Knowing when you require some medical advice is usually pretty easy. When you break a bone, for instance, you know you should go to the doctor (or the emergency room, depending on the situation). 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 you can.
It’s not always that clear cut in terms of hearing aids, however. Hearing loss is normally a progressive condition. This means knowing when to get treatment for hearing loss can be difficult.
So watching out for signs that your hearing may be going is a good plan. If you detect any, it may be time to consult us about your first pair of hearing aids.
Hearing aids and hearing loss
Hearing aids are the primary form of treatment for hearing loss. But everybody who has some level of hearing loss won’t automatically need hearing aids. Hearing aids won’t always be beneficial in cases of minor hearing loss. Consequently, we might want you to wait before starting to use them. Likewise, you might be advised to wear hearing aids only in particular situations.
In other words, the threshold for requiring hearing aids is not always a hearing loss diagnosis.
However, hearing aids will be the ideal answer in many circumstances. Because hearing loss can be a sneaky and gradual condition, many people don’t receive a diagnosis until there’s been considerable damage. Getting your hearing assessed regularly is the key to catching hearing loss early and possibly mitigating the need for hearing aids.
So how will you know if you have hearing loss?
Indications you need a hearing aid
Instant communication challenges can be the consequence of hearing loss. The funny thing, though, is that you don’t always understand that those communication difficulties are the result of hearing loss. So, at what point will a hearing aid help?
Here are a few of the common signs you should watch out for:
- Phone conversations sound muffled: Voices usually sound a bit flat on even high-quality phone speakers. If you have hearing loss, this can make it even harder to understand conversations. Once again, specific frequencies are cut out and the result is that it’s really hard to understand those voices.
- When people talk, you can’t always understand what they said: Many people feel like the overall volume of life is fine so they never consider that they might have hearing loss. But hearing loss is funny, it tends to affect specific frequencies before others. Which means that the great majority of sounds may seem normal but things in the high frequencies (such as certain vowels) will be distorted. This could cause you to have a tough time understanding what people are saying.
- The volume on your devices is becoming really loud: If you’re constantly turning up the volume on your television or radio or smartphone, it might be due to hearing loss. If you find individuals around you complaining about the high volume of your devices, this is especially true.
- When you’re in noisy settings, you have a tough time following conversations: This is probably one of the most common symptoms of hearing loss. One of the surest signs of hearing loss is that you have difficulty following conversations in noisy places, like bars or restaurants. That’s because your brain has trouble filling in the missing information that gets lost with hearing impairment. As a result, there’s a lot of muffled conversations.
So how should you deal with it?
When you break a bone, it’s clear cut what to do: you go to the doctor! But what do you do when you start to experience the symptoms of hearing loss? How bad does hearing loss need to be to call for a hearing aid? That isn’t a very easy answer but you should schedule an appointment with us for a hearing assessment if you begin to notice any hearing loss symptoms. We will be able to inform you about how serious your hearing loss is.
A hearing screening will also help you get the most effective hearing aids for your needs if you do indeed need hearing aids. This means you’ll be able to get back to communicating with your friends and loved ones, you’ll hear your grandkids when they call you on the phone, your co-workers at your morning meeting, and your friends at happy hour.
Call us for a hearing exam so we can help you improve your quality of life.
