People who suffer from hearing loss aren’t always immediately aware of it. Often, it’s family and friends who are the first to notice that something is off. And when they point it out, the person with diminished hearing is often quick to deny it, and they try to compensate for their hearing loss by talking louder or lip reading. But hearing loss is very real. It affects millions of people, and it will look different depending on the type of hearing loss you have.

Sensorineural Hearing Loss

This type of hearing loss occurs when nerves in the inner ear are damaged and don’t properly transmit sound signals to the brain. This type of hearing loss is permanent, and can be caused by various things including injury, excessive exposure to loud noises, meningitis, diabetes, stroke and viral infections.

Aging Is The Number One Culprit

Aging is the most common cause of sensorineural hearing loss. The hearing loss may come as a side-effect of the conditions listed above, which we’re more prone to as we age. In addition, as we age our bodies don’t heal as quickly and tend to fail more often, and the auditory system is not immune to the aging process. Older people have also had a longer lifetime to be exposed to loud noises, injuries, etc. People with sensorineural hearing loss complain that other people mumble, or that they just can’t understand what’s being said.

An Audiologist Can Help

There is no medication or surgery to treat sensorineural hearing loss, but working with an audiologist to get fitted for the correct hearing aids can minimize the impairment, and dramatically improve your ability to hear what’s going on around you.

Conductive Hearing Loss

Conductive hearing loss can be either temporary or permanent, and is caused when sound is prevented from reaching the inner ear. Some common causes of conductive hearing loss are fluid in the middle ear, wax build-up, infections in the ear canal or growths or tumors. People who have this condition will complain of voices being faint or muffled.

Hearing Aids Help You Hear Better

Once properly diagnosed by a trained audiologist, medical help may be available to alleviate the symptoms. And in the absence of that help, hearing aids can help restore your hearing when they are used properly.

Mixed Hearing Loss

Some people have a combination of sensorineural and conductive hearing loss. The hearing loss is often gradual, and the person with the impairment may not notice right away, which is why friends and family often notice first.

Symptoms Of Mixed Hearing Loss

Some of the most common symptoms include an inability to hear people fully and clearly, often asking to repeat or clarify something, avoiding social situations because of difficulty following conversations in noisy places, and feeling tired at the end of the day from straining to hear people all day long.

Don’t Suffer Anymore

If you feel like you or a loved one could be suffering from hearing loss, now is the time to seek out help and get the solution that’s right for you. An experienced audiologist is trained to detect, diagnose and treat different types of hearing loss with the best solutions available on the market today.