Possible To Improve Hearing?

[Lamp]

I'm a 28 year old male who has always listened to music at a high volume with headphones. At one point in my life I had to resort to blasting white noise with headphones to drown out roommates so I could fall asleep for about a year. I have tinnitus which I don't really mind all that much, and I don't notice it until I'm laying in bed at night and everything is quiet, but sometimes I have trouble understanding others. I'm about to have a clinical rotation in the operating room and when I was shadowing there about a week ago I was having a hard time understanding the other people in the room. I got my hearing tested and she said it wasn't bad. Is there anyway to possible improve hearing? Thanks.

 

[james2388]

I'd say it's the tinnitus at night that is disrupting sleep, which is causing some cognition issues. If you say it's not that bad, and the hearing test says its not that bad, but you are having a hard time understanding people in a room, this could either be a sleep issue, or a stress thing especially regarding technical details. If it's the latter, you'd want to believe its just your hearing, and not deal with imposter syndrome.
To test this out, put on a youtube video, at 2x the speed and put it across the room.
The only other instance of this sort of cognitive impairment is people eating a vegan diet. They just aren't as sharp.
If people say you talk too loud, that would be a tell tale sign of hearing impairment. But you would have acknowledged this and read body language.

Other than that, considering nutritional therapies for hearing and tinnitus, if you find it, you'll not be in the operating room, you'll be on you way to publishing studies. Look into some hearing appliances, they have some for tinnitus as well as increasing hearing. Also a background machine at night, ocean, rain, crickets, wind etc will help with sleep.

 

[BearWithMe]

Magnesium, Taurine and Niacinamide can improve tinnitus and hearing and are peat-friendly. Ginkgo helps improving the blood flow to the brain and ear and could help with both actual hearing loss and cognitive impairment that @james2388 mentioned.

 

[snacks]

I'd say it's the tinnitus at night that is disrupting sleep, which is causing some cognition issues. If you say it's not that bad, and the hearing test says its not that bad, but you are having a hard time understanding people in a room, this could either be a sleep issue, or a stress thing especially regarding technical details. If it's the latter, you'd want to believe its just your hearing, and not deal with imposter syndrome.
To test this out, put on a youtube video, at 2x the speed and put it across the room.
The only other instance of this sort of cognitive impairment is people eating a vegan diet. They just aren't as sharp.
If people say you talk too loud, that would be a tell tale sign of hearing impairment. But you would have acknowledged this and read body language.

Other than that, considering nutritional therapies for hearing and tinnitus, if you find it, you'll not be in the operating room, you'll be on you way to publishing studies. Look into some hearing appliances, they have some for tinnitus as well as increasing hearing. Also a background machine at night, ocean, rain, crickets, wind etc will help with sleep.

Talking too loud can not understanding people can be an issue with things other than hearing damage. For example when I listened to a lot of music at damaging volume I couldn't understand very quiet/soft speakers but can just fine now-- this led me to believe that the issue isn't that your hearing is damaged but rather that your threshold for "this is meaningfully audible and registers" is higher. Kind of like reduced dopamine sensitivity due to porn or high stress I suppose although the two aren't exactly comparable. The other thing with speaking modulation (as opposed to listening, so this isn't relevant to OP) is that occasionally the issue can be a level of autism or not being mentally present. Of course it can also be hearing damage though so this is just me being pedantic

 

[Lamp]

I should also note that my tinnitus started after I started taking Lions Mane mushrooms. Not sure if that holds any relevance.

 

[BearWithMe]

Lion's Mane powerfully stimulate nerve repair. Your tinnitus might actually be a good sign. The supplement might have bringed back to life some of your cochlear hair cells or some nerves in the hearing pathway, that were damaged earlier in your life.