HealthTree Blog

Hearing loss can occur for a number of reasons. It can be congenital; that is, something happened during fetal development to cause the cells, nerves, and other things necessary for hearing to develop abnormally or not at all.
Heredity can also be a factor. If parents and/or grandparents suffered from hearing loss, the chances that you may suffer from hearing loss may be increased.
Environmental factors also play a role. If you have worked in a place where loud noises were prevalent, and either were not provided hearing protection, or did not use it correctly, your hearing can be affected. And, yes, teenagers, it is true that listening to loud music can affect your hearing. Prolonged exposure to loud music can cause you to start having hearing problems at a younger age than it would have normally occurred.
Hearing loss is determined through a series of hearing tests. One test reveals whether or not certain tones can be heard at the lowest level of hearing, while another can reveal problems with pure-tone screening. Pure tones are single tones which a person should be able to hear at a particular level.
A third hearing test measures how well a person can hear the spoken word, determine what has been said, and repeat it back to the person conducting the hearing test. If any of these tests show a hearing loss severe enough to require artificial amplification, then it may be suggested that you wear hearing aids. This may seem a little daunting, at first, especially if your first impression is that of a large device sitting behind someone’s ear, with wires running into an ear canal completely blocked by a listening device.
This is no longer the case. Hearing aids today are smaller and less noticeable, but still work as well. There are still hearing aids designed to be worn behind the ear, but they have been re-tooled to be more discreet while providing maximum amplification. Hearing aids that can be worn in the ear are popular with many people. These devices are not only easy to conceal, they often provide a better measure of hearing, because the amplification equipment fits closer to the ear canal.