Hearing loss is about pitch as much as volume. It’s conceivable you have some level of high-frequency hearing loss if you can understand what the men in the room are saying but you can’t hear women and children. This is a very prevalent form of hearing loss so you’re not alone.
high-frequency Hearing Loss Symptoms
With high-frequency hearing loss, you may still be able to pick up the volume of a woman’s voice or a child’s voice, but consonant sounds that allow conversations to be easily understood, get muddled. Usually, consonant sounds such as t, th, ch, soft c, s, sh, f, k, and h are the most difficult to differentiate. So, it may sound like a woman or child is mumbling, even though they actually aren’t. Comprehending a child’s joke or your loved ones question about dinner plans becomes very difficult because you have lost the ability to differentiate these sounds. Isolation from friends and family, sadness, and frustration can be the result.
Other sounds within the high-frequency hearing loss range (2000 Hz) are missed by people who have this condition. This includes birds chirping, high musical notes, whistles or squeaks. Even at low volumes a man’s voice, thunder, and bass musical notes, might be relatively easy to discern.
Reasons For High-Frequency Hearing Loss
Frequently imperceptible at first, high-frequency hearing loss, the most widespread kind of hearing loss, can creep up on you as you get older. Besides aging, excessive noise exposure, certain medications and a number of medical problems like cardiovascular disease can result in high-frequency hearing loss.
The tiny hair-like sensors in the cochlea are damaged by all of these situations. It’s these tiny cells that pick up sound input and send it to the brain for processing. The higher pitched sounds are often the first to be hard to understand because the high-frequency cells get injured more easily than the lower pitched cells.
How to Prevent High-Frequency Hearing Loss
You can do several things to slow down or stop the progress of high-frequency hearing loss even though you can’t stop your ears from getting older. Some of these include:
- Using hearing protection in noisy situations.A certain sign that your ears might be getting injured is if you have to shout to be heard in a loud location. Heavy traffic, motorcycles revving, power tool sounds, the loud stereo systems at movies or live music concerts are all good examples of times when popping in the ear-plugs is a smart idea. Noise-canceling earphones are also a good option in certain circumstances, but might not fit in your pocket as easily as ear-plugs.
- Quieter things are more ideal. Select the quietest product by checking the noise rating of the appliances. And don’t be reluctant to ask the restaurant manager to turn the music down if it’s hard to hear your friends at dinner.
- When eliminating earwax, never utilize a swab or any other small object. This can push old ear wax into your ear canal and blunt your ability to hear. Gently clean out excessive earwax with a washcloth when you’re done showering, or ask your hearing care specialist about different ear irrigation techniques for eliminating earwax without damaging your hearing.
- Taking good care of your overall health. Smoking can damage your hearing. Poor health, poor nutrition, or lack of exercise can also injure your hearing. Maintain your hearing by taking care of your general health.
- If you use any medication, ask your doctor if it has any impact on hearing. high-frequency hearing loss can be caused by at least 200 different kinds of medications. Your hearing can even be injured by high doses of aspirin. Check with your doctor to see if there are possibilities less likely to injure your hearing. Stay in close touch with your hearing health care provider if you can’t abstain from taking a particular medication. Additional hearing loss can be prevented by treatment.
Treatment For High-Frequency Hearing Loss
Presently, the most effective strategy for treating high-frequency hearing loss is hearing aids. And since this is the most common type of hearing loss, there are many different models a person can choose from. So that they are clearer to the user, hearing aids can increase high pitched sounds. You can immediately manage your level and extent of hearing loss by having your hearing care pro fine-tune your hearing aid to increase your ability to hear sounds at the right level. For circumstances such as talking on the phone, listening to children, having dinner at a restaurant, or business meetings several hearing aids can be controlled by your phone and have directional microphones for fine-tuning.
If you think that you might be dealing with high-frequency hearing loss, make an appointment for a hearing test. Chances are, there are personally-customized answers that can enhance your capacity to hear your grandchild’s priceless one-liners.