Age Related Hearing Loss
Do people lose hearing as they age?
Hearing loss is one of the common conditions affecting Children, older and elderly adults. Age related hearing loss is medically termed as ‘presbycusis’. Hearing loss often occurs in both ears, damaging them equally.
The hearing loss is gradual and you may not realize that you’ve lost some of your ability to hear. Well! As you age, you experience a number of changes in the way your body part functions and hearing loss might be one of these changes.
Age related hearing loss:
There are more causes for age related hearing loss. Most commonly it arises from the changes in the inner ear; where as we age, the hair cells which are responsible for producing sounds will gradually stop working for some of us. The hair cells are also responsible for transmitting sound to the brain. These sensory receptors play a major role in detecting sound and may also affect balance control of an individual.
Hearing Loss Causes:
Other factors that causes hearing loss as we age includes;
- Prolonged exposure to loud noises
- Family history of hearing loss
- Poor circulation of blood in ear
- Diabetes
- High blood pressure
- Uses of certain medications are toxic to the sensory cells of the ears.
- Abnormalities of outer ear or middle ear
Symptoms:
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- Inability to hear high-pitched sounds
- May notice that you have difficulty hearing females or children voices.
- Localization difficulty
- Difficulty in understanding group conversation
- Difficulty in understanding speech in noisy situation
- Ringing in ears
- Turning up the volume on TV or phone louder than normal
- Asking people to repeat themselves
- Unable to understand conversation over telephone
- Talking louder than normal
Most of us don’t notice the loss until it starts to cause trouble in our ability to easily understand conversations with our family and friends.
Treatment:
The treatment will depend on the severity of your hearing loss, so some treatments will work better for you than others. There are a number of hearing devices and aids that help you hear better when you have hearing loss.
In spite of age related hearing loss not a life-threatening condition, it can have an important impact on your quality of life if left untreated.
So as soon as you experience any of those symptoms immediately seek help from professional, like an otolaryngologist (ear, nose, and throat doctor) or an audiologist (health professional who can identify and measure hearing loss).
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