Sometimes, it’s easy to identify when you require medical help. When you break your leg, for instance, you know you should go to the doctor (or the emergency room, depending on the situation). You might need a splint or a cast or supportive device, but the thing is that you’re not likely to try “toughing it out”. If you want your bones to mend correctly, you need to get them treated as soon as possible.
It’s not always that clear cut with regard to hearing aids, though. Hearing loss usually advances very gradually over time. This means knowing when to get treatment for hearing loss can be tricky.
So keeping an eye out for indications that your hearing is going is a good idea. If you notice any, it may be time to consult us about your first set of hearing aids.
Hearing loss and hearing aids
Hearing aids are the primary form of treatment for hearing loss. But that doesn’t mean everybody who has hearing loss will immediately need a set of hearing aids. In situations where patients have very mild hearing loss, hearing aids won’t always be practical. Consequently, we might want you to wait before starting to use them. In addition, you might be instructed to wear hearing aids only in particular situations.
This means that just because you are diagnosed with hearing loss doesn’t mean you will automatically need hearing aids.
But in many cases hearing aids will be the best solution. Because hearing loss can be a sneaky and slow condition, many individuals don’t get a diagnosis until there’s been considerable damage. But if you come in for a hearing exam regularly, you may be able to catch your hearing loss early, and, because of this, you may not require hearing aids right away.
So how will you know if you have hearing loss?
Signs you need a hearing aid
Immediate communication problems can be the consequence of hearing loss. But lots of times you don’t even comprehend that hearing loss is the cause of those communication issues. So, at what stage will a hearing aid help you?
Here are some of the common signs you should watch out for:
- You can’t understand people on the phone: Even the highest quality phone speakers tend to flatten a voice. That can make it hard to understand, particularly if you have hearing loss. It can be really difficult to hear voices as an outcome of the loss of these frequencies.
- You listen to the radio or TV at really loud levels: If you’re continuously turning up the volume on your television or radio or smartphone, it may be the result of hearing loss. This is particularly 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 noisy locations, you have a hard time following conversations: When people ask, “What are the signs of hearing loss?”, this one is almost always mentioned. If you have difficulty hearing conversations in loud places, that’s usually a sure sign that you have hearing loss. That’s because your brain has a hard time filling in the missing information that you lose when you have hearing impairment. Because of this, there’s a lot of muffled conversations.
- You have trouble understanding what people are saying: Many people feel like the overall volume of life is fine so they never consider that they may have hearing loss. But hearing loss is funny, it tends to affect particular frequencies before others. Which means that the great majority of sounds might seem normal but things in the high frequencies (like certain vowels) will be distorted. This could cause you to have a tough time understanding what people are saying.
So what can you do?
When you break a bone, it’s clear cut what to do: you go see the doctor! But what do you do when you start to notice the symptoms of hearing loss? How bad does hearing loss need to be to call for a hearing aid? That’s not a very easy answer but you should schedule an appointment with us for a hearing assessment if you begin to experience any hearing loss symptoms. We will be able to let you know how severe your hearing loss is.
A hearing evaluation will also help you get the optimal hearing aids for your requirements if you do indeed need hearing aids. Then you will be able to get back to taking pleasure in good conversations with your friends and family members and doing the things you love.
Call us for a hearing test so we can help you improve your quality of life.
