Can unilateral deafness in the elderly be cured? What causes deafness?

As the elderly age, the functions of various parts of the body decline. Can unilateral deafness be cured? Unilateral deafness not only causes physical harm to the patient, but also makes it inconvenient to talk with people in daily life. What are the causes of deafness?

Deafness is mainly caused by the following factors:

1) Secretory otitis media: Because there is no pus, fever or ear pain, children are often not treated until their academic performance declines or their personality changes, thus losing the opportunity for surgery and treatment. It is one of the common causes of deafness in children.

2) Congenital deafness: refers to the loss of hearing function after birth and living in a world of silence. Most of the time, parents pass on deafness-causing genes to their offspring, or the mother contracts viral infections such as colds, rubella, and eczema during the first three months of pregnancy, which hinders the development of hair cells and causes the fetus to lose hearing function.

3) Deafness caused by infectious diseases: If epidemic meningitis and mumps are not treated systematically after the onset of the disease, chronic sensorineural deafness may be left behind.

4) Ototoxic deafness (inner ear drug poisoning): refers to deafness caused by abuse of certain drugs or long-term exposure to certain chemicals. Common ototoxic drugs include gentamicin, salicylic acid analgesics, streptomycin, diuretics, anticancer drugs, etc. Common ototoxic chemicals include aluminum, phosphorus, arsenic, and benzene.

5) Sudden deafness: Hearing loss occurs without obvious cause and occurs within 1-2 days.

6) Autoimmune deafness: It is an asymmetric progressive sensorineural deafness that occurs simultaneously or successively on both sides and often occurs in adolescents.

Deafness can be divided into conductive hearing loss and sensorineural hearing loss.

Conductive hearing loss: Due to damage to the outer or middle ear, sound cannot be transmitted effectively. Such as otitis media, tympanic membrane perforation, cholesteatoma, and otosclerosis.

Sensorineural hearing loss: Due to excessive noise, functional degeneration, injection of ototoxic drugs, genetic reasons, etc., sound information cannot be transmitted to the brain completely and accurately. Such as noise-induced hearing loss, presbycusis, drug poisoning, Meniere's disease, acoustic nerve tumors, sudden hearing loss, central hearing loss, and cerebrovascular causes.

Common symptoms in people with sensorineural hearing loss:

1) Reduced speech discrimination ability: Unable to distinguish the difference between certain voice and intonation, and reduced comprehension of other people's speech.

2) Narrowing of hearing range: Some small sounds cannot be heard clearly.

3) Reduced rapid processing capabilities: When loud and soft sounds are mixed and occur at the same time, the reaction speed to soft sounds is reduced, so conversations in noisy environments will become problematic.

4) Reduced audio selection ability: The ability to distinguish between noise and normal conversation is reduced, making it easy to neglect the main communication information in a multi-person conversation environment.

Mixed hearing loss: A combination of conductive hearing loss and sensorineural hearing loss, where sound conduction in the inner, middle and outer ear may fail.

Treatment for deafness

Purpose: To restore or partially restore lost hearing and to preserve and utilize residual hearing as much as possible.

Drug treatment: Within six months after the onset of deafness, drug treatments such as improving inner ear microcirculation and hair cell nutrition should be adopted. If it is ineffective, you should give up and do not blindly believe in drugs. This is because the inner hair cells of sensorineural hearing loss will necrotize and fall off and cannot regenerate. It cannot be treated with drugs and has time limitations. For example, drugs can be used for treatment 1-3 weeks after sudden hearing loss, but the effect will be poor if it exceeds 3 weeks.

Hearing aids: So far, they are the most effective means of treatment and rehabilitation for patients with sensorineural hearing loss or conductive hearing loss who have lost the opportunity for medication and surgery.

Cochlear implant surgery: Suitable for completely deaf patients who do not respond to hearing aids. The surgery costs RMB 200,000, which is very expensive and has limited clinical application.

Hearing and speech training:

Auditory training: suitable for gradually cultivating listening habits after wearing hearing aids, and improving auditory positioning, recognition, memory and other abilities.

Speech training: Train deaf children to pronounce and lip-read, and then understand and accumulate vocabulary, master grammatical rules, and express thoughts and feelings flexibly and accurately. Through the joint efforts of teachers and parents, children's grasp of language can be improved.

What foods are good for recovery from deafness?

According to traditional Chinese medicine, the main pathogenesis of deafness is insufficient kidney essence and heat in the liver and gallbladder, so some foods that have the effects of nourishing the kidney and clearing the liver, promoting blood circulation and opening the orifices can be used in the care of patients.

The diet of deaf patients should be rich in nutrition. The staple foods should be rice, millet, corn, flour, soybeans, sorghum rice, etc. The side dishes should be beef, pork, duck, chicken, milk, goat milk, crucian carp, yellow croaker, carp, hairtail, turtle, tortoise, loach, shark fin, tofu, soy milk, etc. Vegetables such as cabbage, spinach, celery, lentils, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, soybean sprouts, mung bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, etc. Suitable fruits include apples, oranges, plums, peaches, persimmons, bananas, loquats, watermelons, and cantaloupes. Some foods vary from person to person: people with yin deficiency and internal heat should eat more fresh vegetables and fruits, but should not eat too much meat, especially warm meat such as mutton and dog meat. People with yang deficiency and fear of cold should eat less shrimps and seafood, and less melons.

Some foods can also be used to nourish kidney essence and treat deafness, such as walnut meat, longan meat, black sesame, etc. Choose one or two, crush them and take 1 to 2 tablespoons every day. This is a simple and effective dietary therapy method.