Hearing loss is not exclusively about volume, it’s about pitch. If you find it hard to comprehend the speech of a child or a woman, but you can still, for the most part, understand the men in the room, you may have some degree of high-frequency hearing loss. You’re not alone…this is the most prevalent type of hearing loss.
Warning Signs of High-Frequency Hearing Loss
With high-frequency hearing loss, consonant sounds that allow conversations to be understood, get muddled even though you may still be able to pick up on the volume of a woman or a child’s voice. Normally, consonant sounds such as t, th, ch, soft c, s, sh, f, k, and h are the hardest to pick out. Even though a woman or a child is not mumbling, it may sound that way. 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. This can result in frustration, depression 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 who have this problem. This includes high musical notes, birds chirping, and squeaks or sirens. Even at low volumes a man’s voice, thunder, and bass musical notes, may be fairly easy to detect.
Causes of High-Frequency Hearing Loss
Frequently imperceptible in the beginning, high-frequency hearing loss, the most common kind of hearing loss, can sneak up on you as you grow older. Other than aging, excessive noise exposure, particular medications and a variety of medical issues such as cardiovascular disease can cause high-frequency hearing loss.
These situations all harm to the little, hair-like sensory cells inside the cochlea. Sound input is received by these tiny cells and sent to the brain for processing. The higher pitched sounds are often the first to become hard to understand because the high-frequency cells get injured more easily than the lower pitched cells.
high-frequency Hearing Loss, How to Prevent it
Although you can’t stop your ears from aging, there are quite a few steps you can take to stop or at least slow the progress of high-frequency hearing loss. Including these:
- When removing earwax, never utilize a swab or any other small object. This can jam old ear wax into your ear canal and blunt your ability to hear. Carefully wash out excessive earwax with a rag when you’re done showering, or ask your hearing care specialist about different ear irrigation techniques for eliminating earwax without injuring your hearing.
- Ask your doctor about medications you take. high-frequency hearing loss can be caused by at least 200 different kinds of medications. Your hearing can even be harmed by high doses of aspirin. To learn if there are choices less likely to damage your hearing, check with your doctor. If you can’t avoid using a specific medication, keep in close contact with your hearing care specialist for regular hearing loss and balance testing. Additional hearing loss can be avoided by treatment.
- Taking good care of your general health. Your hearing can be injured by smoking. Your hearing can also be damaged from poor health caused by poor nutrition. Try to take good care of your health in all aspects and this can safeguard your hearing as well.
- Quieter things are more ideal. Look for noise ratings on appliances and choose the quietest models. And don’t be afraid to ask the restaurant manager to turn down the music if it’s hard to hear your dinner companions.
- Wearing hearing protection in noisy situations. If you need to yell to be heard in a loud environment, this is a sure signal the noise could hurt your hearing. Some examples of times when using ear-plugs are rock concerts, motorcycles revving, power tools running, and a loud music system. Noise canceling earphone might not fit inside your pocket, but they are the best solution in certain situations.
high-frequency Hearing Loss Treatment
Hearing aids are presently the most effective strategy for treating high-frequency hearing loss. And since this is the most common kind of hearing loss, there are many different models a person can choose from. So that they are crisper to the listener, hearing aids can augment high pitched sounds. Many models can be configured and your hearing professional can help fine-tune them to improve your ability to hear those sounds at the right level, directly addressing the level and extent of the hearing loss. For situations 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.
Schedule a hearing test if you suspect you might have high-frequency hearing loss. If you want to enhance your ability to hear your grandchild’s priceless one-liner, odds are there are individually designed solutions for you.
