New cures are regularly being discovered. That may be a positive or a negative. For example, you might look at encouraging new research in the arena of curing hearing loss and you figure you don’t really have to be all that cautious. By the time you start exhibiting symptoms of hearing loss, you think, they’ll have found the cure for deafness.
That wouldn’t be wise. Without question, it’s better to protect your hearing while you can. Scientists are making some incredible strides when it comes to treating hearing loss though, including some possible cures in the future.
It isn’t any fun to lose your hearing
Hearing loss is just a fact of life. It doesn’t suggest you’re a negative person or you did something wrong or you’re being punished. It’s just part of getting older. But there are some clear disadvantages to dealing with hearing loss. Not only do you hear less, but the disorder can affect your social life, your mental health, and your overall health. Untreated hearing loss can even result in an increased risk of depression and dementia. There’s plenty of evidence to connect untreated hearing loss to problems like social isolation.
Hearing loss is, generally speaking, a degenerative and chronic situation. This means that there’s no cure and, over time, it’ll grow worse. That’s not true for every form of hearing loss, but more on that below. Even though there is no cure, though, that doesn’t mean it can’t be managed.
We can help you protect your levels of hearing and slow down the progression of hearing loss. Hearing aids are usually the form of treatment that will be most appropriate for most forms of hearing loss. So there are treatments for most individuals but there’s no cure. And those treatments can do a lot of good when it comes to improving your quality of life.
Two kinds of hearing loss
There are differences in kinds of hearing loss. Hearing loss comes in two principal categories. You can treat one and the other can be cured. Here’s how it breaks down:
- Conductive hearing loss: When the ear canal gets blocked by something, you get this kind of hearing loss. Possibly it’s a clump of earwax (a little gross, but it happens). Maybe it’s swelling from an ear infection. When something is blocking your ear canals, whatever it might be, sound waves won’t be capable of getting to your inner ear. This type of hearing loss will be cured when the cause of the obstruction is eliminated.
- Sensorineural hearing loss: This is the more permanent type of hearing loss. There are fragile hairs in your ear (called stereocilia) that sense minute vibrations in the air. Your brain is capable of interpreting these vibrations as sound. As you go through life, these hairs become damaged, by loud noises usually. And these hairs stop working after they get damaged. This reduces your ability to hear. Your body doesn’t naturally regrow these hairs and we presently have no way to repair them. When you lose them, it’s forever.
Sensorineural hearing loss treatments
Sensorineural hearing loss may be irreversible but that doesn’t mean it can’t be treated. The purpose of any such treatment is to allow you to hear as much as possible given your hearing loss. The goal is to help you hear conversations, enhance your situational awareness, and keep you functioning independently through life.
So, what are these treatment methods? Here are some common treatments.
Hearing aids
Hearing aids are likely the single most prevalent way of managing hearing loss. Hearing aids can be specially tuned to your particular hearing needs, so they’re especially beneficial. Over the course of your day, a hearing aid will help you hear conversations and communicate with others better. Many of the symptoms of social solitude can be prevented by using hearing aids (and the danger of depression and dementia as a result).
Getting your own pair of hearing aids is extremely common, and there are lots of styles to pick from. In order to determine which model is suited to your taste and degree of hearing loss, you’ll need to come see us for a consultation.
Cochlear implants
When hearing loss is total, it often makes sense to bypass the ears altogether. A cochlear implant does just that. This device is surgically inserted into the ear. This device directly transmits sound, which it has converted into electrical energy, to your cochlear nerve. This enables your brain to translate those signals into sounds.
Cochlear implants are usually used when hearing loss is total, a condition known as deafness. So there will still be treatment solutions even if you have completely lost your hearing.
Novel advances
New novel ways of treating hearing loss are always being researched by scientists.
These new advances are often aimed at “curing” hearing loss in ways that have previously been impossible. Here are some of those advances:
- Stem cell therapies: These treatments make use of stem cells from your own body. The concept is that new stereocilia can be created by these stem cells (those little hairs inside of your ears). Studies with animals (like rats and mice) have shown some promise, but some kind of prescription stem cell gene therapy still seems going to be a while.
- Progenitor cell activation: So, stem cells in your ear initiate the production of stereocilia. The stem cells become inactive after they develop stereocilia and are then known as progenitor cells. These new treatments are stimulating the stereocilia to regrow by waking up the progenitor cells. This particular novel therapy has been tried in humans, and the outcomes seem encouraging. There was a substantial improvement, for most people, in their ability to hear and understand speech. It isn’t really known how long it will be before these therapies will be widely available.
- GFI1 Protein: Some scientists have identified a protein that’s essential to growing new stereocilia. Researchers are hoping that they can get a clearer idea of how to get these stereocilia to grow back by recognizing this protein. Once again, this is one of those therapies that’s more in the “drawing board” stage than the “widely available” phase.
Don’t wait to have your hearing loss treated
There’s a great deal of promise in these innovations. But let’s not forget that none of them are available to the public at this point. So it’s a bad plan to wait to get treatment for your hearing loss. Protect your hearing today.
Don’t try and hold out for that miracle cure, call us today to schedule a hearing exam.
References
https://hsci.harvard.edu/major-step-toward-treatment-leading-form-hearing-loss
https://news.mit.edu/2022/frequency-therapeutics-hearing-regeneration-0329
