Knowing when you require some medical advice is typically fairly easy. When you break a bone, 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 mend properly, you need to get them taken care of as soon as you can.
But with regard to hearing aids, it’s not always so simple to recognize when it’s time to get some assistance. Hearing loss is normally a progressive condition. This means it isn’t always simple to know when you may need to start 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 likely time to call us for a consultation if you do notice any.
Hearing loss and hearing aids
Hearing aids are the main 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 helpful. Consequently, we may want you to wait before beginning to use them. It’s also possible that we could instruct you to only use your hearing aids when you’re in certain situations.
This means that just because you’re diagnosed with hearing loss doesn’t mean you will necessarily need hearing aids.
But in many instances hearing aids will be the best answer. Many individuals won’t get their hearing loss diagnosed until it becomes more severe because hearing loss advances gradually and frequently goes undetected for a while. Getting your hearing examined regularly is the key to catching hearing loss early and possibly mitigating the need for hearing aids.
And if that’s the situation, you’re most likely thinking: how can I tell if I require hearing aids?
Signs you need a hearing aid
Immediate communication issues can be the result of hearing loss. But a lot of times you don’t even comprehend that hearing loss is the cause of those communication problems. So, at what point will a hearing aid help?
Watch out for these indicators:
- When you’re in very loud locations, you have a difficult time following conversations: When people ask, “What are the signs of hearing loss?”, this one almost always comes up. If you have trouble hearing conversations in noisy places, that’s usually a sure sign that you have hearing loss. This happens because your ears aren’t getting as much information as they used to, and your brain isn’t really capable of filling in the gaps very easily. A lot of conversations get muddled because of this.
- You have difficulty making out what people are saying: Many people don’t think they have hearing loss or need hearing aids because the total volume they hear seems fine. But the thing about hearing loss is that certain frequencies of sound tend to go before others. Which means that the vast majority of sounds might seem ordinary but things in the high frequencies (like certain vowels) will be distorted. Consequently, you may have a difficult time making out what people are saying to you.
- The volume on your devices is becoming really loud: Hearing loss could be the culprit if you constantly need to crank the volume of your devices up. This is especially true if you keep turning that volume knob higher (and even more especially true if the people around you complain about how loud your media is).
- Phone conversations sound muffled: Voices usually sound a bit flat on even high-quality phone speakers. That can make it hard to understand, particularly if you have hearing loss. Once again, specific frequencies are missing and the outcome is that it’s very hard to hear those voices.
So how should you deal with it?
Clearly, you know precisely what you need to do when you break a bone! But what do you do when you begin to notice the symptoms of hearing loss? What degree of hearing loss requires hearing aids? That’s not a really easy answer but you should make an appointment with us for a hearing test if you start to notice any hearing loss symptoms. We’ll be able to assess the health of your hearing and ascertain just how serious your hearing loss may or may not be.
A hearing evaluation will also help you get the best possible hearing aids for your needs 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 loved ones and doing the things you love.
Call us for a hearing exam so we can help you improve your quality of life.