How Hearing Loss Develops Gradually?

Often, hearing loss is related to ageing, but it can affect anyone regardless of age. From children to adults, anyone can suffer from hearing loss. However, various reasons lead to hearing issues, and loud noise is the primary factor. You can experience hearing loss suddenly or gradually.

To treat hearing loss on time, you can consult an ENT doctor in Siliguri or near you. It is crucial to understand the factors that result in the gradual development of hearing loss. You can experience a wide range of symptoms related to hearing when hearing loss is progressing. It is different from sudden hearing loss that is caused by certain ear infections and other reasons.

Understanding Hearing Loss

Hearing loss happens when your hearing system cannot function. With ageing, the quality of hearing loses over time, but it can happen at any age. With this condition, you can experience trouble in understanding, following or participating in conversation. Hearing loss makes it harder for you to hear telephonic conversations, take part in online meetings or listen to dialogues when you are watching television.

It can affect your quality of life, affecting your ability to work, communicate with others, and generally create hurdles to enjoying life. Often, hearing loss cannot be reversed in some major cases. But with medical intervention, you might be prescribed treatments like hearing aids or cochlear implants to reduce hearing loss.

Know the Alarming Signs of Hearing Loss :

• Struggling to Hear in Noisy Surroundings: When you suffer hearing loss, you can experience difficulty following conversations in restaurants, parties or other noisy environments. Words become harder to decode, making sentences confusing even when speaking from a closer distance. Sometimes this leads to a misinterpretation of words despite being able to hear someone speak.

• Increasing the Volume:Hearing loss can require you to turn up the volume of TV, radio or headphones. Someone else may tell you that the volume is too high while you find it normal and barely sufficient. This indicates reduced hearing sensitivity and the development of hearing loss.

• Tinnitus or Buzzing Sound:  You can experience tinnitus, a persistent ringing, buzzing or humming sound in the ears. It can occur in one or both ears due to hearing loss. This sound has no external source and can vary in intensity, sometimes more obvious in a quiet ambience. You can consult a professional to understand the diseases that cause hearing loss and address them on time.

• Asking for Repeating:  Hearing loss can lead you to ask people to repeat what they say during conversation and speak louder. It can be a warning sign for developing hearing loss. You can miss certain words and phrases, especially the softer sounds, causing repeated interruptions in communication and problems in keeping up.

• Difficulty Hearing Particular Sounds: Hearing loss symptoms may include difficulty with high-frequency sounds such as doorbells, alarm tones, birds or children’s voices fading fast. You can find these sounds disappearing or fainting completely, while lower-pitched noises like traffic and footsteps are audible to you.

• Tiredness From Listening: Listening may strain you, requiring extra effort to concentrate. You can feel tired as your brain works harder to fill in missing sounds, resulting in mental fatigue, headaches, irritability after conversations, meetings or long periods of listening. Staring to hear can be a crucial signal of hearing loss.

Here Are Some Key Factors of Developing Gradual Hearing Loss

• Presbycusis or Age-Related Changes: As you age, like every organ, your ears also undergo structural and functional changes. This leads to the small hair cells, which convert sound vibrations into nerve signals, slowly degenerating and dying. They do not regenerate, and blood circulation to the auditory nerve also reduces over time. This affects the clarity of signals. This condition occurs, causing difficulty in hearing high-frequency sounds like consonants in speech. This declining of hearing is gradual and painless, leading you to unknowingly adapt until everyday communication becomes harder to understand.

• Long-term Noise Exposure: Continuous exposure to loud noise can affect your hearing ability without any noticeable discomfort. Prolonged hours of listening to music through earphones, working near traffic, machinery, generators or a loud workplace gradually strain your inner ear. This affects the sound-sensing hair cells, causing them to lose function. This damage does not happen in a single day but accumulates quietly over the years without any obvious sign of early changes. With daily noises seeming normal, preventive measures are ignored. You should limit the use of loud noise while using earphones to prevent gradual hearing loss.

• Certain Medicines & Health Conditions:You can experience hearing loss due to a wide range of medical conditions. These affect the blood supply and nerve health, affecting your audibility. Conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, thyroid disorder and heart disease limit oxygen supply to the inner ear, causing impairment of the sound processing system. Also, using certain medications like antibiotics, painkillers, chemotherapy drugs, or diuretics can cause ototoxic effects. These changes gradually develop without any pain or sudden loss. Since these symptoms appear silently and slowly, you may misinterpret such hearing loss as due to ageing rather than the underlying health conditions.

• Genetic Factors and Family History:  Genetic reasons crucially affect your hearing loss. It determines how quickly or how early you can develop hearing loss. Some people have abnormal and weaker inner ear structures, sensitive auditory nerves and metabolic traits that interfere with sound processing. Hearing loss due to genetic factors and family history often develops silently and can affect both ears without clear signs. It may be assumed as situational, causing a delay in treatment until communication becomes a challenge.

Final Thoughts

Hearing loss may develop gradually and change quickly, requiring an understanding of the signs and risk factors early. The effectiveness of treatment depends on how early these conditions are addressed and protective measures are taken. Gradual hearing loss can also happen due to a lack of proper care, listening to loud music for hours through earphones and frequent exposure to loud noise. You can seek professional help from an ENT doctor in Siliguri or near you for timely diagnosis and care.