How Your Body Rebounds From Injury and Illness
The human body can normally repair scratches, cuts, and broken bones, though some injuries take longer than others.
Sadly, there is no fix for the fragile hair cells in your ears once they become damaged.
At least so far.
Animals have the capacity to restore damaged cilia in their ears, recovering their hearing, a trait that researchers are currently attempting to replicate in humans.
That means you might have an irreversible loss of hearing if you damage the hearing nerve or those tiny hairs.
When is Hearing Loss Permanent?
Upon identifying hearing loss, the initial concern that often emerges is whether the hearing will be restored.
Whether it will or not depends on a variety of factors.
Two principal kinds of hearing loss:
- Blockage-related hearing loss: If your ear canal is partly or entirely blocked, it can mimic the symptoms of hearing loss.
Debris, earwax, and growths are some of the things that can cause an obstruction.
The good news is, your hearing typically recovers once the obstruction is cleared away. - Hearing loss caused by damage: But there’s another, more widespread type of hearing loss that makes up approximately 90 percent of hearing loss.
This specific form of hearing loss, referred to as sensorineural hearing loss in medical terms, is usually permanent.
Here’s how it works: tiny hairs in your ear vibrate when struck with moving air (sound waves).
These vibrations are then transformed, by your brain, into signals that you hear as sound.
Prolonged exposure to loud noises can, however, lead to permanent damage to your hearing.
Sensorineural hearing loss can also be triggered by harm to the inner ear or nerve.
A cochlear implant can help reestablish hearing in some instances of hearing loss, especially in extreme cases.
A hearing exam will help you determine whether hearing aids will help enhance your hearing.
Solutions for Improving Your Hearing
There is currently no cure for sensorineural hearing loss.
Treatment for your hearing loss may, however, be a possibility.
The following are a few ways that obtaining the right treatment can help you:
- Maintain a good total standard of living and well-being.
- Successfully deal with any of the symptoms of hearing loss you might be suffering from.
- Preserve and protect the hearing you still have.
- Keep isolation away by continuing to be socially active.
- Stop mental decline.
The form of treatment you obtain for your hearing loss will differ depending on the severity of the problem.
A typically recommended and fairly straightforward solution is the use of hearing aids.
How is Hearing Loss Treated by Hearing Aids
Individuals who cope with hearing loss can use hearing aids to help them perceive sounds, allowing them to work as effectively as they can.
Fatigue happens when the brain has to work overtime to process sound.
As researchers acquire more knowledge, they have recognized a more significant threat of cognitive decline with a consistent lack of cognitive input.
Hearing aids help you recover your mental function by allowing your ears to hear once more.
As a matter of fact, utilizing hearing aids has been shown to slow mental decline by as much as 75%.
Modern hearing aids will also allow you to pay attention to what you want to hear while tuning out background sounds.
The Best Protection is Prevention
If you take away one thing from this article, hopefully, it’s this: you need to protect the hearing you have because you can’t depend on recuperating from hearing loss. If an object becomes lodged in your ear canal, it can likely be safely removed.
But that doesn’t decrease the danger posed by loud sounds that you may not believe to be loud enough to be all that hazardous.
That’s why making the effort to protect your ears is a smart idea.
If you are ever diagnosed with hearing loss in the future, you will have more treatment options if you take steps to safeguard your hearing now.
Treatment can help you live a great, full life even if recovery isn’t a possibility.
To determine what your best option is, make an appointment with our hearing care experts.