Hitting your head hard with something due to some accident might cause head trauma, and if you face it, you might get concussions or other mild problems. But problems can get really severe at times. You might have to get hospitalized. Getting head traumas are really common among people, and you’ll find it surprising that around 1.5 million people in the USA get affected by head traumas per year, and around 3 million people get mild concussions each year. Even mild injuries heal after some time, as you might recover from them within some days or weeks, or maybe a bit longer. But sadly, head traumas can have a more severe effect at times, as they can cause some permanent problems. Hearing loss problem is one of the after-effects that a person might face due to head trauma.
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury or Concussion
You can get a concussion from a blow or impact on your head, which is a subtle form of brain injury. You can also get concussions from severe movements of your head or neck. Many people crack their necks when they are under stress, but this is not a good thing to do at all, as by doing it you can cause damage to your neck, and in turn, it can affect your brain. So, try to refrain from such activities that can cause concussions. Even though you will recover from concussions soon enough, and they’re not fatal at all. But they can cause other damages such as hearing loss problems.
The connection between Head Injuries and Hearing Loss
If you face a traumatic brain injury, it can lead you to problems like dizziness, or more, such as tinnitus and hearing loss problems. If you face sudden violent injuries on your head, your auditory pathway can get damaged. You can face this damage at any point between your outer ear and your auditory cortex of the brain. So, you can see that there isn’t a direct connection between head injury and hearing loss, but instead, the auditory pathway gets damaged due to the injury.
In the case of causing hearing loss problems, a mild concussion can be really threatening, as the negative effects might remain even after you recover. And these effects aren’t curable or reversible in many cases, as your eardrums can permanently get damaged, or the small bones that you have in order to connect with the middle ear get destroyed. Moreover, the membranes and tissues can get damaged too. All these internal problems might stop the flow of blood to your cochlear nerves, which can cause hearing loss problems, and even prove to be fatal.
What To Do if You Face Hearing Loss
If you face any kind of head trauma or get any kind of concussion, make sure to check your hearing by taking a hearing test. An audiologist can help you with that. If you are lucky then you won’t have any problems with your hearing as it isn’t something inevitable in the case of head trauma. But if you really fall victim to hearing loss problems due to your auditory pathway getting damaged because of the head trauma, then instead of getting panicked you’ll have to follow some measures.
If you have hearing loss problems, you will have to sit down with your audiologist for some tests to know how much you can hear at each frequency in each of your ears, and this will help to determine the degree of your hearing loss problem, and what type of hearing aid you will need.
Hearing aid technology has been really great in helping people with hearing loss problems. Even though there are some other options, in the case of permanent hearing loss problems, hearing aids are the most effective and most popular thing to use no matter the degree of hearing loss. Hearing aids will help you to listen better by amplifying the sounds around you. Hearing aids won’t only help you to listen better, they will also keep your hearing health from further deteriorating.
If you don’t take any kind of measures after finding out that you have hearing loss problems, your hearing will worsen with time, and you might get exposed to additional physical and mental health problems because of your existing hearing loss problem. If you don’t take care of the problem you will find it really troubling and difficult to get on with your normal life and carry on a conversation with other people the way you used to do before. Your social life might get greatly hampered. Hearing aids will help you to listen better, and keep up with everyone else, and will get you integrated into society the way you used to before your hearing loss problems.
Final Words
You should always be careful while going on with your day-to-day tasks so that you don’t face any head trauma, but accidents can always happen. So, if you face any head trauma and fall victim to hearing loss due to that, make sure to take proper measures.
