Can lost hearing be restored?

The quick and frank answer to the question, “Can lost hearing be restored?” is no; once your hearing is lost, you cannot restore it to how it was.

But notice the “how it was” part of that answer. That’s because, while you can’t go back to the way you used to hear, you can still absolutely treat hearing loss and significantly improve how well you’re currently hearing.

Let us explain.

There are two types of hearing loss. One type - conductive hearing loss - happens when sounds cannot travel through the outer or middle ear due to an obstruction or other issue. Many times, conductive hearing loss can be treated with surgery or medicine.

The most common type of hearing loss - sensorineural hearing loss - occurs when the inner ear or hearing nerve stops working how it should, usually from damage caused by ageing or noise. (There’s a third type - mixed hearing loss - but that’s just a combo of the other two.)

While sensorineural hearing loss can’t be corrected medically or surgically, it can almost always be treated and helped with amplification.

Hearing aids can improve lost hearing.

Hearing aids have been the go-to way we amplify sounds for people with hearing loss for the last 100 or so years. Back then, of course, they just amplified everything - which did not help their reputation. Even today, personal sound amplification devices (PSAPs) and hearing amplifiers, you can buy online, operate similarly - just raising the volume on everything. (It hurts just thinking of that.)

But today’s best hearing aids are a different story altogether. Thanks to a lot of technical underneath-the-hood stuff, they’re able to distinguish between signals/sounds of interest - like voices and speech - and “noise” that makes listening hard and uncomfortable. Then they can instantly and automatically amplify those sounds you want to hear while suppressing the ones you don’t.

They’re that smart.

In the hands of an experienced hearing professional, they become even smarter. Because that hearing professional can fine-tune them to help with the specific frequencies, intensity levels, and environments you struggle with, not unlike how eyeglass prescriptions are tailored to your vision.

The TL;DR version.

So, no, hearing loss cannot be restored to how you remember it when it was “normal”. But you can certainly treat it and improve it with hearing aids. And, if what we hear from first-time wearers is true, you’ll be amazed at what you’ve been missing all the years you didn’t wear them.

Want to experience the benefits of hearing aids for yourself? We can help. Feel free to contact us, and we can arrange a trial of the latest award-winning hearing aids in Somerset for you.

With thanks to Starkey.