In some cases, it’s easy to know when you require medical advice. When you break your leg, for instance, you know you should go to the doctor (or the emergency room, depending on the situation). With situations like this, simply “toughing it out” isn’t a possibility. If you want your bones to heal properly, you need to get them treated as soon as you can.
It isn’t always that obvious when it comes to hearing aids, though. Hearing loss is usually a developing condition. This means recognizing when to get treatment for hearing loss can be tricky.
That’s why it’s a good plan to watch out for some distinct signposts that you might be losing your ability to communicate. It’s likely time to call us for a consultation if you do detect any.
Hearing aids and hearing loss
Hearing aids are the main form of treatment for hearing loss. But that doesn’t mean everyone who has hearing loss will instantly need a set of hearing aids. Hearing aids won’t always be helpful in cases of minor hearing loss. We may want you to hold off on using hearing aids because of this. In addition, you might be directed 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 need hearing aids.
But in many cases hearing aids will be the best answer. Because hearing loss can be a sneaky and gradual condition, lots of people don’t receive a diagnosis until there’s been substantial 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?
You need hearing aids if you detect these indicators
Hearing loss is one of those conditions that can produce immediate communication challenges. The curious thing, though, is that you don’t always comprehend that those communication difficulties are the result of hearing loss. So, at what stage will a hearing aid help?
Here are some of the common signs you should watch out for:
- When people talk, you can’t always make out what they said: Many individuals feel like the overall volume of life is fine so they never imagine that they might have hearing loss. But the thing about hearing loss is that particular frequencies of sound tend to go before others. Which means that the great majority of sounds might seem ordinary but things in the high frequencies (like certain vowels) will be distorted. This could cause you to have a hard time understanding what people are saying.
- 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 noisy places, that’s usually a sure sign that you have hearing loss. 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.
- You’re unable to understand people on the phone: Even the highest quality phone speakers tend to flatten a voice. That can make it hard to understand, especially if you have hearing loss. It can be very challenging to hear voices as an outcome of the loss of these frequencies.
- The volume on your devices is becoming really loud: Hearing loss could be the cause if you constantly need to turn the volume of your devices up. If you find individuals around you complaining about the high volume of your devices, this is particularly true.
So how should you deal with it?
Clearly, you know exactly what you have to do when you break a bone! But what do you do when you start to detect the symptoms of hearing loss? How bad does hearing loss need to be to require a hearing aid? Well, that’s hard to answer, but when you start detecting 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.
And if you do end up needing hearing aids, a hearing test will help determine the best device for your hearing needs. 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.
Contact us to schedule your hearing exam, we can help you understand if you’re suffering from hearing loss.