Recognizing when you need 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 scenario). With situations like this, simply “toughing it out” isn’t a possibility. At least, not for that long (especially if you want your bones to repair themselves correctly).
But when it comes to hearing aids, it’s not always so easy to know when it’s time to get some help. Hearing loss is usually a developing condition. This means it isn’t always simple to know when you might need to start wearing hearing aids or to delay finding treatment you know could be helpful.
That’s why it’s a good plan to keep an eye out for some distinct indicators that you may be losing your ability to communicate. If you detect any, it might be time to consult us about your first set of hearing aids.
Hearing loss and hearing aids
Hearing aids are the main form of treatment for hearing loss. But everybody who has some degree of hearing loss won’t automatically need hearing aids. Hearing aids won’t always be practical in cases of mild hearing loss. Because of this, we might want you to wait before beginning to use them. It’s also possible that we could advise you to only use your hearing aids when you’re in specific situations.
This means that just because you’re diagnosed with hearing loss doesn’t mean you will necessarily require hearing aids.
But in many instances hearing aids will be the best answer. Because hearing loss can be a sneaky and gradual condition, lots of people don’t get 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.
And if that’s the situation, you’re probably thinking: how can I tell if I need hearing aids?
You need hearing aids if you experience these indicators
Instant communication problems can be the result of hearing loss. But a lot of times you don’t even realize that hearing loss is the cause of those communication issues. So, at what stage will a hearing aid help you?
Watch out for these signs:
- You have a tough time following conversations in noisy places: When people ask, “What are the signs of hearing loss?”, this one almost always comes up. If you have trouble hearing conversations in loud places, that’s often a sure sign that you have hearing loss. That’s because your brain has a hard time filling in the missing information that you lose when you have hearing impairment. As a result, there’s a lot of muddled conversations.
- When people talk, you can’t always make out what they said: Many people 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 affect specific frequencies before others. Which means that the great majority of sounds could 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.
- You listen to the radio or TV at high volumes: Hearing loss could be the culprit if you continuously need to crank the volume of your devices up. This is especially true if you keep moving 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 typically sound a bit 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 challenging to hear voices as a result of the loss of these frequencies.
So what should you do?
When you break your leg, it’s obvious what to do: you go to the doctor! But what do you do when you begin to notice the symptoms of hearing loss? What level of hearing loss requires hearing aids? Well, that’s hard to answer, but when you start detecting these symptoms, it’s a good plan to make an appointment with us. We’ll be able to assess the health of your hearing and ascertain just how serious your hearing loss may or may not be.
And if you do end up needing hearing aids, a hearing test will help determine the best device for your hearing needs. This means you’ll be able to get back to communicating with your friends and loved ones, you’ll hear your grandkids when they give you a call, your co-workers at your morning meeting, and your friends at the pub.
Give us a call to schedule your hearing exam, we can help you recognize if you’re suffering from hearing loss.