Undoubtedly, all of our senses are important for us to function properly, but hearing can be considered as to be more important as it helps us learn about things and even just to balance our body. The world around us can completely change once our sense of hearing is gone. For us to prevent permanent hearing loss, we should therefore try to understand and learn what are the causes of hearing loss as well as how hearing actually works.
It can be said that hearing is a complicated process as it involves five parts of the human body for the hearing mechanism to properly work. The five sections inside our body that are involved in the hearing mechanism are: the brain's auditory processing center, the inner ear, the outer ear, middle ear and acoustic nerves. All five of these sections should be able to work together like an orchestra for a person to have a perfect sense of hearing, any kind of damage to one of these sections can lead for a person to lose his or her hearing permanently.
Sound vibrations are collected by the outer ear and it funnels them to the ear canal, making this the first step in the hearing mechanism. The brain can process where a sound's origin is and how far it is with the help of the outer ear. The ear canal then follows the outer ear part and this prevents dusts and other tiny foreign matter from entering the ear.
The eardrum is the next part after the ear canal, and after this is where the middle ear starts where three signficant bones can be found. The three bones, hammer, anvil and stirrup basically create movement that matches the sound waves coming in from the outer ear. The movement from the middle ear pushes on a membrane in the cochlea located in the inner ear.
A snail-like shape that is seen in the inner ear is the cochlea and it is filled with fluid and tine hair cells. It is filled with fluid and of tiny hair cells which are respectively disrupted then stimulated by the mechanical energy pushing on the membrane. Different hair cells may respond to only certain frequencies therefore not all hair cells are stimulated by any one sound.
These tiny hair cells send signals that are transformed to nerve impulses, these are then brought by the acoustic nerve to the brain. As the acoustic nerve carries these nerve impulses to the brain, the central auditory system is already processing it. It processes the sound by localizing it, differentiating different sounds and sources, recognizing sound patterns and placing a time stamp on the sound.
These things, although microscopic in size, gives a person his or her ability to hear and more importantly understand sound. Hearing loss, temporary or permanent, can be prevented by protecting all these sections of our hearing mechanism. In the next section, we tackle the causes of hearing loss in order to educate people and give them a chance to prevent it all together.
Being born with malfunctioning or improperly formed hearing parts is only one cause of hearing loss. A person whose job is to be in very noisy and loud surroundings like construction yards and airports is at risk of losing their sense of hearing. Sudden bursts of extraordinary levels of sounds like that of a gunshot fire or firework explosion can also impair a person's hearing.
Aside from the ones mentioned already, diseases can also make a person lose their sense of hearing. A person's hearing can be affected by some types of medication and ototoxic chemicals. On a lasting note, if you haven't had your ears checked then it is time to get it diagnosed for possible risks.
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