What Causes High Frequency Hearing Loss

Treatments And Solutions That Work

Hearing aids are the most common and usually the best course of treatment for high frequency hearing loss. In recent years, there has been a lot of technological improvement in hearing aids. According to Mayo Clinic, hearing aid manufacturers continue to make improvements by developing hearing aids that are more effective for all types of hearing loss, including high frequency hearing loss.

High frequency hearing loss can often be prevented, but sometimes it might be inevitable. âHearing loss isnât always preventable as there can be a genetic and aging component. However, noise exposure can certainly cause high frequency hearing loss. It is very important that you protect your hearing if you are in noisy environments,â Basham says.

Should You Take A High

If you believe you have trouble with your hearing, we highly recommend taking a test. At EarPros, you can schedule a free hearing test with a licensed audiologist.

There are no specialized tests for high pitch hearing impairments. Instead, you will receive a standardized hearing test, and the resulting audiogram will be used to diagnose your specific type of hearing loss.

Evaluate And Treat Underlying Problems

If you develop tinnitus, it’s important to see your clinician. She or he will take a medical history, give you a physical examination, and do a series of tests to try to find the source of the problem. She or he will also ask you to describe the noise you’re hearing and the times and places in which you hear it. Your clinician will review your medical history, your current and past exposure to noise, and any medications or supplements you’re taking. Tinnitus can be a side effect of many medications, especially when taken at higher doses .

Musculoskeletal factors jaw clenching, tooth grinding, prior injury, or muscle tension in the neck sometimes make tinnitus more noticeable, so your clinician may ask you to tighten muscles or move the jaw or neck in certain ways to see if the sound changes. If tight muscles are part of the problem, massage therapy may help relieve it.

Tinnitus that’s continuous, steady, and high-pitched generally indicates a problem in the auditory system and requires hearing tests conducted by an audiologist. Pulsatile tinnitus calls for a medical evaluation, especially if the noise is frequent or constant. MRI or CT imaging may be needed to check for a tumor or blood vessel abnormality.

If you’re often exposed to loud noises at work or at home, it’s important to reduce the risk of hearing loss by using protectors such as earplugs or earmuff-like or custom-fitted devices.

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How Does Hearing Loss Happen

High-frequency hearing loss can be caused by a variety of reasons. These include noise, aging, genetics, and disease. Menieres disease affects the inner ear and often happens to people between the ages of 30 and 50 years old. This can cause tinnitus, vertigo, hearing loss, and intense episodic dizziness. Some medications can cause damage to your hearing. Drugs used for chemotherapy and antibiotics are particularly damaging to your hearing health. Aging is also a natural cause of hearing loss because the cells cannot repair as quickly. If relatives have hearing loss, you might also be more genetically predisposed to high-frequency hearing loss. Those who are exposed to high noise levels like machinery, gunshots, or loud music can experience irreversible hearing damage.

What Can You Do About High

Depending on the severity of your hearing loss, treatment options are available. For profound hearing loss, a cochlear implant may help. In most cases of high-frequency hearing loss, hearing aids are an excellent solution. Both behind-the-ear and in-the-ear devices deliver crystal-clear sound and automatic features that reduce background noise. To determine the proper course of action, you can speak to one of our experts over the phone. Our consultation is free and with no obligations. We can tell you more about the latest hearing aids and how they can help improve your quality of life. We even offer a 45 day risk-free trial so you can test some of the best devices on the market.

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Say What Understanding High Frequency Hearing Loss

Do you struggle to hear, but only when it comes to specific voices or sounds? For example, you might have no trouble hearing the local newscasters voice on television at night, but youre unable to hear the birds chirping outside or a small child speaking.

If the above scenario sounds familiar, you may be suffering from high frequency hearing loss.

While hearing loss is prevalent in older Americans, this isnt an issue that is isolated to the over 65 crowd. According to a recent study published by JAMA, the number of U.S. adults ages 20 and older with hearing loss is expected to increase from 44 million in 2020 to 74 million by 2060. This can be caused by such things as loud music, certain medications and illnesses, damage to the eardrum, and, of course, aging.

Being unable to hear at higher ranges is one of the first signs of hearing loss. While this can create a variety of challenges in your life, it is also something you can address with the right hearing devices.

Coping With Pulsatile Tinnitus

Pulsatile tinnitus is not a common form of tinnitus, which is why it has not received much attention

While most people know what standard tinnitus is, pulsatile tinnitus is often misunderstood and ignored. Because of that, people with pulsatile tinnitus are not always aware of what is going on with them.

That is why it is so important to understand what this form of tinnitus is and how it manifests itself.

First, unlike the typical tinnitus, pulsatile tinnitus does not consist of phantom noises. Others can actually hear the sounds in the ear with pulsatile tinnitus.

That is because the tinnitus is directly linked to the pumping of blood.

Pulsatile tinnitus is named this way because it is related to the pulse.

When someone listens close to the ear of someone who has it, they will likely be able to hear the thumping sounds that mimic a heart beating, it is as if your heart is inside your ear.

This type of tinnitus finds its bodily cause in abnormal blood flow.

When something restricts the flow of blood, a person can end up with pulsatile tinnitus because the blood flow is not able to flow freely.

This could be from a number of problems. There are many things people can do to minimize their chances of coming down with this condition.

People should take the precautions they can to avoid having to cope with the symptoms of pulsatile tinnitus.

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High Frequency Hearing Loss

You need to be sure to clarify to your physician that you are having difficulties with higher frequencies and not the full spectrum. You may need to be convincing, as a great many physicians dismiss high frequency hearing loss as much ado about nothing.

Much of the medical community feels that high frequency hearing loss does not cause any major issues, and thus it does not need to be dealt with.

Because of that, you must be your own advocate regarding the necessary test.

If the test shows him that you are having problems with hearing high frequencies, he can set you up with a hearing aid. By giving you a hearing aid, you will be able to mask out some of the phantom noises in the high frequency range.

The reason this will happen is because your hearing will be restored in that range.

This will not take the tinnitus away, but it will give you a degree of comfort because the tinnitus sounds will become more muffled.

In addition, you can use a tinnitus mask with your hearing aid. This will also help with hearing related issues because it will mask out the tinnitus sounds by offering a distraction.

When the sounds distract you, it increases the likelihood of adaptation.

You will be able to put the ringing in your ears and other phantom sounds in the background.

While this is not a perfect solution, it is very helpful. There can be no denial about the link between tinnitus and hearing loss.

How To Prevent High Tone Hearing Loss

While hearing aids are effective at high-frequency hearing loss treatment, it is important to do what you can to preserve your existing hearing capacity.

Some of the actions you can take to prevent hearing loss include:

• Avoid Loud Sounds Anything above 85 dB has the potential to damage your hearing. Reduce your overall exposure to these sounds.
• Lower the Volume Turn down the volume on your electronic devices.
• Take Breaks If youre in a loud environment, take regular breaks every hour to give your ears a rest.
• Wear Protection Ear defenders and earbuds are a great way to limit noise exposure.
• Get Regular Hearing Tests Finally, spot the signs of hearing loss early by getting an annual hearing test with your nearest audiologist.

Even if you already have some degree of hearing loss, taking preventative steps can stop the problem from growing worse. Create a quieter world, and your ears will thank you going forward.

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Both My Parents Have Tinnitus

Do you know anyone who suffers or has suffered from tinnitus? According to the British Tinnitus Association about 30% of people will experience tinnitus at some point in their lives. Have you ever been listening to music through your headphones before bed, and when taking your headphones out have heard a slight ringing in your ears?

Or maybe you have been to a concert or night club and stood too close to the speakers, only to then get home to your quiet bedroom and hear a ringing in your ears? Loud music or loud sounds are what most people think of when considering tinnitus causes. For some though, tinnitus doesnât go away like it gradually does after listening to loud music.

Exercise represents the surest means of preventing this form of tinnitus. Since many of the causes of pulsatile tinnitus have to do with health, people can work to avoid getting it in the first place by exercising regularly.

In order to avoid getting this type of tinnitus, make sure you do cardio workouts.

Good health requires that the heart rate be elevated somewhat during exercise.

You also need to watch what you eat, you can end up with heart problems if you dont eat right, so it is important that you are careful and watch everything that goes into your body.

Watch your fat intake and eat as healthy as possible making sure to eat plenty of fresh produce to help avoid pulsatile tinnitus. You also want to have a cholesterol test at regular intervals.

Tinnitus and Hearing Loss

How Can I Prevent High

Preventing hearing loss is the best way to avoid it because high-frequency hearing loss cannot be reversed. The best way to protect your hearing is to avoid high noise levels, especially noise that is louder than 85 decibels. Keep your personal electronics turned down and wear hearing protection when in noisy environments like concerts and sporting events. Use earplugs to protect your hearing. If you are involved in noisy hobbies, make sure you invest in over-the-ear hearing protection or custom earmolds.

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Joy Victory Managing Editor Healthy Hearing

Joy Victory has extensive experience editing consumer health information. Her training in particular has focused on how to best communicate evidence-based medical guidelines and clinical trial results to the public. She strives to make health content accurate, accessible and engaging to the public.Read more about Joy.

Tinnitus And High Frequency Hearing Loss

People of every age group could be subject to high-frequency hearing loss and also the underlying factors leading to it can be just as diverse.

Losing your ability to hear is definitely a typical factor underpinning tinnitus, even though some people that have regular hearing could also encounter tinnitus.

Issues that trigger hearing loss and also tinnitus include things like loud noise, medicines which damage the actual nerve fibres within the ear, ototoxic medicines, solidified ear-wax, middle ear concerns for example infection and even general tumors, and even ageing.

Noise activated hearing loss, exposure with loud sounds, whether in just one painful encounter or maybe over time, can easily damage your auditory structure as well as lead to hearing loss and quite often tinnitus too.

Did you know

While a good many people talk about tinnitus as being buzzing in the ears, many others identify it as being some sort of high pitched ringing, a lower pitched type of roar, tweeting, squealing, and in some cases musical noises.

Tinnitus is frequently connected with damage with your high frequency hearing, in most cases as a result of exposure to loud or even lengthy periods of noise.

A number of reports have even more strongly recommended that for a substantial selection of people hearing aids can lower the effects of tinnitus.

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Signs And Symptoms Of High Frequency Hearing Loss

According to Hearing Rehab Center, you may first notice high frequency hearing loss when you realize that you cannot keep up in conversations, or when someone else comments on your hearing. When you develop high frequency hearing loss, one of the first symptoms is the loss of ability to hear high pitched sounds, which means that you may be able to hear some words other people say but canât hear all of the words in a sentence, or even all of the sounds in a word.

âWith high frequency hearing loss, patients often report they can hear most

speech, they just often misunderstand whatâs being said,â Shannon Basham, AuD, Senior Director of Audiology & Education at Phonak USA tells WebMD Connect to Care.

According to Basham, common symptoms of high frequency hearing loss include:

• Trouble hearing consonants.
• Frequently asking others to speak more slowly or clearly.
• Difficulty understanding words especially in crowds or noisy
• environments.
• Developmental and learning delays .
• Insecurity and self-esteem issues.
• Tinnitus

âHigh frequency hearing loss can cause people to withdraw from conversations and social situations,â Basham says.

Ways To Identify High

As we showed in our post about how the cochlea hears sounds, high-frequency sounds are perceived in the bottom of the cochlea and low-frequency sounds are in the top. Because of this, itâs common for hearing loss to happen in the high-frequencies before it happens in the low frequencies.

When this occurs, and the cochlea is still able to understand some low-frequency sounds but no high-frequency sounds, the hearing loss is called âhigh frequency hearing lossâ.

Even though there is very little a person might do in order to avoid age associated hearing loss, it is very important that you shield your hearing and get away from exposure to any loud and continuous noise, noise induced loss is often a contributive element in age associated ability to hear.

Keeping away from loud noises, minimizing the length of time youre in contact with loud noise, in addition to protecting your ears using ear plugs or maybe ear muffs really are very easy steps you can take to safeguard your hearing and also reduce the level of hearing you could lose as you become older.

Quite a few audiologists that assess and provide solutions for tinnitus could accommodate people with customized maskers which are especially chosen and even relevant to the individualâs particular requirements.

Serious damage to your head or neck area could cause nerve, blood circulation, and also muscle problems that results the symptoms of tinnitus.

Hearing Loss Prevention is Much Better Than The Cure

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What Are The Causes Of High Frequency Hearing Loss

There are five main causes of High Frequency Sensorineural Hearing Loss.

Old age is the most significant cause of High Frequency Hearing loss, our organs grow old and become less efficient over the years. Age related hearing loss frequencies are generally above 2000 Hz, the ear parts like the Hair Cells in the Inner Ear or the Cochlea become less sensitive to sound above these frequencies. There are many other reasons for the reduction in our Hearing efficiency.

We are regularly exposed to loud sounds. The noise from traffic and construction activity contributes to the increasing noise pollution. Constant exposure to loud sounds can affect our Hearing. Listening to loud music through Headphones can also have a negative effect on Hearing. Due to the physical location of the Hair cells in the Cochlea, the Hair cells responsible for the High Frequencies get affected much before the Hair Cells for Low and Middle frequencies.

3. Ototoxicity or Damage Due to Medication

Ototoxicity means a substance that is toxic to the Ears Some medicines are Ototoxic and cause damage to the delicate hair cells. In some instances, medicines are necessary as they could be life-saving. Sensorineural Hearing Loss is the price one has to pay for a larger cause. Hearing Loss due to Ototoxicity can be permanent or temporary depending on the line of treatment.

4. High Frequency Sensorineural Hearing Loss due to Unrelated Diseases

How To Treat High

While all forms of sensorineural hearing loss are considered irreversible, high-frequency hearing loss treatment is available.

Modern digital hearing aids are extremely effective at helping you to hear high-pitched sounds.

Audiologists typically recommend the Receiver-in-the-Ear style of hearing aid. RITE hearing aids are positioned in the canal with microphone tubing curling to the back of your ear, resulting in a versatile yet discreet fit. Hearing aids like this enable you to hear higher frequencies without muffling lower frequencies.

While its common for people to opt for invisible hearing aids that sit deep in the canal, they are less effective against this type of hearing loss. Completely-in-Canal and Invisible-in-Canal hearing aids block lower frequency sounds.

After your diagnosis, your hearing care professional will provide you with a hearing aid and program it for you. Over the next few weeks, you will test out your hearing aid, and your audiologist will make adjustments for the best possible hearing experience.

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