Hearing Loss

Hearing Loss Symptoms

Feeling Isolated about your Hearing Loss

When you’re around the dinner table, do you find it difficult to follow along with conversations? You have turned up the volume to the highest setting and still missing parts of phone conversations.

You can feel really isolated when you have hearing loss. Your brain and mental function can be impacted by even minor hearing loss, which is dangerous because it often goes unnoticed in its early stages.

Understand the Facts about Hearing Loss

Is hearing loss a very common condition? Globally, more than 466 million individuals are impacted by hearing loss, according to some estimates. Hearing loss is a condition that can have many causes, types, and treatment options and is one of the most prevalent health concerns in the world. Health officials are heavily investing in educational programs to bring awareness to the fact that hearing loss is surprisingly preventable. Understanding the facts about hearing loss will put you in a better position to safeguard your own ability to hear.

Frequently overlooked Hearing Loss Symptoms

Maybe you think hearing loss means you simply have a hard time hearing. But it’s not uncommon for the early indications of hearing loss to go undetected or even just ignored. Some signs of hearing loss include:

It sounds like people’s voices are muffled when they speak

When there is background noise, like crowd noise, hearing becomes a real challenge

You constantly need to turn up the volume on your devices

You avoid going to movies due to trouble hearing softer dialogue

Isolation from social situations, especially louder settings and bigger groups of people

You are getting plenty of rest, but still feel exhausted

You frequently find yourself tuning out colleagues and other around you

Basic cognitive functions and memory are becoming a struggle for you

Contact us for a hearing test if you are noticing any of these initial symptoms.

Hear Loss Causes

The underlying cause of hearing loss is sometimes fairly obvious. But identifying one particular cause of hearing loss, for most people, will be difficult. There can be a combination of slight problems, for instance, that interact in surprising ways to cause hearing loss. Here are a few common causes of hearing loss:
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Noise Damage

Exposure to overly loud noise, causing damage to your ears, is probably the most prevalent cause of chronic hearing loss. Gradual and irreversible deterioration of hearing ability can be caused by persistent exposure to sounds over the 85dB threshold.

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Physical Obstruction

Hearing is dependent on the movement of sound vibrations traveling first into your outer ear, then through your middle ear via your ear canal. Loss of hearing can be the result if there’s a blockage anywhere in that passageway. When the blockage is removed, hearing will usually return to normal.

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Congenital Issues

For younger people, like children and infants, the most prevalent cause of hearing loss is birth defects or congenital problems. Even so, many hearing problems won’t become apparent until the individual gets older.

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Age

Age may be the main cause of hearing loss in some situations. But noise-induced hearing loss and age-related hearing loss can be difficult to differentiate. The two are functionally identical in many situations.

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Trauma

Hearing loss can be caused by a variety of trauma types. That may, in some situations, be ear trauma. Trauma to the brain can cause both short and long-term hearing loss in other scenarios.

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Infection

Both primary and secondary infections can impact your ears. Severe or chronic ear infections can cause damage to your hearing ability, in some cases resulting in hearing loss.

Types of Hearing Loss

Generally, there are two main categories of hearing loss:

Conductive Hearing Loss

When there is a blockage anywhere along the hearing pathway it causes this type of hearing loss. There could be a non-cancerous growth, for instance, or the blockage could be due to an infection. Even something as basic as earwax impaction could be the cause of the obstruction. Whatever the cause, the blockage effectively causes hearing loss by stopping sound waves from traveling through the ear canal.

Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Stereocilia, which are tiny hair cells in the ear, are responsible for our ability to hear. These hairs send signals to the brain after being exposed to waves of sound. Those signals are then converted by the brain into sounds that are understandable. Normally, noise exposure is the cause of this damage, and those little hairs never repair or regrow. Irreversible damage to hearing is the result.

With conductive hearing loss, hearing will usually return to normal when the blockage is removed. In some cases, both types of hearing loss could be present simultaneously.

Treatments for Hearing Loss

Most hearing loss can be treated even if it can’t be cured. Regular hearing assessments might be all that is required in the less extreme cases. But when there is more significant hearing loss, hearing aids can be an effective treatment.

There are a large number of sophisticated technologies packed inside of a modern hearing aid. Making voices and sounds sharper and clearer is exactly where innovations like machine learning-enabled sound balancing shine. And modern hearing aids come with an impressive array of other useful technologies, like Bluetooth connectivity, automatic emergency contacting, and step counting, to name just a few.
At first glance, it may seem excessive to pack that much technology into a hearing aid. But for individuals who cope with hearing loss, these technologies can be very helpful. Communication is improved with sound balancing which favors voices. Essential social bonds can be preserved and connection to the outside world can remain intact with features like Bluetooth. For someone with hearing impairment, maintaining quality of life is what all of these technologies were designed to accomplish.

Why Is It Essential To Effectively Manage Hearing Loss?

It’s very common for hearing loss to be treated by the use of hearing aids. Getting that treatment is really important, and not only for your hearing.

Health concerns that are associated with hearing loss can best be managed by getting treatment as early as possible. Contact us right away to make an appointment for a hearing test.

Schedule An Appointment

Ready to take your hearing health into your own hands? Call our office today to schedule a visit with a hearing care professionals. With a variety of hearing technology available, we’ll find the right fit for you!

(361) 414-9066