The Importance of Early Adoption of Hearing Aids
Many people put off getting their hearing tested and seeking treatment when they are young, believing that hearing issues can only strike the elderly. As a matter of fact, if you take care of your hearing from a young age, you may be able to maintain your hearing health as you grow old. If you avoid the obvious signs of hearing issues and leave them unresolved, the problem will become worse over time. Let’s take a closer look at the importance of hearing aids and tackling hearing issues in the early stages with adequate diagnosis and treatment.
Importance of Early Adoption Hearing Treatment
By seeking proper medical treatment for your hearing impairment early on and maintaining hearing health best practices, you are less likely to face serious consequences down the road. Hearing impairments can lead to a variety of related health issues, starting from decreasing your quality of life to giving rise to depression or in the worst-case scenario, sudden hearing loss. In order to avoid worsening your situation if you suspect hearing issues, it’s best to seek professional assistance immediately.
Here are a few tell-tale signs of typical hearing issues you need to look out for (either for yourself or a loved one):
- Constantly increasing the volume of devices (TV, laptop…etc)
- Asking people to repeat themselves in regular conversation
- Having difficulties hearing whispers or other low-volume ambiance sounds (i.e. birds chirping)
- Experiencing a ringing noise or other sounds in the ear
- Experiencing poor coordination/balance and/or dizziness
- Feeling pain or discomfort in the ear
- Sudden changes with your hearing
Where to Start
Getting properly tested and receiving a professional diagnosis by an audiologist or hearing instrument specialist is the best place to start your journey. If you have doubts about your hearing, you can consider online examinations and assessments to check for signs of hearing loss. While this may be helpful, it doesn’t fully replace getting your hearing checked at the hearing aid clinic by an on-site specialist. After the testing, the degree of your hearing loss will become apparent (mild, moderate, or severe). From there, your hearing specialist will discuss your results and answer any questions. Depending on the type of hearing loss, they should discuss moving forward with a treatment plan which could be further medical diagnosis or hearing aids.
Aside from the recommended treatment, it’s always best that you uphold best practices on a daily basis to promote good hearing health. That includes not listening to music or shows at high volumes, avoiding being near other sources of loud noises as much as possible and keeping your ears clean.
Types of Hearing Treatments
There isn’t a one-shoe-fits-all approach to hearing health. Each case is unique and requires a specialized approach to treatment. Here are the most common hearing treatments that your hearing professional will recommend:
- Earwax cleaning — the cause of muffled hearing or hearing loss may sometimes be as simple as clogged ears. A simple earwax cleaning procedure may be enough to recover your hearing back to normal if there aren’t any other problems. Always get this done by a professional and don’t resort to DIY solutions such as using ear-candles at home (These don’t work at all).
- Surgery — when a physiological issue is the root cause of the hearing issues, such as a perforated eardrum, then a solution may be possible with a surgical procedure.
- Cochlear implants — for severe cases of hearing loss, a cochlear implant that is surgically implanted is often the best course of action in order to regain hearing. Many people who became unsuccessful with hearing aids are hearing very well with cochlear implants.
- Hearing aids — the most common solution to hearing impairments for people of all ages that requires the least amount of medical intervention (i.e. surgery). They can be worn on either one ear or two, depending on the type of support you need.
What Does A Hearing Aid Do?
A hearing aid amplifies the sounds around you and allows you to hear almost like normal again. They don’t cure hearing problems, but they make it easier to hear in most situations. Hearing aids come in different shapes and sizes, but they all work by making the sounds louder and clearer for you. It’s made up of three main parts: a microphone that picks up sound, an amplifier that increases its volume, and a receiver that sends the amplified sound into your ear canal.
Can Hearing Aids Cause Hearing Loss?
People often avoid or are afraid of things that they don’t know too much about. There are many misconceptions related to hearing aids floating around these days. One of those is the idea that your ears can get too used to hearing aids to the point that they don’t help you anymore.
This is an interesting conversational topic, as our brains need information from all our senses in order to determine what action we take. When our ears don’t work properly, our brain must rely on other senses to perform normally, but this takes away from our ability to focus, remember and even our sense of direction of sounds. Hence, hearing aids act as a brain support so that the brain can perform normally.
People who go without hearing aids for too long will actively speak louder than normal, they will increase the volume of the TV, will actively try to control the conversation so that they don’t get left behind in conversations.
What Are The Benefits Of Wearing Hearing Aids?
Recent technological advancements have helped recent hearing aid models to be several times more innovative than they were in the past. Nowadays, you’ll find models that have highly optimized speech enhancing and noise reducing features which improve the listeners hearing experience, helping you focus on live conversations with ease despite the background noise.
Other benefits of hearing aids include, but aren’t limited to:
- Conversations become easier for the hard of hearing listener as well as the other party.
- Sense of balance and stability is improved.
- Hearing and enjoying the low-volume sounds in nature again such as the chirping of birds or blowing of wind (low-decibel sounds are often the first sounds we begin to have difficulty hearing).
Take this as your sign to pay attention to your hearing health and adopt hearing aids or an alternative treatment as suggested by a hearing care practitioner.