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The December holiday season is a time of social gatherings, especially at offices and businesses across the country. Most employees probably found themselves attending at least one party event in the last few weeks and of course, the big one is tonight. From experience, we know that it can be hard to enjoy the party if you cannot hear well. So how did you do this year, did you notice any problems that took some of the fun away?
I am sorry I just couldn’t resist, but hey this is no laughing matter. What are the most recognizable problems for people with untreated hearing loss?
Hearing loss for the most part comes on slowly and quite insidiously. For most people it’s difficult to recognize that they in fact suffer with it in earlier stages. The two biggest warning signs are probably having to turn the volume up on the radio or television. Most family arguments seem to start there, but there are other signs.
If you had some difficulty understanding conversations this holiday season or if you needed to ask people to repeat what they said, you may have hearing loss. Difficulty understanding people, especially in crowded places like bars or restaurants is a sign that your hearing might be problematic.
We often find that people with hearing loss may have to have instructions repeated to them. The belief is that the cognitive load of coping with the hearing loss can effect short term memory, so to understand the instructions they may need to hear them more than once.
Like I said, I hear this a lot, when you have untreated hearing loss it can be difficult to understand reproduced audio. Not just that, but you may also be dealing with a voice or accent that you are not familiar with. This all leads to comprehension problems. Most people react by turning up the TV volume, but it usually doesn’t help a great deal and other members of the family can become frustrated and irritated by the noise.
This is another regular concern voiced by our new customers. When you are talking on the phone you have no visual cues to work with, so all of the coping mechanisms that you have unknowingly come up with don’t work. Because you can’t actually see the face of the speaker, it becomes more difficult to understand what’s being said.
This is another classic, and again this situation is caused by the lack of visual cues and the fact that the person is some distance away and so their voice is lower. Both things combine to make it difficult to understand.
If you recognize any of these signs or suffered with problems understanding conversation in the noisy conditions this holiday season you may well have a hearing loss. So what can you do about it?
The first thing to do is to see a hearing healthcare professional, get a hearing test, and find out once and for all whether everyone really mumbles or if you have a hearing loss! Listen, it’s painless and non invasive, and with the investment of just an hour of your time you can find out for sure. Untreated hearing loss is bad, we know this to be true, in fact the more we find out about the effects of untreated hearing loss, the more frightening it is. There are clear signs that untreated hearing loss may at the very least make cognitive difficulties worse.
If you have a treatable hearing loss, get hearing aids. They will change your life. Modern smart hearing aids detect and analyze your environment and then automatically adjust themselves so you can hear better. In fact, they are getting better and better at doing it. It won’t help with this holiday season, but it will help you every day into the next and the one after that.
Hearing aids optimize the quality of speech for you, to make it easier for you to understand what someone is saying. Don’t continue to struggle through because you can’t hear or understand what people are saying. Take steps to improve your hearing ability today, and take back your life.
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