You probably don’t spend too much time thinking about your ears, even though they play such a crucial role in your life. They help keep you balanced, enjoy your favorite music, and converse with your family over a relaxing meal at Zee’s Rooftop Café.
Let’s take some time to appreciate these amazing organs by examining a few unusual facts about your ears.
Ears Have the Three Smallest Bones in the Human Body 
The human body has 206 bones, and your ears are home to the three smallest, the malleus, incus, and stapes. These three bones work to help you hear by transmitting sound vibrations to the brain. If any one or all of them break, it can cause conductive hearing loss, where sound is blocked from moving through the outer or middle ear.
Hair Helps You Hear
Not the hair on your head, as that would be more than unusual! However, tiny hair cells located in the cochlea in the inner ear play a vital role in helping transmit sound to your brain. If these cells are damaged by loud noise, disrupted blood flow or for another reason, they cannot be repaired. Enough damage will lead to permanent hearing loss.
Gender May Affect Your Hearing
Women and men have different experiences when it comes to hearing ability and hearing loss. Research has shown that women of all ages have a better ability to hear higher frequency or higher-pitched sounds (above 2000 Hz) than men. Conversely, as women age, they seem to struggle to hear lower frequency sounds more than men do.
Age Makes it Harder to Hear High-pitched Sounds
Hearing loss becomes more likely as we age. Typically, we start to lose our ability to hear higher-frequency sounds first. This means it might become more difficult to hear things like birds chirping, waves crashing or even higher-pitched voices like those of women and children.
Pediatric Hearing Loss Can Affect School Performance
While many cases of pediatric hearing loss get diagnosed during newborn hearing screenings, sometimes symptoms don’t develop until later in childhood. If a child’s hearing loss is mild or moderate, it may go unnoticed for years. Unfortunately, this delay in treatment can affect their language and speech development. This can affect both their ability to succeed at school and well as make it difficult to communicate and connect with their peers. Any concerns about your child’s hearing should be discussed with a medical provider as soon as possible.
If you or a loved one is experiencing problems hearing or other ear-related troubles, call Southwest Idaho ENT today to speak with an expert or schedule an appointment.