicating a decrease of up to 75%.
Contemporary hearing aids will also allow you to pay attention to what you want to hear while tuning out background sounds.
Prevention is The Best Protection
Preserving your hearing is essential because once it’s lost, it’s usually irretrievable. If an object becomes lodged in your ear canal, it can usually be safely cleared out.
However, this doesn’t decrease the danger posed by loud sounds, which can be harmful even if they don’t seem excessively loud to you.
So taking steps to protect your hearing is a wise decision.
The better you safeguard your hearing now, the more treatment potential you’ll have when and if you are inevitably diagnosed with hearing loss.
Getting treatment can enable you to live a fulfilling life, even if total recovery is not achievable.
To determine what your best choice is, make an appointment with our hearing care professionals.
