Ear Health: Protect Your Hearing

Hearing is delicate and important. Hearing loss can have many different causes, including the aging process, earwax buildup, exposure to very loud noises over a long period of time, viral or bacterial infections, heart conditions or stroke, head injuries, tumors, certain medicines and heredity. Do what you can to protect yourself and your family from hearing loss.

• How Hearing Works
• Sensorineural Hearing Loss
• Conductive Hearing Loss
• Common Hearing Disorders
• Noise-induced Hearing Loss
• Presbycusis
• Tinnitus
• Work with Your Family and Friends
• How You Can Help a Person with Hearing Loss
• What You Can Do if You Have Trouble Hearing
• Additional Resources

Health information in this article was obtained from the following sources: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

Published in January 2004. Last updated April 2007. HIP reviews this article, as all articles in MyHealth, on a monthly basis.