Your Body’s Capacity to Recover

While some wounds take longer to heal than others, the human body normally has no problem mending cuts, scrapes, or broken bones. But when it comes to repairing the tiny little hairs in your ear, you’re out of luck. So far, at least. Even though scientists are working on it, humans don’t heal the cilia in their ears like animals can. That means you may have irreversible hearing loss if you injure the hearing nerve or those little hairs.

When Is Loss of Hearing Irreversible?

The first question you think of when you find out you have hearing loss is, will it come back? Whether it will or not depends on a number of things. There are two basic types of hearing loss:

• Damage based loss of hearing: But about 90 percent of hearing loss is accounted for by another, more common cause. Known clinically as sensorineural hearing loss, this type of hearing loss is often permanent. Here’s what happens: there are little hairs in your ear that move when hit with moving air (sound waves). These vibrations are then turned, by your brain, into signals that you hear as sound. But loud sounds can damage the hairs and, over time, permanently diminish your hearing. Damage to the inner ear or nerve can also cause sensorineural hearing loss. A cochlear implant can help improve hearing in some cases of hearing loss, specifically extreme cases.
• Blockage based loss of hearing: You can exhibit all the signs of hearing loss when there is something blocking your ear canal. Debris, earwax, and tumors are just a few of the things that can cause a blockage. The good news is that after the blockage is cleared your hearing often goes back to normal.

Whether hearing aids will help improve your hearing can only be determined by having a hearing test.

Treatment of Hearing Loss

Sensorineural hearing loss presently has no cure. But that’s not to say you can’t get treatment for your hearing loss. In fact, getting the proper treatment for your hearing loss can help you:

• Guarantee your overall quality of life is unaffected or remains high.
• Successfully deal with any of the symptoms of hearing loss you might be experiencing.
• Keep isolation away by staying socially engaged.
• Prevent mental decline.
• Preserve and protect the hearing you have left.

This approach can take many forms, and it’ll usually depend on how severe your loss of hearing is. One of the most common treatment options is pretty simple: hearing aids.

How is Hearing Loss Treated by Hearing Aids

People with hearing loss can use hearing aids to perceive sounds and perform as effectively as they can. Fatigue is caused when the brain strains to hear because hearing is hindered. As scientist gain more insights, they have recognized an increased danger of mental decline with a persistent lack of cognitive input. Your mental function can start to be restored by using hearing aids because they let your ears hear again. In fact, using hearing aids has been demonstrated to slow cognitive decline by as much as 75%. Background noise can also be drowned out by contemporary hearing aids enabling you to focus on what you want to hear.

The Best Protection Is Prevention

Hopefully, if you take one thing away from this knowledge, it this: you should safeguard the hearing you’ve got because you can’t count on recovering from hearing loss. Certainly, you can have any blockages in your ear cleared. But that doesn’t mitigate the threat from loud noises, noises you may not even consider to be loud enough to be all that harmful. That’s why taking the time to safeguard your ears is a smart idea. The better you safeguard your hearing today, the more treatment options you’ll have when and if you are eventually diagnosed with loss of hearing. Recovery likely won’t be a possibility but treatment can help you keep living a great, full life. To determine what your best choice is, make an appointment with a hearing care professional.