5 Things That Put You At High Risk Of Losing Your Hearing

No matter what age you are, it’s a good time to think about your hearing health. From damaging noise levels to the aging process, there are several ways you can put your hearing health in jeopardy. Luckily, there are many things you can do to take care of your hearing health, including arming yourself with the information needed to make the right choices:

• Presbycusis is the technical name for age-related hearing loss – it is very common
• Exposure to loud noises at home or at work can damage your hearing irreparably
• People can be predisposed to hearing loss because of unavoidable genetic factors
• Occupational hazards and illnesses can cause premature hearing loss as well

Most people don’t think about their hearing health until something goes wrong with it, and they need to visit an audiologist, but making lifestyle changes early on can help you to avoid the early onset of hearing loss and enhance your life quality. Look out for the five risk factors in the article below.

Getting Older

Cells divide and people get older – that’s the system. Cells are incredibly intelligent and creative entities that are programmed for a range of uses, but in order to function, they need to divide and multiply; it is this division that causes us to grow older and die; it also creates hearing loss.

In general, people over the age of fifty are at a higher risk of age-related hearing loss for two reasons, their cells are dividing and they have several decades of lived experience during which time they have been in contact with loud and sustained noise. The ear’s inner structures can be damaged over time, and start to break down in later life, so have your hearing checked.

Loud Noises  

One of the most common risk factors for hearing loss is loud noises. These can be one-off events like a live concert or a gun going off; it can also be sustained loud noise from a workplace or a living situation. Loud noise damages and destroyed the cilia hairs in the ear.

Cilia are fragile hairs that sit on an auditory organ called the cochlea – a snail-shaped organ deep in the inner ear cavity. Sound waves enter the ear canal and are amplified by the eardrum; when the cilia received the sound, they vibrate and turn the sound wave into an electrical signal for the brain. Without these hairs, the brain cannot interpret the sounds affecting hearing.

Genetic Factors

When it comes to effective hearing, there are some things that are under our control, such as our lifestyle choices and whether we want a hearing aid or not. Other things are indeterminate, such as our genetic predisposition to hearing loss and the general quality of our hearing health.

Genetic factors can leave us vulnerable to ear infections and other issues that affect our hearing throughout our lives; these genetic factors can also influence when we start to lose our hearing and the effectiveness of a hearing aid device. If you experience some hearing loss and you suspect that it runs in the family, it’s best to visit a medical professional or qualified audiologist.

Occupational Noises  

Choosing to avoid a live concert to protect your hearing is one thing but working in a loud environment is a different situation – you have to attend your work. Occupational noises are one of the main factors in age-related hearing loss because people have not taken precautions.

If you have worked for decades on a factory floor, a garage, or the runway of an airport, you are a prime candidate for age-related hearing loss. These environments use machinery that scores highly on dangerous decibel levels, and sustained exposure to them destroys the cilia hairs over the years. The best solution is to wear hearing protection and find out about a hearing device.

Some Illnesses 

It is not only genetic factors and lifestyle that can damage your hearing; some illnesses can as well. Diseases such as meningitis, otosclerosis, Meniere’s disease, pneumonia and presbycusis are some of the most common illnesses that can affect someone’s hearing quality.

These diseases damage different parts of the inner ear, such as the cochlear and the middle ear, making it hard to recover your original hearing function. If your hearing has been damaged by an unfortunate illness, you might require a hearing device. Nowadays, hearing devices can be found to suit most requirements and lifestyles – they can be very discreet or virtually invisible.

If you are worried about your hearing or you fret over losing your hearing in later life, it’s time to pay attention to the risk factors and make some lifestyle changes to support better hearing health. Contact Hearing Solutions Inc at (701) 566-7280 for more information on hearing loss.