Why are people with hearing loss often afraid of noise?

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Degenerative problems of hearing aging and senile hearing loss are common after the age of 50 and 60. Studies have shown that related complications that may accelerate hearing loss include obesity, sleep apnea, high blood lipids, diabetes, high blood pressure, noise damage, ototoxic drug use, ear inflammation, ear trauma, etc. The characteristics of hearing loss include bilateral, symmetrical, and progressive hearing loss, especially in high-frequency parts. Therefore, high-frequency sounds such as birdsong and telephone ringing will be particularly difficult to hear, which will have a significant impact on the quality of life. .



Why are people with hearing loss often afraid of noise?

Our hearing is limited. Just like setting the temperature of water when it freezes to 0 degrees Celsius, audiologists artificially set the sound of several different frequencies that normal young people can just hear as 0dBHL (hearing zero level). Normal people can barely hear sounds of 0dBHL. can hear. The sound of conversation in a quiet environment is about 65dBHL, which sounds soft and suitable. If someone shouts loudly in our ears, we will all feel disgusted, and even louder sounds will be intolerable to us. Generally speaking, our tolerance limit will not exceed 120dBHL.


Starting from the OdBHL that can be heard to the maximum limit of 120dB is the range that we can hear. The term is called "auditory dynamic range". If there is hearing loss (deafness), the sound you just heard will not be OdBHL, but may be 30dB, 60dB, 70dBHL or even more. Assuming that a deaf person's average hearing loss (PTA) is 6OdBHL (this means that 60dBHL is the sound he can just hear, which feels equivalent to a normal hearing valve: OdBHL), and assuming that he also has a hearing dynamic range of 12OdB, then the Deaf people seem to be able to tolerate sounds around 180dBHL. In fact, not only is no one able to endure it, such a loud sound does not exist in nature at all. The second assumption is completely wrong.

Although they cannot hear soft sounds, the vast majority of deaf people, especially those with sensorineural deafness, are no better, or even worse, than people with normal hearing in tolerating loud sounds. Not to mention 120dB, even 110dB and 100dB often sound "deafening" to them. This is because their hearing dynamic range is narrowed to varying degrees, sometimes even to less than 5dB. In other words, if you reduce it by 5dB, you can't hear it, and if you increase it by 5dB, you can't stand it. Therefore, many deaf people are more afraid of noise than normal hearing people.

People who are afraid of noise after hearing loss are called "re-sounding" (reverberation).Revitalization is a pathological reaction accompanying hearing loss. Experts define it as: "As the sound intensity increases, the loudness perception increases abnormally and rapidly compared with normal people." The essence of revitalization is the inner and outer hair cells of the inner ear. Collaboration dysfunction. When explaining the revitalization phenomenon to patients, we can make the following analogy: when the speaking voice is doubled, the normal person's hearing experience is also doubled: when the speaking voice is increased ten times or a hundred times, the normal person's hearing sensation is doubled. The listening experience will be increased ten to one hundred times accordingly. This is not the case with revitalized deaf people. When our speaking voice doubles, their listening experience often increases ten, twenty, or even fifty or a hundred times. An excessive increase in listening sensation (loudness) is called revitalization.
The existence of revitalization is the root cause of deafness and fear of noise. Revitalization is a common phenomenon that is not well understood by deaf people or even by most otologists. Therefore, once it is discovered that our patients are "allergic" to loud sounds, they should be introduced to the phenomenon of resuscitation and its mechanisms. The advantage of doing this is that we often receive unexpected trust. In addition, hearing aids selected for patients with reverberations must be designed with attention to maximum loudness output.



Deafness and hard-of-hearing in the elderly are inevitable. We must take preventive measures as early as possible and feed the elderly more iron-containing and kidney-tonifying foods. You should pay attention to communicating with the elderly more often and discover the problems around them in time.


It is recommended that when the hearing loss exceeds 40 decibels, a hearing aid should be selected.
Some elderly people think that wearing hearing aids means telling others that their ears are not good, which is embarrassing. In fact, poor hearing is just like other diseases. It is just that there is something wrong with a certain part of our body. There is nothing to be ashamed of. Rather than hiding it, it is better to admit it frankly. The elderly should change their minds. Wearing hearing aids does not highlight their own shortcomings, but rather improves their quality of life. The elderly should communicate better with the help of hearing aids and maintain an optimistic attitude and active thinking.