Hearing Loss Comes With Old Age, But A Hearing Center Can Help

Visits to our grandparents house are often characterized by blaring television sets, raised voices and the need to repeat every other sentence. Hearing loss is a part of old age. Although the damage that causes hearing loss cannot be reversed, a solution can be found at a hearing center.

Hearing impairment develops naturally in old age as the result of the dying out of tiny hairlike structures located in the ear. While old men often joke about the excess amount of ear hair they see develop, the opposite is true of the tiny "hair cells" of the inner ear.

These cells are attached to the sensory nerve cells that transmit signals to the brain that allow us to perceive sound. They are sensitive to the vibration of sound waves and trigger the response in the nervous system.

As they begin to die out naturally, they first reduce the spectrum of sound that a person's ear is able to hear. The first sounds to go are high-pitched noises because they are unable to detect high-frequency sound waves. This typically is the first noticeable part of hearing loss because it severely affects a person's ability to understand other people's speech.

Many consonant sounds are considered to be the most high-pitched part of human speech. Therefore, as those begin to escape a person's scope of hearing, that person will increasingly need to have words repeated to them in order to understand what people are saying. They may also find out that it is more difficult to hear or understand women's and children's voices because of their high pitch.

Hearing loss can severely affect a person's mental and emotional health by discouraging the person from engaging in activities that involve public interaction. The embarrassment involved can result in isolation and depression for the person suffering hearing loss.

Fortunately, a hearing center can help get you back out into the world by assessing the degree of hearing loss and fitting you with the best hearing device for your situation. Unfortunately, a hearing aid cannot specifically restore the ability to pick up high-frequency sounds, but it can amplify sounds to the extent that you will be able to understand them without having to turn up the volume or ask anyone to repeat themselves.

Hearing aids are advanced technological instruments, but the way they work is fairly simple to understand. The device contains a tiny microphone that picks up sound and converts it into an electrical signal. Like all microphones, it amplifies the signal and converts it back into a louder sound, which is then played back into the wearer's ear. Like a regular microphone, the conversion is immediate and does not cause any delay between the occurrence and the hearing of the sounds.

Amazing advances have been made in hearing aids that allow anyone to discreetly wear a hearing aid without anyone ever knowing. Many people have precautions about visiting a hearing center because they are afraid of walking out with a bulky, embarrassing machine that fits around the whole ear. However, those worries can now be a thing of the past.