In some cases, it’s easy to identify when you need medical help. When you break your leg, for example, you know you should go to the doctor (or the emergency room, depending on the scenario). With situations like this, simply “toughing it out” isn’t an option. At least, not for that long (particularly if you want your bones to mend themselves correctly).
But in terms of hearing aids, it isn’t always so simple to recognize when it’s time to get some assistance. Hearing loss is normally a progressive condition. This means recognizing when to get treatment for hearing loss can be tricky.
So keeping an eye out for signs that your hearing may be going is a good plan. It’s likely time to call us for a consultation if you do detect any.
Hearing loss and hearing aids
Hearing loss is mainly managed with hearing aids. But everyone who has some degree of hearing loss won’t necessarily need hearing aids. Hearing aids won’t always be practical in cases of minor hearing loss. Consequently, we may want you to wait before beginning to use them. It’s also feasible that we could direct you to only use your hearing aids when you’re in particular situations.
In other words, the threshold for requiring hearing aids is not always a hearing loss diagnosis.
But in many instances hearing aids will be the best answer. Many people won’t have their hearing loss diagnosed until it becomes more serious because hearing loss progresses gradually and often goes undetected 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 need hearing aids?
You need hearing aids if you detect these indicators
Hearing loss is one of those conditions that can cause immediate communication problems. The interesting thing, though, is that you don’t always realize that those communication difficulties are caused by hearing loss. So, at what stage will a hearing aid help?
Watch out for these signs:
- When you’re in very loud settings, you have a hard time following conversations: This is probably one of the most prevalent symptoms of hearing loss. One of the surest indications of hearing loss is that you have difficulty following conversations in noisy places, like bars or restaurants. That’s because your brain has difficulty filling in the missing information that you lose when you have hearing impairment. Because of this, there’s a lot of muddled conversations.
- You have difficulty understanding what people are saying: Many people don’t think they have hearing loss or need hearing aids because the overall volume they hear seems fine. But the thing about hearing loss is that specific frequencies of sound usually go before others. Which means that the great majority of sounds might seem normal but things in the high frequencies (such as particular vowels) will be distorted. This could cause you to have a difficult time understanding what people are saying.
- 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 particularly true if you keep turning that volume knob higher (and even more especially relevant if the people around you complain about how loud your media is).
- You’re unable to understand people on the phone: Voices typically sound a little flat on even high-quality phone speakers. If you have hearing loss, this can make it even more difficult to understand conversations. It can be really difficult to hear voices as an outcome of the loss of these frequencies.
So what can you do?
Obviously, you know exactly what you need to do when you break a bone! But what do you do when you start to detect the symptoms of hearing loss? What degree of hearing loss calls for hearing aids? Well, that’s hard to answer, but when you start noticing these signs, it’s a good idea to schedule an appointment with us. We will be able to inform you about how severe your hearing loss is.
A hearing test 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 enjoying good conversations with your friends and loved ones and doing the things you love.
Contact us to schedule your hearing test, we can help you understand if you’re suffering from hearing loss.