Deafness and Hearing Loss

answ2. Some folk are born deaf, or with very limited hearing. This is usually due to a genetic defect, but some diseases during pregnancy can cause deafness. Mumps, measles and meningitis are some. Fetal alcohol syndrome, AIDS, Syphillus and Chlamydia are other diseases of the mother that may be passed to the fetus and impair development of hearing organs.

As folk get old, several of their faculties partly fail, and hearing is one of these. Presbycusus (elderly ear) is the name for this.

In 2010, unfortunately, noise induced deafness is becoming much more common. It used to be a defect only in noisy industries, such as boilermaking and rivetting. It has spread beyond that, e.g. in farming, noisy tractors and farm bikes have contributed and now with the event of 'in ear' headphones such as with MP3 players etc, the problem of noise induced deafness is becoming more widespread.

Noise induced deafness is caused by the hair cells in the cochlea being damaged, and is irreversible. You can prevent it!

There are many reasons why a person might be deaf. Some people are born with a hearing loss, due to an inherited genetic condition, while some develop deafness later in life due to exposure to a disease like mumps or German measles, or exposure to repeated and very loud noises. The most common form of deafness is called sensorineural hearing loss, that is, the cochlea (a small but necessary part of the inner ear which has tiny hair cells hairs that process the signals of sound) is damaged. Other forms are neural hearing losses, where the nerve that sends the signal to the brain is damaged, or a conductive hearing loss, which is when there is something blocking the sound from entering the ear to begin with, such as a malformed ear, deformed ossicular chain (the tiny bones in the middle ear), etc.