Recognizing when you need some medical advice is normally rather easy. When you break your leg, for example, you know you should go to the doctor (or the emergency room, depending on the scenario). With scenarios like this, simply “toughing it out” isn’t a possibility. If you want your bones to heal properly, you need to get them taken care of as soon as possible.
But when it comes to hearing aids, it’s not always so easy to identify when it’s time to get some assistance. Hearing loss typically progresses very slowly over time. That means it’s not always easy to know when you may need to begin wearing hearing aids or to delay seeking treatment you know could be beneficial.
So keeping an eye out for signs that your hearing is going is a good plan. It’s probably time to call us for a consultation if you do detect any.
Hearing loss and hearing aids
Hearing aids are the main form of treatment for hearing loss. But everybody who has some degree of hearing loss won’t automatically need hearing aids. In cases where patients have very mild hearing loss, hearing aids won’t always be useful. We may want you to hold off on using hearing aids because of this. Likewise, you might be advised to wear hearing aids only in specific situations.
This means that just because you’re diagnosed with hearing loss doesn’t mean you will automatically require hearing aids.
But in many cases hearing aids will be the best answer. Many people won’t get their hearing loss diagnosed until it becomes more serious because hearing loss develops slowly and frequently goes unnoticed for a while. Getting your hearing tested regularly is the key to catching hearing loss early and possibly mitigating the need for hearing aids.
And if that’s the case, you’re probably thinking: how can I tell if I require hearing aids?
You need hearing aids if you detect these indicators
Hearing loss is one of those conditions that can produce immediate communication challenges. The interesting thing, though, is that you don’t always comprehend that those communication difficulties are due to hearing loss. So, at what stage will a hearing aid help you?
Look out for these indicators:
- Phone conversations sound muffled: Even the highest quality phone speakers have a habit of flattening a voice. If you have hearing loss, this can make it even more challenging to understand conversations. It can be extremely challenging to hear voices as an outcome of the loss of these frequencies.
- You have difficulty making out what people are saying: Many individuals feel like the total volume of life is fine so they never imagine that they may have hearing loss. But hearing loss is funny, it tends to affect certain frequencies before others. Which means that the great majority of sounds might seem ordinary but things in the high frequencies (such as certain vowels) will be distorted. Consequently, you might have a hard time making out what people are saying to you.
- You listen to the radio or TV at really loud levels: Hearing loss could be the cause if you constantly need to crank the volume of your devices up. This is especially true if you keep moving that volume knob higher (and even more especially relevant if the people around you complain about how loud your media is).
- When you’re in very loud settings, you have a tough time following conversations: When people ask, “What are the signs of hearing loss?”, this one almost always comes up. One of the surest signs of hearing loss is that you have trouble following conversations in noisy settings, like bars or restaurants. That’s because your brain has trouble filling in the missing information that you lose when you have hearing impairment. A lot of conversations get muffled because of this.
So how should you deal with it?
When you break a bone, it’s obvious what to do: you go see the doctor! But what about when you notice these indications that you might need a hearing aid? How severe does hearing loss need to be to require a hearing aid? Well, that’s hard to answer, but when you start noticing these symptoms, it’s a good plan to make an appointment with us. We will be able to inform you about how severe your hearing loss is.
And if you do wind up needing hearing aids, a hearing exam will help determine the best device for your hearing needs. This means you’ll be able to get back to communicating with your friends and loved ones, you’ll understand your grandkids when they call you on the phone, your co-workers at your morning meeting, and your friends at the pub.
Give us a call to schedule your hearing test, we can help you recognize if you’re suffering from hearing loss.