What is the sensorineural hearing loss? Sponsored by Deaf Broadcasting Council
Well in this article I’m gonna teach you what it is and what your treatment options are available for sensorineural hearing loss. Hello to all and in this article I will cover a bunch of hearing related information to help make you a better-informed decision, so if you’re into that, consider hitting the subscribe our newsletter. Now there are only three types of hearing loss, but the most common one is sensorineural and it’s often abbreviated SNHL.
But what happens when you have sensorineural hearing loss and what do you do about it? Well, let’s jump right in. First, you have to understand how we hear. Now the hearing system can be broken down into three distinct sections:
- The outer ear
- The middle ear
- The inner ear.
The outer ear consists of your auricle, your ear canal, all the way down to your eardrum. The middle ear consists of that eardrum, through the ossicles, or the bones of hearing, and also your Eustachian tube and middle ear space. The inner ear encompasses the cochlea, which is also called your hearing organ.
A sensorineural hearing loss occurs when there is damage to either the cochlea or the structures inside of the cochlea, or the auditory nerve that goes from the cochlea up to your brain. Now some common causes can be either head trauma or to toxic chemical exposure, a tumour on your auditory nerve, other genetic factors that you might have, or noise exposure, and most commonly, age-related hearing loss. A typical hearing test can easily identify if you have a sensorineural hearing loss as opposed to a conductive hearing loss or a mixed hearing loss. Earlier I mentioned several causes of sensorineural hearing loss, but the most common causes are noise exposure and age. And when you have noise-exposed hearing loss or age-related hearing loss, typically what happens is that the outer hair cells in the high-frequency range end up dying. What this causes is this lack of perceived clarity when people are talking to you, and that’s because high frequencies encompass clarity in speech, and low frequencies encompass volume in speech.
So this is typical for someone who has the age-related hearing loss or a noise exposure related hearing loss, to come in and say. Well, I feel like I can hear fine, but people are just mumbling, or I just can’t understand what they’re saying. Another common complaint that I hear when someone has a noise exposure related hearing loss or age-related hearing loss, is that when they go into a noisy background, that noise just overshadows everything. And that’s because if you have good low-frequency hearing still, you’ll have a phenomenon that’s called the upward spread of masking, which means you hear the background noise really good, but it drowns out all of those high-frequency components and takes away all of your clarity. So you really can’t understand speech in those situations. So now that you know what causes sensorineural hearing loss, how do you treat it?
Well treatment will depend on where the damage occurs, either in the cochlea or along that auditory nerve, so if you have outer hair cell death inside of the cochlea, the outer hair cells are your ears’ natural amplifiers, so when sound comes in through your ear, those outer hair cells make that basilar membrane vibrate more, which sends a more powerful signal up to your brain. But when those outer hair cells die, your ear cannot naturally amplify sound so it requires the use of a hearing aid.
Now it’s important to understand that a hearing aid only works in this situation when the hearing aid is fit and programmed properly, using real ear verification. Now if you have excessive inner hair cell death, a hearing aid isn’t gonna provide you with a massive amount of benefit. Hearing aids are really only good when it comes to outer hair cells. So when inner hair cells end up dying beyond a rate of which a hearing aid can help, then you start becoming a candidate for a cochlear implant and what happens with the cochlear implant is that you bypass the cochlea entirely and you stimulate the auditory nerve electrically. Now if you have an acoustic neuroma, which means a tumour growing on your auditory nerve, you could potentially get benefit from hearing aids if that tumour is small and isn’t growing. But if that tumour has to be removed you’ll be left with no hearing on the side that you had a tumour on. When that happens, you become a candidate for either a cross-device, which sends sound from your bad ear, or that ear that no longer hears, and reroutes it to your better ear, so your better ear can use the sound from that side of your head.
The other option is using a bone anchored hearing device that is actually implanted on the back of your skull, vibrates your skull, and helps your ear on the opposite side hear. In some extreme cases where both auditory nerves have tumours and they both have to be removed, you actually could potentially be a candidate for an auditory brain stem implant, which, just like the name suggests, is an implant right on your brain stem which will then trigger your brain to hear.
Over 90% of hearing losses are sensorineural in nature, and a large portion of those require hearing aids as the main treatment option. That being said, it’s impossible to know exactly which treatment option is right for you unless you have your hearing evaluated properly by an audiologist. If you feel like you’re experiencing hearing loss, your best option is to schedule an appointment with an audiologist, so they can find out exactly what type of hearing loss you have. That’s it for this article if you have any questions leave them in the comments section below. If you liked the article, go ahead and give it a thumbs up and share.
Start eating these foods when you feel like you may be losing your hearing
You’re probably aware that certain nutrients can support the optimal vision. But do you know that hearing may benefit from certain foods as well if you have trouble hearing or notice that your hearing is not as good as it used to be your diet can improve? Do you know nutritional imbalances are increasingly thought to be a causative factor in hearing loss? Also when we age. hearing loss is actually not just due to any kind of mechanical dysfunction in your ear rather it’s how your brain processes information. That results in reduced hearing among the nutrients found to be most beneficial for protecting and improving hearing are carotenoids. Especially astaxanthin and vitamin A, folate zinc magnesium these nutrients support hearing in a number of ways including protecting against oxidative stress in the cochlea, preventing free radical damage, improve blood flow can reduce cochlear damage related to a compromised vascular system improving homocysteine metabolism the support for vitamin A is mixed.
In one large study that included data from more than 65 thousand five hundred women, no correlation was found between vitamin A intake and risk for hearing loss folate may improve tinnitus for noise-induced which is characterized by a chronic or near chronic ringing in our ears. Folate vitamin B9 has also shown great results that can also lower your homocysteine. When you have a high blood level of homocysteine, it has been linked to age-related hearing loss. Normally, the best way to raise your folate levels is to eat plenty of fresh raw and organic leafy green vegetables. Folic acid is the synthetic form that you can typically found in supplements. There are a lot of best supplements in the UK that you can read before you buy. There is a good reason to consider getting your folate from food rather than folic acid supplements. In order for folic acid to be of use to your body, it must first be activated into its biologically active form l5m THF. This is the form that is able to cross the blood-brain barrier asparagus, spinach, turnip greens and broccoli are all good sources of folate.
Research has shown zinc may be useful for idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss SSN HL. When you experience a sudden unexplained loss of your hearing is typically treated with high-dose steroids even though steroid treatment is controversial and evidence to support their efficacy is limited. Zinc has antiviral properties and studies have shown it can prevent common cold viruses from replicating or attaching to your nasal membranes. Zinc also has immune boosting properties allowing your body to mount a stronger first response at the onset of a viral infection intravenous magnesium may also improve sudden hearing loss. Intravenous magnesium has also been shown to improve SS NHL in one study. 48 % of SS NHL patients achieved recovery after receiving intravenous magnesium in combination with car Boggan inhalation. Another 27% experienced significant improvement factors that reduce the effectiveness of the treatment included vestibular symptoms and delaying treatment for more than eight days after unset’ increasing nt3 production restored hearing. Two years ago researchers looking at ways to restore hearing loss due to noise came upon an interesting finding by increasing the production of a protein called neurotrophic 3 and t3. They were able to reverse hearing loss in months that had been partially deafened by loud noise.
There are two main sources of natural astaxanthin. The microalgae that produce it and the sea creatures that consume the algae such as salmon, shellfish and krill. If you decide to give a Styx infinite I recommend starting with 2 milligrams per day. Boosting BDNF may also improve your hearing. Earlier research has also shown that in addition to nt3 brain-derived neurotrophic factor also plays an important role in the development and survival of auditory neurons in your brain. In 1996 study found that loss of auditory hair cells and auditory neurons can be prevented by therapies that boost either nt3 or BDNF interestingly. One lifestyle factor that naturally boosts BDNF is exercise part of what makes exercise so effective for preventing cognitive decline is related to a boost in V D and F it’s intriguing to speculate whether exercise may also help prevent hearing loss through this mechanism.