Is Hearing Loss Reversible? (podcast)

Really, any loud sound can cause hearing loss. It’s a combination of how loud the sound is and how long you’re exposed to it.

A leaf blower is about 85 decibels, which is a measurement of loudness. You might be able to be exposed to that for two hours before you have damage. But a jackhammer might be more like 120 decibels and that can potentially cause instantaneous damage to your ears.

It’s important to try to keep it at a reasonable volume. If you have it even at a moderate volume, if you’re listening to it all day long, that can conceivably cause damage.

All of us are slowly losing high frequency hearing throughout life from noise damage. It turns out that our ears are so sensitive and so delicate that our daily lives are too loud for them. The longer we live, the more noise we’re exposed to, the more high frequency hearing loss occurs. Even young people can start to notice that.

Yes. One in five adults aged 20 to 29 will have a significant hearing loss. One in four from age 50 to 59. By the time you get to age 80, it’s nine out of 10.

Generally men are more at risk.

What most people notice first is they hear fine if they’re in a quiet environment or one on one, but if there’s any background noise, they have a lot harder time understanding what people are saying and have to start asking people to repeat themselves.

The reason for that is we all are slowly losing our high frequency hearing throughout life because of noise damage. It’s the high frequency sounds that are most important for the brain to filter out background noise for us. The brain actively suppresses surrounding sound to allow us to understand speech that is coming from in front of us. We start to lose that ability first.

Significant hearing loss can lead to social isolation and that can lead to depression. There has been an association discovered with significant hearing loss in the risk of progressing to dementia.

One of the ways to keep hearing loss from getting worse is to protect yourself from loud noise exposure. To get a handle on it, the first thing to do is to get a hearing test with an audiologist so they can figure out exactly what type of hearing loss it is and exactly how severe it is.

For most people it’ll turn out to be a sensorineural hearing loss, and the treatment option to start with is typically hearing aids.

A hearing aid has a small piece that goes over the ear with the battery and the processor, and it’s got a little tube that goes down into the ear canal where the speaker is.

A cochlear implant has a device that can restore hearing for someone whose hearing loss is so severe that they can no longer get sufficient benefit from hearing aids. It’s a surgically implanted device that can provide sound by electrically stimulating the hearing nerve. It can take someone who’s functionally deaf and allow them to understand speech again.

The device is a tiny little coiled electrode that gets fed into the hearing organ, the cochlea, and then it can activate the hearing nerve. On the outside, the patient wears something that looks like a hearing aid. It’s got a microphone, computer and batteries and a magnet that lines it up with the part that’s on the inside.

It’s an outpatient surgery done in an operating room. The patient would be asleep with a general anesthetic. It takes about an hour and a half or so to put the device in and then they would wake up and go home the same day. Then they’d wait about a month for things to heal up and then they’d have the device turned on and start learning to hear with it.

Earplugs are the main thing. It’s possible that noise-canceling headphones might be helpful. It’s really just a matter of trying to limit the volume of noise you’re exposed to and especially avoiding long duration of loud volume.

At concerts, definitely wear earplugs. What earplug is right depends on how loud it is. But for most concerts, the foam insert earplugs that you can get in any drugstore work well. You can have what are called musicians earplugs, which are created to maintain the fidelity of the frequencies of music, but reduce it to a level that’s not damaging to your ear.

It’s hard to give a definite number for that because everybody’s TV and earbuds are going to put out a different amount of volume, but it should definitely just be at a comfortable level.

Normal conversation is about 60 decals of sound. A lawnmower is about 85 decimals of sound. We know that sound at or above 70 decibels for extended periods of time can cause damage to the ears.

I would just want people to know that if they notice that they’re having increasing difficulty understanding speech, that would be a good time to come in and get a hearing test to find out exactly what’s going on with their ears.

It involves measuring the quietest sound that can be heard at every different frequency. It involves a test that’ll figure out whether hearing loss is sensorineural or conductive. Then they’ll test the movement of the eardrum and the pressure behind the eardrum to try to figure out exactly what might be causing the hearing loss.