How We Can Cause Hearing Loss?

The importance of five senses has already been noted and the catastrophic loss of either one of them is considered to be a great problem. Losing an arm or leg in an accident is far better than losing eyesight and hearing. When you lose your arm, you can still walk, talk, see and hear. So does, when you lose your leg. However, the most devastating incapacitation is the sensory loss like the loss of eyesight and hearing. Just like eyesight, hearing is very important as well to make individual appreciate sound, voice and music. Otherwise, they are all mute, never exist. Hearing is also important to make anyone respond to the stimuli like responding to the call, understanding verbal instructions and so on.

There are many factors that can cause hearing loss including earwax buildup, infections and damage in the inner ear. In order to understand how hearing loss takes place, it may be helpful to understand how we hear. Hearing occurs when the sound wave reaches to the inner structures of our ear. The sound wave will then be converted into nerve signals which the brain interprets as sound.

Our ear is composed of three major parts namely; the outer ear, middle and inner ear. The sound wave passes through the outer ear and vibrations occur at the end of the ear canal, in the Tympanic membrane called eardrum. The tympanic membrane, abbreviated TM and the small bones in the middle ear, namely; the hammer, stirrup and anvil, will amplify the sound as they travel to the inner structures of the ear. The vibrations will then pass through the fluid in the cochlea, the snail-shaped form in the inner ear.

Hearing loss can occur when there is a damage to the inner ear. Age and exposure to loud sound or noise can cause wear and tear on the hair cells or nerve cells in the corti, that is responsible of sending signals to the brain. When these nerve cells are missing or damaged, the electrical signals may not be converted as efficiently, so thus hearing loss occurs. The high pitched noise or voice may become muffled to the affected person. It becomes more difficult to pick up words against the noise in the background. When you have family history to hearing loss, you may become prone to these kind of changes. This type of hearing loss is called sensorineural hearing loss and is permanent.

The increasing buildup of earwax in the outer ear can cause hearing loss. Earwax is called cerumen, a substance that is secreted in the ear canal to protect the skin of the outer ear of human and other mammals against infections and foreign harmful things. However, when earwax becomes hard and covers the ear canal where sound wave passes through, a person may have difficulty in hearing. This often causes conductive hearing loss that can be treatable when earwax is removed from the canal.

Ear infections and the abnormal growth of bone or tumors in the outer or middle ear can cause hearing loss. A ruptured eardrum can also cause hearing loss. This is due to when there is a sudden blasts of noise, poking the eardrum with any object, sudden change in pressure and infections can rupture the eardrum and thereby could result to hearing loss.

Hearing loss or deafness may now be recovered with the help of analog or digital hearing aids. The hearing aids are very helpful when the hearing loss is medically treatable. For more information about hearing aids, you may visit audicus.com.