Hearing loss is about pitch as much as volume. If it’s hard to understand the speech of a child or a woman, but you can still, for the most part, understand the men in the room, you may have some amount of high-frequency hearing loss. You’re not alone…this is the most common type of hearing loss.

Warning Signs of High-Frequency Hearing Loss

With high-frequency hearing loss, consonant sounds that allow conversations to be understood, get muddled even though you might still be able to pick up on the volume of a woman or a child’s voice. Normally, consonant sounds like t, th, ch, soft c, s, sh, f, k, and h are the hardest to differentiate. Even though a woman or a child is not mumbling, it might sound like they are. Losing the ability to distinguish these sounds makes it very difficult to understand a child’s joke or your sister’s question about dinner plans. Isolation from friends and family, sadness, and frustration can be the result.

People who have high-frequency hearing loss also miss other sounds falling within the high-frequency range (2000 Hz and higher). This includes birds chirping, high musical notes, whistles or squeaks. Low-frequency sounds such as bass musical notes, the rumble of thunder or a man’s voice might still be quite easy to detect, even if the volume isn’t very loud.

Causes of High-Frequency Hearing Loss

Often imperceptible at first, high-frequency hearing loss, the most common kind of hearing loss, can creep up on you as you grow older. Apart from aging, excessive noise exposure, select medications and a variety of medical issues including cardiovascular disease can lead to high-frequency hearing loss.

These situations all cause damage to the little, hair-like sensory cells within the cochlea. Sound input is received by these tiny cells and delivered to the brain for processing. The higher pitched sounds are often the first to be hard to understand because the high-frequency cells get damaged more easily than the lower pitched cells.

high-frequency Hearing Loss, How to Prevent it

You can take several steps to slow down or stop the progression of high-frequency hearing loss despite the fact that you can’t stop your ears from getting older. Some of these include:

• In loud environments, put in hearing protection. If you have to yell to be heard in a noisy setting, this is a certain sign the noise might hurt your hearing. Some examples of times when wearing ear protection are live music concerts, engines revving, running power tools, and a loud music system. Noise-canceling headphones are also a good solution in some circumstances, but may not fit in your pocket as easily as ear-plugs.
• If you use any medication, ask your doctor if it has any impact on hearing. At least 200 different kinds of medications can cause or worsen high-frequency hearing loss. Even too much aspirin can harm your hearing. To learn if there are choices less likely to injure your hearing, consult your doctor. Stay in close contact with your hearing health care provider if you can’t avoid taking a certain medication. Getting treatment for hearing loss early can help prevent further loss.
• When extracting earwax, never utilize a swab or any other small object. Your capacity to hear is blunted when you jam old earwax against your eardrum. A hot shower is normally enough o drain exes earwax but if this doesn’t work ask your hearing care professional for other methods of irrigating your ears.
• Your health is important so take care of it. Smoking can harm your hearing. Poor health, poor nutrition, or not enough exercise can also harm your hearing. Try to take good care of your health in all ways and this will safeguard your hearing also.
• Getting quiet things. Look for noise ratings on appliances and pick the quietest products. If it’s tough to hear your friends at dinner, don’t be afraid to ask the manager to turn the music down.

high-frequency Hearing Loss Treatment

Presently, the most effective strategy for treating high-frequency hearing loss is hearing aids. And there are many models to pick from since this is the most common type of hearing loss. Hearing aids can enhance high-pitched sounds so they are clearer to the user. Many models can be configured and your hearing care expert can help fine-tune them to increase your ability to hear those sounds at the correct level, immediately addressing the level and degree of the hearing loss. For circumstances such as talking on the phone, listening to children, having dinner at a restaurant, or business meetings several hearing aids can be manipulated by your phone and have directional microphones for fine-tuning.

Schedule a hearing test if you think you might have high-frequency hearing loss. If you want to increase your ability to hear your grandchild’s priceless one-liner, chances are there are individually designed solutions for you.