Do you need a hearing aid? How can you tell? Read on to learn the telltale signs you need hearing aids.
While age is the number one predictor of hearing loss, there are lots of other things that come into play that cause us to lose our hearing. Whether we work in an environment with persistent noise that harms us or if we're in an accident, we could end up losing our hearing without realizing.
Knowing the telltale signs of whether or not you need a hearing aid is the best way to protect yourself from social or physical problems with hearing loss.
Here are four ways to know that it's time to get a hearing aid.
1. Saying "What?" Too Often
If you've found that you can't seem to have a conversation without asking your friend to repeat themselves, you might need help. It's a chore for both you and your interlocutor to keep repeating things. After a while it becomes exhausting and often you lose the spirit of what's being said.
If someone is trying to make a small inside joke, having them repeat it kind of takes the fun out of the joke. If the comment they made was off-handed and not that important, the emotion behind it could change. Rather than laughing together, that side comment might sound callous.
When you're in the midst of an important conversation, it's not the best time to have to repeat yourself. People could be confessing something that's important or vital to get off their chest but after repeating it might feel self-conscious. This makes it hard to share things with one another.
Once this repeating issue becomes more than a small irritation, it's clear that you need a hearing aid. Assistance with your hearing is vital if you're in business. People could lose patience with you and mishearing something important could cost you real money.
2. Kids Are Hard To Hear
If you're a teacher, a parent, or a grandparent, it's important to be able to hear the kids around you. Kids speak in higher frequencies than adults and when kids are hard to hear, it's hard to be attentive.
Kids need lots of encouragement, patients, and more than anything, to be heard. When kids don't feel heard, they're less likely to express themselves openly or to take important risks socially. They might stay quiet and not be willing to communicate as openly as they should.
When you're a teacher, you need to listen carefully to students to ensure that everyone is safe and comfortable. If a student is bullied, you need to be able to hear them from far away. If you can't hear your students when they answer a question, they might not feel encouraged to communicate as often.
When you're trying to teach kids how to behave in public, you need them to be quiet and careful with their words. However, if they have to scream to get you to hear them, you're giving them mixed messages. If you want to ensure that you're able to teach your kids or students good behavior, you need to hear them clearly.
3. You're Relying On Lip Reading
You might not even realize that you've started to rely on lip reading until it's too late. People who are facing you are easier to read and understand than people who are turned away from you. When you're having trouble hearing, their emotions, intentions, or the content of what they're saying might get lots.
Most people rely on reading lips and faces to some degree. This is a vital part of human communication, but you might realize too late that you're depending on lip reading to get information. When you're using other senses to make up for hearing loss, it's hard to balance crowded, loud, or distracting spaces.
Wearing a hearing aid ensures that you're able to listen carefully as the people around you are speaking. It's not always possible to face you directly in a conversation, especially at work or out in public. This frees you and your conversation partner up to speak more comfortably and naturally.
4. You Miss Your Alarms
The electronic devices around us have come to define our lives. The notifications and alarms that regulate our communications or get us to appointments on time are vital. However, with most of them relying on high pitches from small speakers, it's important to be able to hear them.
The beeps and clicks that they make let us know when someone we're working with is getting in touch. The buzzing and alarms let us know when we have to leave work, pick up the kids, or get up in the morning. These tones are important if we're stuck staring at another screen while we're working.
As you age, small amounts of damage to our ears make it harder to hear them. You'll be missing out on the sounds machines are making.
There are some alarms that come from devices that could hurt us. Beeping of a backing up truck is vital to hear so that you don't get hit while crossing the street. The beeping of a smoke or carbon monoxide alarm lets us know we need to get moving and save ourselves from harm.
While we might take these sounds for granted, they keep us safe, keep life orderly, and let us know important information. To stay happy and healthy and active, interacting with the world around us, we need to protect our hearing as we age or if it is damaged.
Checkout this online hearing test to get a better idea of your hearing loss
A Hearing Aid Could Save Your Life
Whether its physical harm you're worried about or your social life, a hearing aid ensures that you're safe from loss. While you might not like the idea of wearing a traditional hearing aid, there are so many new types of aids that are almost invisible.
If you want to ensure you don't overspend on your hearing aid, check out our guide for more information. If you are looking affordable hearing aids, check the selection that Nano Hearing Aids has to offer: FIND OUT MORE