You normally would think that hearing loss would be simple to spot, but it’s not as straightforward to recognize as you may think.
To start with, most individuals with hearing loss have trouble only with certain sounds and in distinct situations. Consequently, if you can hear normally on some occasions, you’ll be inclined to blame other factors or other people for the times you do have trouble hearing.
Second, hearing loss occurs slowly through the years, so it’s challenging to recognize the slow development. It’s simpler and easier to find fault with others for mumbling, or to turn up the TV volume a little higher, than to acknowledge that you might have hearing loss.
So, the signs and symptoms can be subtle. You need to know what to watch for, and although it’s convenient to disavow that you have hearing loss, you should be truthful with yourself about the warning signs.
Here are the top 10 to watch out for. If you recognize any, it may be time to arrange for a hearing test.
- You experience ringing in the ears – this may be an indicator of permanent hearing damage. Hearing aids can not only allow you to hear better, but they may additionally be able to eliminate the ringing in your ears.
- You are not able to hear regular household sounds – hearing loss can make it challenging to hear the doorbell, the phone ringing, or another person shouting your name from another room.
- You have difficulty understanding TV dialogue – speech is normally a lot more challenging to hear than other sorts of sound. This frequently manifests itself as difficulty following movie or TV show plots.
- You have your cellphone, TV, or radio at max volume – if you can hear the television, phone, or radio better than you can hear personal conversations, check out the volume settings on your devices. You might have these devices set at elevated volumes while concurrently believing that everyone else speaks too softly.
- You ask people to repeat themselves frequently – you notice that you say “what?” a lot, or that you have to ask people to repeat themselves when you’re not facing them.
- You commonly misread what people are saying – consonants are higher-pitched, and therefore much more difficult to hear, than vowels. Considering that consonants impart the majority of the meaning in a sentence, speech comprehension suffers.
- You have trouble hearing all the words in a conversation – specific sounds and letters are more challenging to hear than others. Consequently, you can hear most of the words in a sentence, but that you have to more often than not try to fill in the blanks.
- You have trouble hearing when your back is to the speaker – you may depend on lip reading, nonverbal communication, and other hints to meaning significantly more than you realize. When you’re not facing the speaker, and can’t use these cues, you may have difficulty comprehending speech.
- You have a hard time hearing with a great deal of background noise – as hearing loss gets to be worse, competing noise becomes more of a challenge. You might have the capacity to hear speech in tranquil settings, but it becomes progressively difficult to follow conversations in a noisy environment like a restaurant.
- People say that you shout or have the TV volume too loud – people may comment that you have the television volume too loud or that you have the proclivity to shout. It doesn’t appear to be 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 yes, set up your hearing test today, and take the steps to start living an improved, more productive, and healthier life.
