The Healing Ability of Your Body
The physical body usually has the ability to recover from cuts, scrapes, and fractured bones, although the recovery process could vary in duration depending on the injury.
Sadly, there is no fix for the fragile hair cells in your ears once they become damaged.
At least thus far.
Animals can heal damage to the cilia in their ears and get their hearing back, but human beings don’t possess that ability (although scientists are tackling it).
That means you might have a permanent loss of hearing if you damage the hearing nerve or those little hairs.
When is Hearing Loss Permanent?
The initial thing you think about when you discover you have hearing loss is whether it will return.
Whether it will or not depends on a variety of things.
There are two basic forms of hearing loss:
- Obstruction-based hearing loss: When there’s something blocking your ear canal, you can experience all of the symptoms of hearing loss.
Earwax, debris, and abnormal growths can possibly obstruct the ear canal.
Your hearing generally goes back to normal after the blockage is cleared, and that’s the good news. - Hearing loss caused by damage: But there’s another, more widespread kind of hearing loss that accounts for around 90 percent of hearing loss.
This distinct form of hearing loss, referred to as sensorineural hearing loss in medical terms, is typically permanent.
Here’s how it works: tiny hairs in your ear vibrate when hit with moving air (sound waves).
Your brain changes these vibrations into auditory signals that are heard by you as sound.
But your hearing can, over time, be permanently harmed by loud noises.
Sensorineural hearing loss can also be triggered by harm to the inner ear or nerve.
In some cases of severe hearing loss, a cochlear implant may be able to enhance hearing function.
A hearing assessment can help in identifying if hearing aids would improve your hearing ability.
Solutions for Improving Your Hearing
Sensorineural hearing loss currently can’t be cured.
But it may be possible to obtain effective treatment.
The following are a few ways that getting the right treatment can help you:
- Ensure your overall quality of life is unaffected or remains high.
- Effectively deal with any of the symptoms of hearing loss you may be dealing with.
- Preserve and protect the hearing you still have.
- Keep solitude away by continuing to be socially engaged.
- Stop mental decline.
The type of treatment you obtain for your hearing loss will differ depending on the extent of the issue.
A frequently encouraged and relatively straightforward solution is the use of hearing aids.
What Role do Hearing Aids Play in Managing Hearing Loss?
Individuals who cope with hearing loss can use hearing aids to help them perceive sounds, allowing them to work as efficiently as they can.
Fatigue occurs when the brain needs to work overtime to process sound.
Scientists have come to realize that extended mental inactivity poses a considerable danger to cognitive health, as new findings clarify the value of continuous mental stimulation.
Hearing aids help you recover your cognitive function by allowing your ears to hear once more.
Studies have shown that wearing hearing aids can dramatically slow cognitive decline, with some studies indicating a decrease of up to 75%.
Modern hearing devices allow you to focus in on particular sounds you want to hear while minimizing background noise.
The Best Protection is Prevention
If you take away one thing from this little lesson, hopefully, it’s this: you need to protect the hearing you have because you can’t count on recuperating from hearing loss. If an object becomes lodged in your ear canal, it can usually be safely cleared out.
However, this doesn’t reduce the risk posed by high-volume sounds, which can be damaging even if they don’t seem overly loud to you.
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 steps to safeguard your hearing today.
Treatment can help you live a great, full life even if recovery isn’t possible.
To determine what your best choice is, schedule an appointment with our hearing care professionals.