From the moment you hear your parent’s voice as an infant and start taking in the world around you, your ears play a key role in how you perceive everything. The relationship between what you see and what you hear makes up a vast amount of the information you gather from the world around you, and over time, hearing loss can compromise how that works.
According to statistics from the National Council on Aging (NCOA), just over 60 million teens 12 and older and over 44 million adults 20 and up have some form of hearing loss, and those numbers only get higher as you reach your mid-60s and above. This problem is a reality for many people, and if you’re struggling with the signs of hearing loss, you should understand what causes it and how it can be treated.
Residents of Orlando and Kissimmee, Florida, who have hearing problems can get help from Drs. Wade Han, Elvira Livigni De Armas, and the team at Florida Ear Nose Throat & Facial Plastic Surgery Center.
Now, let’s review the types of hearing loss people experience, the common causes and signs of these losses, and what can be done to treat and manage them.
The form of hearing loss you have can be down to the area of your ear that’s affected:
Hearing loss can become bad enough that it feels like you can’t hear the world around you, leading to frustration, anxiety, depression, and anger. In younger kids, it can affect their ability to learn, and in older adults, it can lead to dementia.
Here are some things that can lead to losing your hearing:
Hearing issues can have different symptoms, such as fluid pressure in your ears, difficulty understanding people and things you watch, balance problems, tinnitus (ringing or buzzing noises), eardrum pain, and ear discharges.
Obviously, different hearing causes call for different treatments, which can range from removing obstructions like earwax to a range of hearing aids. There are a few different types of hearing aids, such as the external ones you often see to help with inner ear damage or cochlear implants when those aren’t effective. These implants avoid trying to improve ear canal sound and instead transmit sounds through electrodes, which the brain translates.
Surgery is an option for placing the cochlear implants and managing problems with repeated infections that cause fluid buildup. Not all forms of hearing loss can be avoided, but you can work to prevent further damage and adapt to your hearing quality. Face the people you’re speaking to, turn off noises in the background that can hinder hearing, get people’s attention before speaking, let others know you have hearing problems, and look for quiet areas whenever possible.
Hearing loss affects millions of people, and if you have problems with it, please make an appointment with Drs. Han, Livigni De Armas, and the Florida Ear Nose Throat & Facial Plastic Surgery Center team today.
