Your Body’s Ability to Heal
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. Though scientists are working on it, humans don’t repair the cilia in their ears like animals can. That means you could have permanent loss of hearing if you damage the hearing nerve or those little hairs.
At What Point Does Loss of Hearing Become Irreversible?
When you find out you have hearing loss, the first thing that most people think is will I get it back? Whether it will or not depends on a number of factors. There are two fundamental kinds of loss of hearing:
- Loss of hearing caused by damage: But about 90 percent of hearing loss is accounted for by another, more prevalent cause. Known technically as sensorineural hearing loss, this form of hearing loss is often irreversible. This is how it works: there are tiny hairs in your ear that vibrate when hit by moving air (sound waves). These vibrations are then changed, by your brain, into impulses that you hear as sound. But your hearing can, over time, be permanently harmed by loud noises. Sensorineural hearing loss can also be caused by damage to the nerve or to the inner ear. In some cases, especially in instances of severe hearing loss, a cochlear implant could help restore hearing.
- Hearing loss caused by an obstruction: When there’s something blocking your ear canal, you can have all the symptoms of hearing loss. Debris, earwax, and tumors are some of the things that can cause a blockage. The good news is that once the obstruction is cleared your hearing often returns to normal.
Whether hearing aids will help restore your hearing can only be determined by having a hearing exam.
Treatment of Hearing Loss
Sensorineural hearing loss currently has no cure. But that’s doesn’t mean you can’t get treatment for your hearing loss. The following are some ways that getting the right treatment can help you:
- Guarantee your overall quality of life is unaffected or remains high.
- Preserve and protect the hearing you have left.
- Stop cognitive decline.
- Keep isolation away by staying socially engaged.
- Cope successfully with any of the symptoms of hearing loss you may be suffering from.
Depending on how serious your loss of hearing is, this treatment can take on many kinds. 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 assist the ear with hearing loss to pick up sounds and perform the best they can. Fatigue is the result when the brain strains to hear because hearing is hampered. As time passes the lack of sensory input has been linked to a greater danger of mental decline. Your cognitive function can begin to be recovered by using hearing aids because they let your ears hear again. In fact, it has been shown that using hearing aids can slow cognitive decline by as much as 75%. Modern hearing aids can also help you focus on what you want to hear, and tune out background noises.
Prevention is The Best Protection
If you take away 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. Sure, if you have something stuck in your ear canal, you can probably have it removed. But that doesn’t mitigate the threat from loud sounds, noises you may not even consider to be loud enough to be all that dangerous. That’s why taking the time to protect your ears is a good idea. If you are eventually diagnosed with hearing loss, you will have more treatment possibilities if you take steps now to safeguard your hearing. Recovery likely won’t be an option but treatment can help you keep living a great, full life. Contact a hearing care professional to decide what your best option is.