Hearing loss is about pitch as much as volume. If you find it hard to understand the speech of a woman or a child, but you can still, for the most part, understand the men in the room, you might have some level of high-frequency hearing loss. This is a very prevalent type of hearing loss so you’re not alone.
Warning Signs of High-Frequency Hearing Loss
With high-frequency hearing loss, you could 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 hardest to differentiate are consonant sounds like ch, th, t, soft s, c, sh, k, f, and h. So, it might sound like a woman or child is mumbling, even though they aren’t. Understanding a child’s joke or a family member’s question about dinner plans becomes very difficult because you have lost the ability to distinguish these sounds. This can cause frustration, sadness 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 with this problem. This includes birds chirping, high musical notes, whistles or squeaks. Even at low volumes a man’s voice, thunder, and bass musical notes, might be relatively easy to discern.
Reasons For High-Frequency Hearing Loss
Usually imperceptible at first, high-frequency hearing loss, the most common type of hearing loss, can sneak up on you as you grow older. high-frequency hearing loss can be induced by other things in addition to aging like some medical problems like cardiovascular disease, excessive noise exposure, and various medications.
These situations all harm to the little, hair-like sensory cells inside of the cochlea. It’s these little cells that pick up sound input and send it to the brain for processing. The higher pitched sounds are typically the first to be tough to understand because the high-frequency cells get damaged more easily than the lower pitched cells.
How to Prevent High-Frequency Hearing Loss
You can take several steps to slow down or stop the progression of high-frequency hearing loss even though you can’t stop your ears from aging. Including these:
- Wearing hearing protection in noisy locations. If you need to shout to be heard in a loud environment, this is a certain signal the noise could hurt your hearing. Some examples of occasions when wearing ear protection are live music concerts, engines revving, power tools running, and a loud stereo. Noise-canceling earphones are also a good solution in certain situations, but might not fit in your pocket as easily as ear-plugs.
- Seeking out quiet things. Select the quietest model by checking the noise rating of the appliances. If it’s hard to hear your dinner companions, don’t be hesitant to ask the manager to turn down the music.
- Taking good care of your overall health. Your hearing can be damaged by smoking. Poor health, poor nutrition, or lack of exercise can also hurt your hearing. Preserve your hearing by taking care of your overall health.
- If you use any medication, ask your doctor if it has any impact on hearing. At least 200 different types of medications will cause or worsen high-frequency hearing loss. Your hearing can even be injured by too much aspirin. consult your doctor to find out if there are possibilities less likely to harm your hearing. Stay in close contact with your hearing health care provider if you can’t abstain from using a certain medication. Treating hearing loss early can help avoid further loss.
- When getting rid of earwax, never utilize a swab or any other small object. Your capacity to hear becomes blunted when you push 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 care professional for other ways to irrigate your ears.
high-frequency Hearing Loss Treatment
Currently, the most reliable method for dealing with high-frequency hearing loss is hearing aids. And since this is the most widespread kind of hearing loss, there are various different designs a person can choose from. Hearing aids can enhance high-pitched sounds so they are clearer to the listener. You can directly manage your level and degree of hearing loss by having your hearing care pro fine-tune your hearing aid to increase your ability to hear sounds at the right level. Many hearing aids can be controlled by your phone and come with directional microphones for fine-tuning in circumstances like 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 improve your ability to hear your grandchild’s precious one-liner, odds are there are individually designed answers for you.
