How To Minimize the Health Risk of Hearing Loss
QHHL 
Jul 19 2019
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0 QHHL
Hearing loss is often seen as a natural part of growing older. But now, the evidence is mounting that it may be far more dangerous than previously thought.
Most people believe that hearing loss is inevitable with age. In fact, it’s portrayed in on television as a clear sign of getting older. This creates the impression that it’s both natural and harmless. And yet new research into the topic supports the idea of it being a serious health risk factor. In fact, it may even affect the way your brain functions and your verbal skills. So, if you’re getting older and losing your hearing, here’s what it could mean for your health.
Hearing loss is one of the most common health complaints amongst older people. In the US, around 2 percent of adults from the ages of 45 to 54 have disabling hearing loss. And between the ages of 55 and 64, this figure jumps to 8.5 percent. Despite these statistics, no one really thinks of hearing loss as a serious problem. It’s usually compared to other challenges people face as they age and ignored. Hearing loss isn’t serious until it happens to you. When it does, it can cause social isolation, difficulty socializing, and shame or embarrassment.
Another problem is with detection. A lot of people who have hearing loss don’t realize it. The changes are so subtle that they don’t know something is wrong until the loss is significant. This means they don’t get the treatment and help they need.
There are a few key causes of hearing loss. Some of them you can control, and some you can’t. If you want to lower your health risk for this problem, then you need to know what to do, and what to avoid. The most common causes are:
A new study has shown that hearing loss may be more complicated than previously thought. It suggests that hearing loss can affect sound processing in the brain. This means two things. Firstly, it suggests that the brain may also lose the ability to recognize speech. And it also eliminates hearing devices as a solution.
The study compared how sound was processed differently between people who had hearing loss due to noise trauma and those who had age-related metabolic loss. Hearing loss that’s metabolic refers to age related deterioration. This type of degradation occurs naturally as the electrochemical gradient in the inner ear runs down. This basically means that the ear’s “batteries” lose power over time. The researchers found significant differences between the two groups. The noise trauma group had bigger changes in how the brain processed complex sounds than the second group. This may be the cause of large differences in speech perception amongst people with similar levels of hearing loss.
Basically, this means that noise exposure is far more harmful than age when it comes to hearing. And that puts the power to protect your hearing squarely in your hands.
You can’t change all the health risk factors for hearing loss. But there’s one big one that you can change, and that’s noise. There are strategies you can adopt that will help protect you from loud noise. It obviously won’t eliminate every source of loud noise in the world. But these ideas will, on a daily basis, reduce the amount of noise that you’re exposed to.
But these strategies aren’t enough to completely eliminate the risk of hearing loss. There are risk factors that are out of your control. That’s why you need to monitor your hearing at home. This will ensure that you get a timely diagnosis of any problems and early treatment where possible.
If you’re concerned about a health risk, try using HomeLab to keep track of your condition and any preventative measures you take. And if you see signs of a significant problem, you should check with your doctor as soon as possible.
Tags: health risk, noise, hearing loss.