Because you’re so hip, you rocked out in the front row for the entire rock concert last night. It’s not exactly hearing-healthy, but it’s fun, and the next day, you wake up with two ringing ears. (That’s not as fun.)
But what if you wake up and can only hear out of one ear? Well, if that’s the situation, the rock concert may not be the cause. Something else may be at work. And you may be a little alarmed when you experience hearing loss in only one ear.
In addition, your hearing might also be a little wonky. Normally, your brain is processing information from both ears. So it can be disorienting to get signals from one ear only.
Hearing loss in one ear creates problems, here’s why
Your ears basically work together (no pun intended) with each other. Just like having two forward facing eyes helps you with depth perception and visual clarity, having two outward facing ears helps you hear more accurately. So hearing loss in one ear can wreak havoc. Here are a few of the most prevalent:
- Pinpointing the direction of sound can become a real challenge: You hear somebody trying to get your attention, but looking around, you can’t locate where they are. It’s extremely hard to triangulate the direction of sound with only one ear functioning.
- It’s hard to hear in noisy locations: Loud settings such as event venues or noisy restaurants can become overwhelming with only one ear functioning. That’s because your ears can’t figure out where any of that sound is originating from.
- You have difficulty discerning volume: You need both ears to triangulate location, but you also need both to figure out volume. Think about it this way: You won’t be sure if a sound is far away or merely quiet if you don’t know where the sound is coming from.
- You tire your brain out: When you lose hearing in one of your ears, your brain can get overly tired, extra fast. That’s because it’s failing to get the complete sound spectrum from just one ear so it’s working overly hard to make up for it. And when hearing loss suddenly happens in one ear, that’s particularly true. This can make all kinds of tasks throughout your day-to-day life more exhausting.
So what causes hearing loss in one ear?
Hearing professionals call impaired hearing in one ear “unilateral hearing loss” or “single-sided hearing loss.” Single sided hearing loss, unlike typical “both ear hearing loss”, usually isn’t the result of noise related damage. So, other possible factors need to be considered.
Some of the most prevalent causes include the following:
- Other infections: Swelling is one of your body’s most prevailing responses to infection. It’s just what your body does! This reaction isn’t always localized, so any infection that produces swelling can result in the loss of hearing in one ear.
- Earwax: Yup, sometimes your earwax can become so packed in there that it blocks your hearing. It has a similar effect to wearing earplugs. If you have earwax plugging your ear, never try to clean it out with a cotton swab. Cotton swabs can jam the earwax even further up against the eardrum.
- Ear infections: Ear infections can trigger swelling. And it will extremely difficult to hear through a swollen, closed up ear canal.
- Meniere’s Disease: When someone is coping with the chronic condition called Menier’s disease, they frequently experience vertigo and hearing loss. In many cases, the disease advances asymmetrically: one ear might be impacted before the other. Menier’s disease often is accompanied by single sided hearing loss and ringing.
- Ruptured eardrum: Typical, a ruptured eardrum is hard to miss. It can be due to head trauma, loud noises, or foreign objects in the ear (amongst other things). When the thin membrane dividing your ear canal and your middle ear has a hole in it, this type of injury happens. Normally, tinnitus and hearing loss along with a great deal of pain result.
- Acoustic Neuroma: While the name might sound kind of intimidating, an acoustic neuroma is a benign tumor that forms on the nerves of the inner ear. While it isn’t cancerous, necessarily, an acoustic neuroma is still a serious (and possibly life-threatening) condition that you should talk to your provider about.
- Irregular Bone Growth: In really rare cases, the cause of your hearing loss could actually be some irregular bone growth getting in the way. And when it grows in a particular way, this bone can actually interfere with your hearing.
So how should I handle hearing loss in one ear?
Treatments for single-sided hearing loss will differ based upon the underlying cause. Surgery could be the best choice for specific obstructions such as tissue or bone growth. Some problems, like a ruptured eardrum, will normally heal by themselves. And still others, including an earwax based obstruction, can be cleared away by simple instruments.
Your single-sided hearing loss, in some circumstances, might be permanent. And in these cases, we will help by prescribing one of two hearing aid options:
- Bone-Conduction Hearing Aids: These hearing aids bypass much of the ear by using your bones to convey sound to the brain.
- CROS Hearing Aid: This kind of uniquely designed hearing aid is specifically made to treat single-sided hearing loss. With this hearing aid, sound is picked up at your bad ear and sent to your good ear where it’s detected by your brain. It’s very effective not to mention complicated and very cool.
It all begins with your hearing specialist
If you aren’t hearing out of both of your ears, there’s probably a reason. It’s not something that should be dismissed. It’s important, both for your wellness and for the health of your hearing, to get to the bottom of those causes. So start hearing out of both ears again by scheduling an appointment with us.
References
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7230949/
https://www.hear-it.org/single-sided-deafness