Is this true that if u dont wear your hearing aids you become more deaf?

Endymion said:
Don't you find it amusing that surprisingly few people listened to you? I share the same experience, worry not! ;)
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Yea, it is amusing. As long as some intelligent ones listen, the rest of them can stay lost... :whistle:
 
vithios said:
I think it is because the sound waves are destroying your eardrum. I mean take a person who listens to rock music blasting at full volume; and then take a person who listens to classical music ,like Beethoven, at a really low volume. The rock music dude is going to have a substantial hearing loss after awhile, while the classical music dude might even actually get more acute hearing over the years....but on my post above yes I think that hearing loss is gradual. Take Beethoven, his hearing loss gradually kept getting worse and worse, until he was totally deaf.
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You're right in what you say regarding volume of music and who will lose more hearing. BUT....it's not the eardrum that loses hearing, the damage is done to the cholea nerve hairs in the inner ear.
 
deafskeptic said:
...

I've had problems with bad ringing in both ears and I stopped wearing my left ear HA for quite a while due to the ringing. Wearing my HA seems to make the ringing worse. Now I'm trying to get used to wearing my HA again. I'll be happy to hear again without that damned ringing in my ears.

...
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Sounds like you have recruitment issues in your cochlea. Fortunately for you if you are able to get a CI, that won't be an issue anymore. As for tinnitus (the ringing in your ears bit), there is no guarantee that you won't have it after getting a CI. It could go totally away like it did for me or it could stay the same or get worst. Pick your odds... But even if you still have tinnitus, wearing the CI will overpower it and you generally won't hear it while it is on.
 
That is total and complete B.S.


I KNOW how much the hearing dealers (and hearing people) try to scare you into believing you just absolutely need hearing aids to live.
It's B.S.
 
Dannie said:
That is total and complete B.S.


I KNOW how much the hearing dealers (and hearing people) try to scare you into believing you just absolutely need hearing aids to live.
It's B.S.
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*Sadly shaking head* Er...nobody is telling anybody they have to have a device for hearing in order to live. All that is being said if one wants to keep one's hearing viable, one needs to keep using a device which typically is a HA. Big difference.
 
sr171soars said:
Sounds like you have recruitment issues in your cochlea. Fortunately for you if you are able to get a CI, that won't be an issue anymore. As for tinnitus (the ringing in your ears bit), there is no guarantee that you won't have it after getting a CI. It could go totally away like it did for me or it could stay the same or get worst. Pick your odds... But even if you still have tinnitus, wearing the CI will overpower it and you generally won't hear it while it is on.
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Deaf skeptic,

If it is recruitment that you have then I can share my experience. I developed it after I had my sudden loss and whenever I put my hearing aid in everything was way too loud for me (even though ironically my hearing had got worse) and I got this horrible tinnitus - like my brain was screaming at me to take off my HA.

Come my CI I was a bit nervous even though I was told it would bypass the recruitment problem. And indeed the CI solved the problem. The tinnitus took about 6 weeks to improve though and now I'd say that it's 50% of what it was - maybe even less than that. The sounds from the CI overpower it and even at night it's not as loud as it was anymore.
 
this man is STUPID

we are ALWAYS deaf no matter if we wear HAs HAs sometimes make the deafness worse
 
R2D2 said:
Deaf skeptic,

If it is recruitment that you have then I can share my experience. I developed it after I had my sudden loss and whenever I put my hearing aid in everything was way too loud for me (even though ironically my hearing had got worse) and I got this horrible tinnitus - like my brain was screaming at me to take off my HA.

Come my CI I was a bit nervous even though I was told it would bypass the recruitment problem. And indeed the CI solved the problem. The tinnitus took about 6 weeks to improve though and now I'd say that it's 50% of what it was - maybe even less than that. The sounds from the CI overpower it and even at night it's not as loud as it was anymore.
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I've looked up recruitment and hearing and yeah my symptoms does indicate recruitment issues. For example when I lived with my parents, they had the TV on too loud and it would cause ringing in my ears so I stopped wearing my HA as a result. When I listen to music, it also can cause that. Traffic noises will cause problems as well.

Now I'm trying to wear my HA again. This means keeping everything quiet. Otherwise it's going to be hard to wear my HA.

Well let's hope that I qualify and that the CI will lessen that.
 
That's what I tried to do when I was waiting for my CI - to wear my hearing aid in quiet situations only and to read to myself aloud from a book. I wanted to keep the hearing nerve stimulated. Otherwise I was just not wearing the HA at all - it was too painful.
 
I'll try to explin it another way. Atrophy. Atrophy happens when you dont use something. Example, In high school I tore a ligament in my knee. I was on crutches for 8 weeks with my leg in a splint. When the 8 weeks was up, my leg had gotten alot smaller. If you dont use a body part, it shriks.
This applies to the auditory nerve. If the nerve does not get stimulated, eventually, it will die. It takes a long time to happen, but it will. Ask your audi that.
 
Lillys dad said:
I'll try to explin it another way. Atrophy. Atrophy happens when you dont use something. Example, In high school I tore a ligament in my knee. I was on crutches for 8 weeks with my leg in a splint. When the 8 weeks was up, my leg had gotten alot smaller. If you dont use a body part, it shriks.
This applies to the auditory nerve. If the nerve does not get stimulated, eventually, it will die. It takes a long time to happen, but it will. Ask your audi that.
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yeah; Atrophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia :D
 
LoveToSign21 said:
Hey guys. i was wondering since some man told me last week that since i dont wear my hearing aids i will become more deaf. how is that possible is that possible because im confused. I really want to know. I told him i have a severe hearing loss 80 db now i was born hh etc. hes like so your deaf. Im like im not deaf hes like same thing. IM like no two different things.




danielle
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no it isn't true, although age can be a factor (older people lose more of their hearing). Sometime HA can damage some of your ear nerves
 
btw, it is possible that if you don't keep your ear active, your brain start losing it's information. It is like how my aunt got into a car accident and was brain damaged on her left side that caused her to be slightly paralyze on her right side. They told her if she doesn't therapy exercise, she could lose her ability to use her right side for good. But I don't know for sure if that's how the brain works.
 
I have also wondered about Lillys hearing aid causing further hearing loss. With noise amplified to that degree, couldnt that cause damage to the cochlea? If she starts to hear at a level that would damage a normal hearing ear, then couldnt it damage what is left of her hearing?
 
Ephesians2_8 said:
btw, it is possible that if you don't keep your ear active, your brain start losing it's information. It is like how my aunt got into a car accident and was brain damaged on her left side that caused her to be slightly paralyze on her right side. They told her if she doesn't therapy exercise, she could lose her ability to use her right side for good. But I don't know for sure if that's how the brain works.
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Yes, that's how the brain works. It's the old use it or lose it proposition. It needs to be stimulated in order to justify keeping a neural pathway open. If neural pathway is not stimulated, the brain can reclaim it for some more pressing need. The brain is a marvelously adaptive entity.

If one doesn't use the neural pathways for hearing, then the brain slowly deactivates them and starts reusing them elsewhere. I find this an incredible and fascinating tidbit about a brain. It can actually "rewire" itself to suit it needs. Ever noticed how the blind can hear so much better than regular hearing folks? I heard one mentioned they can "hear" the texture of rain falling in way that normal hearing cannot. Their echo-location ability is superb! The brain simply "rewired" itself to make more use of hearing to assist them. This is why continue use of a HA, CI or other device actually helps keep this pathway open.
 
Lillys dad said:
I have also wondered about Lillys hearing aid causing further hearing loss. With noise amplified to that degree, couldnt that cause damage to the cochlea? If she starts to hear at a level that would damage a normal hearing ear, then couldnt it damage what is left of her hearing?
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I didn't believe it at first but I started thinking on this phenomenon for a while. I noticed some threads here and elsewhere people would mention this (whispers if you will) to realize there is something to make one believe there is some truth to this. But (surprisingly) not in a way that you would think. If this fact were true, everybody who wears any kind of HA type device would all eventually lose their hearing sooner than later.

As we have observed in life, this is not always the case and so brings up another point. Some people are observed to be gradually losing their hearing over time. It took me 44 years to get to the point that I had to do something myself before it got really bad. Then, there are those that have used a HAs all their life with minimal or no change in their hearing loss.

My take on it is that it depends on the type of damage to the cochlea and associated hairs. Some damage is such that wearing a HA is a catch-22 where it utimately damages one hearing over time. Other damage is such that doesn't have the same effect over time.
 
Lillys dad said:
I have also wondered about Lillys hearing aid causing further hearing loss. With noise amplified to that degree, couldnt that cause damage to the cochlea? If she starts to hear at a level that would damage a normal hearing ear, then couldnt it damage what is left of her hearing?
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Yes this can happen. Not so much damage to the cochlea but to the nerve hairs themselves. This is more likely to happen for profoundly deaf people who wear powerful hearing aids. Basically the increased amplification can wear the hair nerves down over time. In profoundly deaf people there are only a limited number of hairs functioning as the rest are either not there or badly damaged from birth. This itself puts a strain on them until they can give way in many cases. Sudden hearing losses are more common in deaf people than in hearing people.

I wish I had been educated about this earlier. I really thought that everything would stay the same forever. I was probably more deluded about my status as a deaf person back when I wore hearing aids than I am now with my CI. I think I now really appreciate what I am now.
 
LoveToSign21 said:
Hey guys. i was wondering since some man told me last week that since i dont wear my hearing aids i will become more deaf. how is that possible is that possible because im confused. I really want to know. I told him i have a severe hearing loss 80 db now i was born hh etc. hes like so your deaf. Im like im not deaf hes like same thing. IM like no two different things.




danielle
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Maybe you're big-D Deaf, since your user name indicates that you love to sign, which is usually a sign that you're culturally Deaf.
 
Lillys dad said:
I have also wondered about Lillys hearing aid causing further hearing loss. With noise amplified to that degree, couldnt that cause damage to the cochlea? If she starts to hear at a level that would damage a normal hearing ear, then couldnt it damage what is left of her hearing?
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I've often wondered about this theory. ( I wonder with a gain of 70-80+ db's) is it going to damage the residual hearing and how long will it take. I'm scared if it happens.
 
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