The Recovery Ability of Your Body
The physical body can typically heal scratches, cuts, and fractured bones, though some injuries take longer than others.
But you’re out of luck when it concerns repairing the tiny little hairs in your ears.
Up to this point, at least.
Animals can repair damage to the hair cells in their ears and get their hearing back, but humans don’t have that ability (although scientists are working on it).
If you harm the hearing nerves or the tiny hairs, you could experience irreversible hearing loss.
At What Point Does Hearing Loss Become Irreversible?
Upon identifying hearing loss, the preliminary concern that frequently emerges is whether the hearing will be restored.
Whether it will or not is dependent on a variety of factors.
There are a couple of fundamental forms of hearing loss:
- Blockage-related hearing loss: If your ear canal is partly or totally blocked, it can mirror the symptoms of hearing loss.
Debris, earwax, and tumors are some of the things that can cause an obstruction.
The good news is, your hearing generally recovers once the obstruction is cleared away. - Damage-related hearing loss: A more prevalent type of hearing impairment, responsible for approximately 90 percent of all cases, is triggered by damage rather than other factors.
This specific kind of hearing loss, referred to as sensorineural hearing loss in medical terms, is typically irreversible.
Here’s how it works: tiny hairs in your ear vibrate 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.
Injury to the inner ear or nerve can also lead to sensorineural hearing loss.
A cochlear implant can help restore hearing in some cases of hearing loss, specifically in severe cases.
A hearing test will help you identify whether hearing aids will help improve your hearing.
Treatment of Hearing Loss
There is presently no cure for sensorineural hearing loss.
Treatment for your hearing loss might, however, be a possibility.
The following are some ways that obtaining the correct treatment can help you:
- Ensure your overall quality of life is unaffected or remains high.
- Effectively manage any symptoms of hearing loss that you may be encountering.
- Protect your remaining hearing to avoid additional damage.
- Maintain connections and community participation to prevent feelings of isolation and disconnection.
- Prevent cognitive decline.
The type of treatment you obtain for your hearing loss will differ depending on the extent of the issue.
One of the most common treatment solutions is quite simple: hearing aids.
What Part do Hearing Aids Play in Managing Hearing Impairment?
Individuals who cope with hearing loss can use hearing aids to help them perceive sounds, allowing them to work as effectively as they can.
Tiredness happens when the brain needs to work overtime to process sound.
Researchers have come to realize that prolonged mental inactivity presents a considerable risk to mental health, as new discoveries shed light on the value of ongoing mental stimulation.
Your cognitive function can start to be recovered by using hearing aids because they let your ears hear again.
In fact, using hearing aids has been shown to slow cognitive decline by as much as 75%.
Contemporary hearing aids will also allow you to focus on what you want to hear while tuning out background sounds.
The Best Protection is Prevention
Maintaining your hearing is crucial as once it’s lost, it’s often permanent. Certainly, if you get something lodged in your ear canal, you can most likely have it removed.
But that doesn’t reduce the danger posed by loud sounds that you may not believe to be loud enough to be all that hazardous.
So taking measures to safeguard your hearing is a good plan.
The better you protect your hearing today, the more treatment potential you’ll have when and if you are eventually diagnosed with hearing loss.
Receiving treatment can allow 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.