How Your Body Recovers From Injury and Illness
The human body usually has the ability to recuperate from cuts, scrapes, and fractured bones, although the recovery process might vary in duration depending on the injury.
But you’re out of luck when it concerns restoring the tiny little hairs in your ears.
At least thus far.
Animals can heal damage to the cilia in their ears and get their hearing back, but people don’t have that ability (although scientists are tackling it).
If you damage the hearing nerves or the tiny hairs, you could experience irreversible hearing loss.
At What Point Does Hearing Loss Become Irreversible?
The first thing you think about when you discover you have hearing loss is whether it can come back.
Whether it will or not is dependent on a number of things.
Two principal forms of hearing loss:
- Blockage-related hearing loss: If your ear canal is partially or entirely obstructed, it can mimic the symptoms of hearing loss.
Debris, earwax, and growths are a few of the things that can cause an obstruction.
Your hearing typically returns to normal after the blockage is eliminated, and that’s the good news. - Damage-related hearing loss: A more common form of hearing impairment, responsible for around 90 percent of all instances, is triggered by damage rather than other factors.
This particular type of hearing loss, referred to as sensorineural hearing loss in scientific terms, is usually irreversible.
The hearing process is triggered by the impact of moving air on tiny hairs in the ear which send sound waves to the brain.
Your brain transforms these vibrations into auditory signals that are heard by you as sound.
Prolonged exposure to loud noises can, however, lead to permanent damage to your hearing.
Injury to the inner ear or nerve can also trigger sensorineural hearing loss.
In some instances of extreme hearing loss, a cochlear implant may have the ability to enhance hearing function.
A hearing assessment can assist in determining if hearing aids would improve your hearing ability.
Treatment of Hearing Loss
There is currently no cure for sensorineural hearing loss.
Treatment for your hearing loss might, however, be an option.
The following are a number of ways that getting the right treatment can help you:
- Ensure your general quality of life is unaffected or remains high.
- Effectively address any symptoms of hearing loss that you may be experiencing.
- Maintain and safeguard the hearing you still have.
- Keep solitude away by staying socially active.
- Stop cognitive decline.
The kind of treatment you obtain for your hearing loss will vary depending on the severity of the issue.
A frequently encouraged and fairly straightforward solution is the use of hearing aids.
What Role do Hearing Aids Play in Dealing With Hearing Loss?
Individuals going through hearing loss can use hearing aids to detect sounds which will allow them to function more effectively.
Fatigue happens when the brain has to work harder to process sound.
Scientists have come to realize that prolonged mental inactivity poses a substantial danger to cognitive health, as new findings clarify the value of continuous mental stimulation.
Hearing aids help you restore your cognitive function by allowing your ears to hear once more.
As a matter of fact, utilizing hearing aids has been shown to slow mental decline by as much as 75%.
Modern hearing aids enable you to concentrate on specific sounds you want to hear while decreasing background noise.
Prevention is The Best Defense
Preserving your hearing is essential as once it’s lost, it’s often irretrievable. If an object becomes lodged in your ear canal, it can usually be safely cleared out.
However, this doesn’t diminish the danger posed by loud sounds, which can be damaging even if they don’t seem overly loud to you.
So taking measures to safeguard your hearing is a wise decision.
The better you safeguard your hearing today, the more treatment potential you’ll have when and if you are inevitably diagnosed with hearing loss.
Receiving treatment can enable you to live a fulfilling life, even if total recovery is not achievable.
To identify what your best option is, schedule an appointment with our hearing care specialist.