Hearing loss is about pitch as much as about volume. If it’s hard to comprehend the speech of a woman or a child, but you can still, for the most part, understand the men in the room, you could have some amount of high-frequency hearing loss. This is a very prevalent kind of hearing loss so you’re not alone.
high-frequency Hearing Loss Symptoms
With high-frequency hearing loss, consonant sounds that allow conversations to be understood, get muddled even though you may still be able to register the volume of a woman or a child’s voice. Usually the most difficult to pick up are consonant sounds like ch, th, t, soft s, c, sh, k, f, and h. Even though a woman or a child is not mumbling, it might sound that way. Understanding a child’s joke or a family member’s question about dinner plans becomes very difficult because you have lost the ability to differentiate these sounds. This can cause frustration, despair and social isolation from your circle of friends and family.
Other sounds within the high-frequency hearing loss range (2000 Hz) are lost to people with this condition. This includes high musical notes, birds chirping, and squeaks or sirens. Low-frequency sounds such as bass musical notes, the rumble of thunder or a man’s voice may still be relatively easy to discern, even if the volume isn’t that loud.
Causes of High-Frequency Hearing Loss
As the most typical type of hearing loss, high-frequency hearing loss can creep up on people as they get older, usually imperceptibly in the beginning. high-frequency hearing loss can be caused by other things in addition to aging like some medical problems like cardiovascular disease, excessive noise exposure, and some medications.
The tiny hair-like sensors in the cochlea are injured by all of these situations. Sound input is received by these little cells and sent to the brain for processing. The high-frequency sensory cells are more sensitive to injury than the low-frequency sensory cells, which is why the higher-pitched sounds are frequently the first to be difficult to understand.
How to Prevent High-Frequency Hearing Loss
While you can’t stop your ears from growing older, there are many steps you can take to prevent or at least slow the progression of high-frequency hearing loss. Some of these include:
- If you take any medication, ask your doctor if it has any impact on hearing. At least 200 different types of medications will cause or worsen high-frequency hearing loss. Even aspirin at high doses can damage your hearing. To learn if there are choices less likely to damage your hearing, consult your doctor. If you can’t avoid using a specific medication, stay in close contact with your hearing care specialist for regular hearing loss and balance testing. Additional hearing loss can be avoided by treatment.
- Seeking out quiet things. Pick the quietest product by examining 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 dinner companions.
- In loud settings, use hearing protection. If you have to yell to be heard in a noisy setting, this is a sure indication the noise might injure your hearing. Some instances of occasions when using ear protection are live music concerts, motorcycles revving, running power tools, and a loud stereo. Noise-canceling headphones are also a good alternative in some scenarios, but may not fit inside your pocket as easily as ear-plugs.
- Your health is important so take care of it. Your hearing can be damaged by smoking. Poor health, poor nutrition, or not enough exercise can also hurt your hearing. Try to take good care of your health in all ways and this can protect your hearing also.
- Never using a swab (or other small objects) to get rid of ear wax. Your capacity to hear is blunted when you push old earwax against your eardrum. A hot shower is normally enough o drain exes earwax but if this doesn’t work ask your hearing care professional for other ways to irrigate your ears.
Treatment For High-Frequency Hearing Loss
Hearing aids are presently the most effective strategy for treating high-frequency hearing loss. And because this is the most common type of hearing loss, there are many different designs a person can choose from. So that they are crisper to the user, hearing aids can boost high pitched sounds. You can directly manage your level and extent of hearing loss by having your hearing care professional fine-tune your hearing aid to enhance your ability to hear sounds at the correct level. For circumstances such as talking on the phone, listening to children, having dinner at a restaurant, or business meetings many hearing aids can be manipulated by your phone and have directional microphones for fine-tuning.
If you think that you may be dealing with high-frequency hearing loss, schedule a hearing test. Chances are, there are individually-tailored answers that can enhance your capacity to hear your grandchild’s precious one-liners.