I visited an old friend last Tuesday, I had a great time talking and catching up but that wasn't the one that i really can't forget, it was my friend's niece. She was just around 2 years old. I called her but she didn't react or respond.
Then i found out that she was deaf. My friend told me that it was Congenital deafness. And she is planning to send her to speech classes the moment the kid started schooling. I was really concern because this is the first time i saw somebody that is deaf at a very young age.
So the moment i arrived i started my research about different type of deafness, and here's what i found.
Congenital deafness is one type of deafness that started from the moment you were born. It's like you already show hearing defects since you were young. People don't usually react to different sounds that surround them.
You will know if a child has these kind of hearing defects if he's old enough to talk but still doesn't talk. They should be wearing hearing aids and should undergo some speech training. Congenital deafness usually started from mothers who has German Measles.
Conductive deafness is a hearing loss that is cause by a defect of the external canal and the middle ear.
Hearing loss occurs as a result of either noise damage or aging. Most of us in one point of our lives have had quite unpleasant experiences with our ears, encountering problems ranging from mild infection to temporary loss of hearing. Hearing tends to deteriorates as we grow older, and this is partly due to constant exposure to noise in the environment. Here are useful tips to save and protect our hearing:
- Be careful cleaning your ears. If you use cotton-tipped swabs, do not push them deeper than the opening of the ear canal to avoid packing earwax into the canal.
- Turn down the volume and don't use the stereo to drown out other loud noises. Some portable CD or MP3 players can crank out 126 decibels, which is comparable to a jackhammer or chainsaw and loud enough to damage your ears.
- If you expect to be exposed to loud noises, wear earplugs or earmuffs or both. Each can shave off 15 to 30 decibels. Earplugs muffle low-pitched noises; earmuffs are better for high pitched ones.
- Quit smoking and avoid second hand smoke. Some evidence from animal studies suggests smoking is toxic to the ear's hair cells. And while some studies have not found a connection, one study showed that current cigarette smokers were 70 percent more likely to have hearing loss than non smokers.
- If you are hearing impaired, get yearly hearing test.
- Wear a bathing cap when swimming, dry the ears thoroughly after bathing, showering, or swimming.
- To soften dry, hard earwax use special ear drops.
