Hearing Loss – The Early Warning Signs

You may think that hearing loss should be obvious to identify, but it’s not as straightforward to notice as you might believe.

To start, most individuals with hearing loss have challenges only with particular sounds and in specific situations. And so, if you can hear normally on some occasions, you’ll tend to pin the blame on other factors or other people for the occasions you do have a tough time hearing.

Second, hearing loss arises slowly and gradually as time goes by, so it’s difficult to recognize the slow progression. It’s simpler and easier to find fault with other people for mumbling, or to turn up the TV volume a little louder, than to acknowledge that you may possibly have hearing loss.

As a result, the signs can be subtle. You have to know what to watch for, and although it’s easy to deny that you have hearing loss, you should be honest with yourself about the warning signs.

Here are the top 10 to look out for. If you recognize any, it may be time to set up a hearing test.

1. You experience ringing in the ears – this might be a symptom of permanent hearing damage. Hearing aids can not only cause you to hear better, but they may additionally be able to eliminate the ringing in your ears.
2. You are not able to hear regular household sounds – hearing loss can make it challenging to hear the doorbell, the telephone ringing, or another person calling your name from another room.
3. You have difficulty comprehending TV dialogue – speech is usually more challenging to hear than other sorts of sound. This frequently manifests itself as trouble following movie or TV show plots.
4. You have your cellphone, television, or radio at maximum volume – if you can hear the TV, phone, or radio better than you can hear personal discussions, check the volume settings on your devices. You could have these devices set at excessive volumes while at the same time thinking that everyone else speaks too softly.
5. You request that people repeat themselves regularly – you notice that you say “what?” a lot, or that you need to ask people to repeat themselves when you’re not facing them.
6. You frequently misinterpret what people are saying – consonants are higher-pitched, and therefore more difficult to hear, than vowels. Considering that consonants impart the majority of the meaning in a sentence, speech comprehension suffers.
7. You have difficulty hearing all the words in a conversation – specific sounds and letters are more difficult to hear than others. Consequently, you can hear the majority of the words in a sentence, but that you have to many times try to fill in the blanks.
8. You have difficulty hearing when your back is to the speaker – you may depend on lip reading, nonverbal communication, and other hints to meaning much more than you think. When you’re not looking at the speaker, and can’t use these cues, you may have difficulty comprehending speech.
9. You have a hard time hearing with a great deal of background noise – as hearing loss gets worse, competing noise becomes more of a problem. You might have the capacity to hear speech in quiet locations, but it becomes increasingly difficult to follow conversations in a loud setting like a restaurant.
10. People say that you shout or have the TV volume too loud – people may remark that you have the television volume too loud or that you have the proclivity to yell. It doesn’t feel this way to you because you’re compensating for your hearing loss.

Do you have one or more of the top 10 warning signs of hearing loss? If so, set up your hearing test today, and take the steps to begin living a better, more productive, and healthier life.