You may want to stop in a sporting goods store and pick up a pair of earplugs on your next trip out. Once you have them in, consider how difficult life suddenly becomes because you aren't able to hear anything. Just holding a conversation with a friend can be a struggle. You will no longer be able to enjoy listening to the radio or watching television. Sensing motion within the home is hard to do. You do not hear a door slam or the beep of appliances.
You have just joined the society of auditory isolation. It is fortunate, however, that the loss of hearing is preventable in many instances. Fundamentally, there are two kinds of hearing loss. Conductive loss is defined as the situation where sounds are not reaching the inner ear, where they are interpreted.
Sensorineural hearing loss occurs when sounds can reach the inner ear, but are either made quieter or misinterpreted due to damage to the inner ear fibers, the auditory nerve, or the brain. Usually tinnitus, a ringing or buzzing in the ear, accompanies this form of hearing loss. Many people will attest to the fact that this condition is worse than the hearing loss. It takes a physician or audiologist to determine which kind of hearing loss you are suffering from. They will use a combination of your health history and diagnostic exams. Hearing tests will comfim a diagnosis.
If the issue is conductive hearing loss, the treatment can be as simple and painless as removing wax build-up from the ear canal, or can be as involved as surgery on the bones in the middle ear. If a person suffers from sensorineural loss, it is possible to regain most of the hearing through a digital hearing aid. However, some people with specific inner ear problems will require cochlear implants.
As a rule of thumb, whenever you must raise your voice over background noise for people to hear you, you should either move away from the source of the sound or use some protective plugs or headphones. The baby boomers who grew up blasting rock and roll music are now facing the consequences of this act. Some of us that experience the same type of loss grew up shooting guns, without the proper ear protection, in the military. Permanent hearing loss is the result of loud music, machines, motors, and munitions. By the age of 55, it's been stated that 20% of adults have some hearing loss, and by age 65, it will have affected 33%. On the upside, though, haring loss related to age don't always lead to completely loss of hearing.
If someone has a hearing loss in just one ear, they may be dealing with an acoustic neuroma - a benign tumor that can most likely affect the healing nerve. These tumors grow slowly, but left unchecked can cause total hearing loss as well as other problems and the only treatment is surgery. Many people must deal with chronic ear infections, such as infection of the middle ear, mumps, measles, scarlet fever and meningitis. A physician must diagnose and treat all of these conditions.
The flow of sound to the inner ear can be stopped by anything that block the ear canal. Many people clean their ears with cotton swabs too aggressively, under the impression they're removing ear wax when they are really pushing it deeper in. Swabs can be used lightly. If your ears have a tendency to have substantial wax buildup, check with your physician for advice. There are times when there's extra fluid due to infections or allergies, as well as a hardening of the bones in the middle ear.
Hearing can be adversely affected by certain medications, such as antibiotics, malaria medications, anti-arrhythmics, and even aspirin. Your hearing can be damaged by trauma, as well. Our hearing can be damaged by noise trauma such as fireworks or gunfire, pressure trauma received during underwater diving or flying in an airplane, a hole poked in the eardrum, or skull fractures. It would be wise to begin to utilize earplugs when appropriate. If you are someone who like to mow your own lawn, uses power tools on a regular basis, or is into target shooting, video games, or loud movies you should think seriously about wearing earplugs.
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