Hearing Loss
If you take your ears for granted, listen up: hearing loss is the third most common health problem in the U.S. It's also on the rise with nearly 36 million Americans now reporting lost hearing. When hearing goes, it may affect quality of life and relationships.
Causes of Hearing Loss
Certain conditions, including age, illness, and genetics, may contribute to hearing loss. Over several generations, modern life has added a host of ear-damaging elements to the list, including some medications and plenty of sources of loud, continuous noise.
Advanced age is the most common cause of hearing loss. One out of three people aged 65-74 has some level of hearing loss. After age 75, that ratio goes up to one out of every two people.
Researchers don't fully understand why hearing decreases with age. It could be that lifetime exposure to noise and other damaging factors slowly wear down the ears' delicate mechanics. Genes also play a role.
Noise wears down hearing if it's loud or continuous. In some workplaces, ears are exposed to dangerous noise levels every day. To understand the impact of noise, consider this: 44% of carpenters and 48% of plumbers report some hearing loss. Other noisy lines of work include the military, mining, manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation.
Even musicians, who literally create music for our ears, are at risk for noise-induced hearing loss. Some now wear special earplugs to protect their ears when they perform. The earplugs allow them to hear music without harming their ears' inner workings.
Certain medications can impair hearing and/or balance. More than 200 medications and chemicals have a track record of triggering hearing and/or balance side effects in addition to their disease-fighting capabilities. These include some antibiotics and chemotherapy drugs,aspirin, loop diuretics, a drug used to treat malaria, and several drugs for erectile dysfunction.
Sudden hearing loss, the rapid loss of 30 decibels or more of hearing ability, can happen over several hours or days. (A normal conversation is 60 decibels.) In nine out of 10 cases, sudden hearing loss affects only one ear. Though there are about 4,000 new cases of sudden hearing loss a year, the cause can only be found in 10% to 15% of cases.
Certain illnesses, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, anddiabetes, put ears at risk by interfering with the ears' blood supply. Otosclerosis is a bone disease of the middle ear and Ménière's diseaseaffects the inner ear. Both can cause hearing loss.
Trauma, especially that which involves a skull fracture or punctured eardrum, puts ears at serious risk for hearing loss.
Infection or ear waxcan block ear canals and reduce hearing.
Treatment for Hearing Loss
Treatment depends on the type and source of hearing loss. Surgery may reverse hearing loss caused by otosclerosis, scar tissue, or infection while Ménière's disease is sometimes treatable with medication and diet modification.
Hearing loss caused by infection can often be treated with antibiotics.
If you think your hearing loss stems from medication use, talk with your doctor about alternative drug options. Prompt medical treatment for sudden hearing loss may increase the chance of recovery.
People with permanent hearing loss need to learn how to function with the hearing they still have. Most people with permanent hearing loss can benefit from using a hearing aid -- yet only one in five eligible people use them. Hearing aids are tiny instruments you typically wear in or behind your ear that make sounds louder.
What can I expect from my hearing aids?
Unlike eyeglasses, hearing aids cannot provide complete correction for the impairment. No hearing aid will restore your hearing to normal or provide a perfect substitute for normal hearing. The benefits derived from wearing hearing aids, even the most technologically advanced, will vary from person to person. The greatest benefit will be experienced with consistent use of hearing aids.
What hearing aids can do:
- Hearing aids make sounds louder (amplify sounds) so that you can hear them. The goal is to make soft sounds audible, the sound of normal conversation comfortable, and loud sounds loud, but not too loud.
- Hearing aids improve a person's ability to understand speech (such as conversations) by amplifying the sounds (such as high-pitched consonants) not audible to the individual. The extent a hearing aid can improve speech understanding will depend on the degree of the person's hearing loss and how much noise is present in the listening situations.
- Some hearing aids can amplify high-pitched consonant sounds more than low-pitched vowel sounds to help you hear better in noisy situations.
- Some advanced hearing aid systems use multiple microphone technology to further enhance communication in noisy environments.
What hearing aids cannot do:
- Hearing aids cannot change how your ears and auditory system function. Hearing aids will not restore your hearing to normal.
- Hearing aids cannot completely eliminate troublesome background noise
- Hearing aids cannot stop the progression of hearing loss.
- Hearing aids cannot separate the sounds you want to hear from those you do not want to hear. That’s the role of the brain.
Do I need one or two hearing aids?
People with hearing loss, even in only one ear, benefit the most from wearing a hearing aid in each ear. The benefits of having a hearing aid in each ear include:
- Improved ability to understand speech in background noise
- Less need to turn up the volume of the hearing aid – lower volume reduces the chance of hearing aid ‘whistle’ (feedback)
- Less fatigue at the end of the day because it is easier to listen with both ears
- Improved ability to locate the source of sound
- Possible prevention of the slow loss of hearing in the ‘better’ ear
If there are questions and concerns call us at 0925-567-5329 • 0908-865-5662 • 0917-566-1932 • 458-0717 and schedule a consultation today
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