Hearing loss is about pitch as much as volume. It’s likely you have some amount of high-frequency hearing loss if you can comprehend what the men in the room are saying but you can’t hear children and women. You’re not alone…this is the most common type of hearing loss.
high-frequency Hearing Loss Warning Signs
With high-frequency hearing loss, you might still be able to register the volume of a woman’s voice or a child’s voice, but consonant sounds that make conversations easy to understand, get muddled. Normally the most difficult to differentiate are consonant sounds such as ch, th, t, soft s, c, sh, k, f, and h. Even though a woman or a child is not mumbling, it may sound like they are. 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. Separation from family and friends, sadness, and frustration can be the result.
Other sounds within the high-frequency hearing loss range (2000 Hz) are missed by people with 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, may be fairly easy to detect.
Reasons For High-Frequency Hearing Loss
As the most common type of hearing loss, high-frequency hearing loss can creep up on people as they get older, frequently imperceptibly in the beginning. Apart from aging, too much noise exposure, certain medications and a number of medical conditions such as cardiovascular disease can result in high-frequency hearing loss.
These scenarios all harm to the tiny, hair-like sensory cells inside of the cochlea. It’s these tiny cells that receive sound input and deliver it to the brain for processing. The higher pitched sounds are commonly the first to be hard to understand because the high-frequency cells get damaged more easily than the lower pitched cells.
high-frequency Hearing Loss, How to Avoid it
You can do several things to slow down or stop the progress of high-frequency hearing loss despite the fact that you can’t stop your ears from aging. Including these:
- Looking for quiet things. Find the quietest product by checking the noise rating of the appliances. If it’s hard to hear your dinner companions, don’t be scared to ask the manager to turn down the music.
- Caring for your general health. Your hearing can be damaged by smoking. Your hearing can also be injured from poor health due to poor nutrition. Preserve your hearing by taking care of your overall health.
- Ask your doctor about medications you use. At least 200 different kinds of medications will cause or worsen high-frequency hearing loss. Your hearing can even be harmed by high doses of aspirin. To discover if there are options less likely to damage your hearing, check with your doctor. If you can’t avoid taking a particular medication, keep in close communication with your hearing care professional for regular hearing loss and balance testing. Additional hearing loss can be avoided by treatment.
- Putting in hearing protection in noisy settings. If you need to shout to be heard in a noisy setting, this is a certain indication the noise could hurt your hearing. Some instances of times when wearing ear-plugs are rock concerts, engines revving, running power tools, and a loud stereo. Noise-canceling earphones are also a good alternative in some situations, but may not fit inside your pocket as easily as ear-plugs.
- When removing earwax, never use a swab or any other small object. Your ability to hear is blunted when you jam old earwax against your eardrum. Gently clean out excess earwax with a rag when you’re done showering, or ask your hearing care specialist about other ear irrigation techniques for removing earwax without damaging your hearing.
high-frequency Hearing Loss Treatment
Presently, the most reliable method for dealing with high-frequency hearing loss is hearing aids. And there are many models to choose from since this is the most common type of hearing loss. So that they are crisper to the listener, hearing aids can boost high pitched sounds. You can directly manage your level and extent of hearing loss by having your hearing care expert fine-tune your hearing aid to improve your ability to hear sounds at the right level. Many hearing aids can be manipulated by your phone and include directional microphones for fine-tuning in circumstances such as business meetings, restaurant dinners, talking on the phone or listening to children.
Make an appointment for a hearing test if you suspect you might have high-frequency hearing loss. If you want to enhance your capacity to hear your grandchild’s precious one-liner, chances are there are personally tailored answers for you.
