The Recovery Capability of Your Body
The physical body can generally repair scratches, cuts, and broken bones, although some injuries take longer than others.
But you’re out of luck when it comes to restoring the tiny little hairs in your ears.
At least so far.
Animals can heal damage to the hair cells in their ears and get their hearing back, but humans don’t possess that ability (although scientists are tackling it).
If you damage the hearing nerves or the tiny hairs, you could experience permanent hearing loss.
At What Point Does Hearing Loss Become Permanent?
The first thing you consider when you learn you have hearing loss is whether it will return.
Whether it will or not depends on a number of factors.
Two primary forms of hearing loss:
- Obstruction-based hearing loss: When there’s something obstructing your ear canal, you can experience all the symptoms of hearing loss.
Debris, earwax, and growths are some of the things that can cause a blockage.
The good news is, your hearing normally bounces back when the blockage is removed. - Hearing loss due to damage: But there’s another, more widespread type of hearing loss that makes up around 90 percent of hearing loss.
This distinct type of hearing loss, known as sensorineural hearing loss in medical terms, is typically permanent.
The hearing process is triggered by the impact of moving air on tiny hairs in the ear which transmit sound waves to the brain.
These vibrations are then modified, by your brain, into signals that you perceive as sound.
But your hearing can, over time, be permanently harmed by loud noises.
Injury to the inner ear or nerve can also cause sensorineural hearing loss.
A cochlear implant can help bring back hearing in some cases of hearing loss, particularly in severe cases.
A hearing examination can assist in determining if hearing aids would improve your hearing ability.
Treatment of Hearing Loss
There is presently no cure for sensorineural hearing loss.
Treatment for your hearing loss might, however, be an option.
Advantages of correct treatment for your wellness:
- Ensure your general quality of life is unaffected or remains high.
- Successfully manage any symptoms of hearing loss that you might be encountering.
- Preserve and protect the hearing you still have.
- Maintain connections and community involvement to avoid feelings of isolation and disconnection.
- Stop mental decline.
This treatment can take many forms, and it’ll typically be dependent on how extreme your hearing loss is.
One of the most common treatment options is rather simple: hearing aids.
How is Hearing Loss Treated by Hearing Aids
Individuals who have hearing loss can use hearing aids to help them perceive sounds, allowing them to work as effectively as possible.
Fatigue is the outcome when the brain strains to hear.
As scientists acquire more knowledge, they have identified a more significant danger of mental decline with a persistent lack of cognitive stimulation.
Your cognitive function can start to be recovered by using hearing aids because they help your ears hear again.
In fact, using hearing aids has been shown to slow mental decline by as much as 75%.
Cutting-edge hearing aids allow you to concentrate on specific sounds you wish to hear while decreasing background noise.
The Best Protection is Prevention
If you take away one thing from this article, hopefully, it’s this: you need to safeguard the hearing you have because you can’t count on recovering from hearing loss. Certainly, if you get something stuck in your ear canal, you can probably have it cleared.
But that doesn’t reduce the danger posed by loud sounds that you may not think are loud enough to be all that hazardous.
So taking measures to protect your hearing is a good plan.
If you are ever diagnosed with hearing loss later in life, you will have more treatment possibilities if you take measures to protect your hearing now.
Receiving treatment can enable you to lead a fulfilling life, even if total recovery is not achievable.
To identify what your best option is, schedule an appointment with our hearing care professionals.