How Your Body Bounces Back From Injury and Illness
The human body typically has the ability to recover from cuts, scrapes, and fractured bones, although the healing process may vary in duration depending on the damage.
But you’re out of luck when it pertains to restoring the tiny little hairs in your ears.
Up to this point, at least.
Animals can repair damage to the cilia in their ears and get their hearing back, but people don’t possess that ability (though scientists are tackling it).
That means you may have an irreversible loss of hearing if you damage the hearing nerve or those little hairs.
At What Point Does Hearing Loss Become Permanent?
The first thing you think of when you find out you have hearing loss is whether it will return.
Whether it will or not depends on a number of things.
Two principal types of hearing loss:
- Blockage-related hearing impairment: If your ear canal is partially or totally obstructed, it can mimic the symptoms of hearing loss.
Debris, earwax, and growths are a few of the things that can cause a blockage.
Your hearing generally returns to normal after the obstruction is eliminated, and that’s the good news. - Damage-related hearing loss: A more common kind of hearing impairment, responsible for roughly 90 percent of all instances, is triggered by damage instead of other factors.
Known clinically as sensorineural hearing loss, this kind of hearing loss is usually irreversible.
Here’s how it works: tiny hairs in your ear vibrate when hit with moving air (sound waves).
These vibrations are then transformed, by your brain, into signals that you hear as sound.
But your hearing can, over time, be permanently harmed by loud noises.
Damage to the inner ear or nerve can also cause sensorineural hearing loss.
A cochlear implant can help reestablish hearing in some cases of hearing loss, specifically in extreme cases.
A hearing exam will help you identify whether hearing aids will help enhance your hearing.
Solutions for Improving Your Hearing
There is presently no cure for sensorineural hearing loss.
But it may be possible to obtain effective treatment.
The following are a number of ways that obtaining the correct treatment can help you:
- Make sure your overall quality of life is unaffected or remains high.
- Effectively manage any of the symptoms of hearing loss you might be dealing with.
- Preserve and safeguard the hearing you still have.
- Keep isolation away by staying socially active.
- Prevent cognitive degeneration.
The kind of treatment you obtain for your hearing loss will differ depending on the severity of the condition.
One of the most prevalent treatment solutions is rather simple: hearing aids.
What Role do Hearing Aids Play in Managing Hearing Impairment?
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 overtime to process sound.
Scientists have come to recognize that extended mental inactivity presents a considerable risk to cognitive health, as new discoveries shed light on the importance of continuous mental stimulation.
Hearing aids help you restore your cognitive function by allowing your ears to hear again.
As a matter of fact, using hearing aids has been shown to slow cognitive decline by as much as 75%.
Cutting-edge hearing devices enable you to concentrate on particular sounds you wish to hear while minimizing background noise.
Prevention is The Best Protection
Maintaining your hearing is crucial because once it’s gone, it’s usually irretrievable. Certainly, if you get something lodged in your ear canal, you can probably have it cleared.
However, this doesn’t decrease the danger posed by high-volume sounds, which can be harmful even if they don’t seem excessively loud to you.
That’s why making the effort to safeguard your ears is a smart plan.
The better you safeguard your hearing today, the more treatment potential you’ll have when and if you are inevitably diagnosed with hearing loss.
Getting treatment can allow you to lead a fulfilling life, even if total recovery is not achievable.
To determine what your best choice is, schedule an appointment with our hearing care professionals.