Cause of Hearing Loss

Tinnitus is a major cause of hearing loss. It is a condition where a person complains of heavy ringing in the ears caused by invalid sound signals to the brain. It is mainly caused by the injury of the hair cells lining the inner ear. This injury is mainly caused due to blasts of high intensity noise. Hence, according to many clinical trials, noise pollution leading to tinnitus has become a major cause of hearing loss.

In the normal physiology of the ear, a healthy inner ear hair cell moves when the pressure carried by sound waves activates it. This movement triggers the hearing nerves, which send the signal to the brain, and the brain interprets it as a sound and enables us to listen. This is how each of the hair cells together work and keeps our audibility clear. Whenever this mechanism is hampered, it causes hearing loss.

The heavy ringing or other such sounds heard by the tinnitus patients are due do the damaged inner ear hair cells. These damaged hair cells are unable to control their movement. Hence they move randomly giving invalid sound signals to the brain, which accepts them and causes the sounds. The sound heard can be periodical or continuous depending on the severity of the damage of the hair cell, and also helps to determine the cause of hearing loss. The sufferers of the latter case express more distress and anxiety.
Hence tinnitus, is not only a cause of hearing loss, but also can lead to considerable psychological trauma and unproductive life.

There are several causes of tinnitus, which can also be the cause of hearing loss. The most common being an age-related condition. It can also be caused by exposure to very loud noises and also by the continuous exposure to relatively lesser noises. Hence noise pollution is what gets implicated as a major cause of hearing loss, time and again. There are some cases of head and neck injuries that have caused tinnitus, which then became the cause of hearing loss.

In recent years, it is noticed that tinnitus is a major cause of hearing loss. In some cases tinnitus may be psychogenic where a person tends to ‘hear sounds in the head’ due to a stressful situation. Relieving the stressful factor itself can provide a lot of relief. However, certain kinds of tinnitus which cause hearing loss may also be of somatic origin. There are extensive researches being carried out these days in order to establish confirmed treatment modalities for tinnitus. As of now, the treatment of tinnitus is mainly symptomatic. The treatment for this condition includes several lifestyle variations, which needs to be followed stringently for good results. But at the end of the day, the problem still remains that all this is highly symptomatic and do not provide sustained relief to the patient. So the disease prognosis is often unpredictable, and in certain cases, it can also be very poor, giving no real benefit to the sufferer.