|
|
|
What Are The Symptoms of Hearing Loss
Visit
www.freehearingtest.ca for
a self test of your hearing.
-
Straining to hear
conversations.
-
A feeling that you can hear,
but cannot understand.
-
Thinking people are mumbling.
-
Asking people to repeat
themselves, even in a quiet setting.
-
Confusing people’s words.
-
Finding it necessary to watch
people’s faces in order to understand what they are saying.
-
Difficulty hearing softer
sounds such as birds singing and water running.
-
Increasing the volume of your
radio or television to the point that it irritates others.
-
Avoiding certain activities
because it is too difficult to hear.
-
Chronic ear infections,
“ringing” in the ears, or dizziness.
-
Family history of diabetes,
heart disease, thyroid problems, poor circulation or hearing loss.
Regular hearing evaluations
are important for everyone, not just those who think they may have a
hearing loss. If you do suspect you have a hearing loss, the first
step is to consult your hearing health professional for a hearing
evaluation.
What is Hearing Loss?
Hearing impairment can occur
at any age, hearing loss develops slowly and painlessly. As a result,
the person is often unaware of the loss of hearing until others start
to notice.
There are three parts to the
human ear: the outer, middle and inner ear. As a sound occurs, the
sound wave vibrations are conducted through the outer and middle ear
to the inner ear.
|
|
  
|
| 1. Ear
canal 2. Eardrum 3-5. Ossicles 6. Oval window 7. Canal leading to the
nose 8. Cochlea 9. Auditory nerve |
|
Anatomy of the Ear and
How it Works
The ear is made up of
three main sections:
-
The Outer Ear
-
The Middle Ear
-
The Inner Ear
|
| Sounds from the outside
world are picked up by the outer ear,
which is made up of the pinna and the ear canal. As the sound waves
enter the ear, the ear canal (1) serves to increase the loudness of
those pitches that make it easier to understand speech. At the same
time the ear canal protects another important part of the ear: the
eardrum (2) - a flexible, circular membrane which vibrates when
touched by sound waves. |
|
The sound vibrations
continue their journey into the middle ear,
which contains three tiny bones called the ossicles(3-5), which are
also known as the hammer, anvil and stirrup. These bones form the
bridge from the eardrum into the inner ear. They increase and amplify
the sound vibrations even more, before safely transmitting them on to
the inner ear via the oval window. |
|
 |
| The
inner ear, or cochlea (8), resembles the circular shell of a
snail, and houses a system of tubes which are filled with a watery
fluid. As the sound waves pass through the oval window (6) the fluid
begins to move, setting tiny hair cells in motion. In turn, these
hairs transform the vibrations into electrical impulses that travel
along the auditory nerve (9) to the brain itself. Exactly how the
brain actually translates these nerve impulses remains a mystery. |
|
