Knowing when you require some medical advice is typically pretty easy. When you break your leg, for example, 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 taken care of as soon as you can.
But with regard to hearing aids, it’s not always so simple to identify when it’s time to get some help. Hearing loss is normally a progressive condition. This means knowing when to get treatment for hearing loss can be difficult.
That’s why it’s a good plan to watch out for some distinct signposts that you might be losing your ability to communicate. If you notice any, it may be time to talk to us about your first set of hearing aids.
Hearing aids and hearing loss
Hearing loss is primarily managed with hearing aids. But that doesn’t mean everyone who has hearing loss will immediately need a pair of hearing aids. Hearing aids won’t always be helpful in cases of minor hearing loss. As a result, we might 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 specific situations.
In other words, the threshold for needing hearing aids isn’t always a diagnosis of hearing loss.
However, hearing aids will be the ideal answer in many situations. Many individuals won’t have their hearing loss diagnosed until it becomes more severe because hearing loss develops gradually and frequently goes unnoticed for a while. But if you come in for a hearing exam regularly, you may be able to catch your hearing loss early, and, as a result, you might not require hearing aids immediately.
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 cause instant communication obstacles. The interesting thing, though, is that you don’t always understand that those communication difficulties are caused by hearing loss. So, at what point will a hearing aid help?
Here are a few of the common signs you should watch out for:
- You have a difficult time following conversations in loud places: When people ask, “What are the signs of hearing loss?”, this one almost always comes up. One of the surest indications of hearing loss is that you have trouble following conversations in noisy locations, like bars or restaurants. This happens because your ears are not receiving as much information as they used to, and your brain isn’t really able to fill in the gaps very easily. Because of this, there’s a lot of muddled conversations.
- You have problems making out what people are saying: Many individuals don’t think they have hearing loss or need hearing aids because the total volume they hear seems fine. But hearing loss is curious, it tends to impact certain frequencies before others. Due to this, things like vowel sounds in the higher pitches can sound distorted. This could cause you to have a difficult time making out what people are saying.
- The volume on your devices is getting really loud: Hearing loss could be the cause if you continuously 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 relevant if the people around you complain about how loud your media is).
- You can’t understand people on the phone: Even the highest quality phone speakers tend to flatten a voice. If you have hearing loss, this can make it even harder to understand conversations. It can be very difficult to hear voices as an outcome of the loss of these frequencies.
So what can you do?
Clearly, you know precisely what you need to do when you break a bone! But what do you do when you begin to experience the symptoms of hearing loss? How severe does hearing loss have to be to require a hearing aid? That’s not a very easy answer but you should make an appointment with us for a hearing exam if you start to detect any hearing loss symptoms. We will be able to inform you about how severe your hearing loss is.
A hearing screening 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 loved ones and doing the things you love.
Call us to schedule your hearing exam, we can help you understand if you’re suffering from hearing loss.
