Hearing loss is about pitch as much as about volume. It’s possible you have some amount of high-frequency hearing loss if you can understand what the men in the room are saying but you can’t hear children and women. You’re not alone…this is the most prevalent form of hearing loss.
Symptoms of High-Frequency Hearing Loss
With high-frequency hearing loss, you might still be able to pick up the volume of a woman’s voice or a child’s voice, but consonant sounds that make conversations easy to understand, get muddled. Normally, consonant sounds like t, th, ch, soft c, s, sh, f, k, and h are the most difficult to differentiate. So, it might sound like a woman or child is mumbling, even though they aren’t. Losing the ability to distinguish these sounds makes it very difficult to understand a child’s joke or your sister’s question about dinner plans. Isolation from friends and family, sadness, and frustration can be the result.
Other sounds within the high-frequency hearing loss range (2000 Hz) are lost to people who have this condition. This includes birds chirping, high musical notes, whistles or squeaks. Low-frequency sounds like bass musical notes, the rumble of thunder or a man’s voice might still be relatively easy to detect, even if the volume isn’t that loud.
Reasons For High-Frequency Hearing Loss
Frequently imperceptible at first, high-frequency hearing loss, the most widespread type of hearing loss, can creep up on you as you get older. Other than aging, excessive noise exposure, certain medications and a variety of medical conditions including cardiovascular disease can lead to high-frequency hearing loss.
The little hair-like sensors inside the cochlea are harmed by all of these situations. It’s these little cells that pick up sound input and send it to the brain for processing. The high-frequency sensory cells are more prone to injury than the low-frequency sensory cells, and this is why the higher-pitched sounds are often the first to be difficult to comprehend.
How to Prevent High-Frequency Hearing Loss
While you can’t stop your ears from getting older, there are several things you can do to stop or at least slow the progression of high-frequency hearing loss. Some of these include:
- When extracting earwax, never utilize a swab or any other small object. Your ability to hear is blunted when you jam old earwax against your eardrum. A hot shower is usually enough o get rid of exes earwax but if this doesn’t work ask your hearing professional for other methods of irrigating your ears.
- Getting quiet things. Select the quietest product by checking the noise rating of the appliances. And don’t be scared to ask the restaurant manager to turn down the music if it’s difficult to hear your friends at dinner.
- Taking good care of your general health. Smoking can injury your hearing. Your hearing can also be harmed from poor health due to poor nutrition. Protect your hearing by taking care of your overall health.
- Putting in hearing protection in noisy locations.A definite sign that your ears could be getting damaged is if you need to yell to be heard in a loud setting. Heavy traffic, engines revving, power tool sounds, the loud sound systems at movies or live music concerts are all examples of instances when putting in the ear-plugs is a good idea. Noise-canceling earphones are also a good solution in certain situations, but might not fit in your pocket as easily as ear-plugs.
- If you take any medication, ask your doctor if it has any effect on hearing. high-frequency hearing loss can be caused by at least 200 different kinds of medications. Even aspirin at high doses can damage your hearing. consult your doctor to see if there are choices less likely to damage your hearing. If you can’t avoid using a particular medication, keep in close contact with your hearing professional for regular hearing loss and balance testing. Additional hearing loss can be prevented by treatment.
high-frequency Hearing Loss Treatment
Hearing aids are currently the most efficient strategy for dealing with high-frequency hearing loss. And because this is the most common kind of hearing loss, there are various different models a person can choose from. So that they are crisper to the user, hearing aids can increase high pitched sounds. Many models are configurable and your hearing professional can help fine-tune them to enhance your ability to hear those sounds at the right level, directly addressing the level and degree of the hearing loss. Some hearing aids can be manipulated by your phone and come with directional microphones for fine-tuning in situations such as business meetings, restaurant dinners, talking on the phone or listening to children.
Schedule a hearing test if you think you may have high-frequency hearing loss. If you would like to enhance your ability to hear your grandchild’s priceless one-liner, odds are there are personally tailored answers for you.