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Hearing Aids

As we get older our hearing diminishes and often we require a hearing aid.  Were you told as a child that if you didn’t wash your ears properly there would soon be potatoes growing in them? No? It must have just been at our house then, anyway, we can start to lose our hearing for a number of different reasons, the three most common ones being:

Conductive Hearing Loss – which is generally caused by a blockage of ear wax (watch out for the potatoes). It’s a bit deeper and more serious than that, but can often be corrected without the need for a hearing aid, surgery can sometimes sort it out.

Sensorineural Hearing Loss – (nerves). This type of hearing loss is because of damage to the inner ear due to illness, old age, disease, exposure to loud noises over a long period of time or might even be genetic. This type of hearing loss does benefit greatly from the use of hearing aids.

Mixed Hearing Loss – is just what it says on the tin, a mixture of both types of hearing loss mentioned above. If this type of hearing loss is impossible to treat surgically then a hearing aid might be the answer. What did you say? I said A HEARING AID MIGHT BE THE ANSWER . . .

Hearing aids do come in a variety of shapes, sizes and styles these days. Those old ear trumpets are thankfully long gone.  Many hearing aids these days are nigh on impossible to see at all, meaning that nobody need ever know that you are having hearing problems.

If you think that there’s a possibility of you losing a portion of your hearing, then it’s important that you seek medical attention as soon as possible. You physician will probably refer you to either an audiologist (a hearing specialist who can identify and measure the amount of hearing loss you may be suffering from, and perform tests to discover the type of hearing loss so that it can be dealt  with correctly)  or an otolaryngologist (ears, nose and throat specialist).

You can find more information on hearing aids at the National Institute on Deafness, the
FTC and the FDA.