Hearing Loss – The Early Warning Signs

You may think that hearing loss would be simple to identify, but it’s not as easy to notice as you may believe.

First, many people with hearing loss have challenges only with specific sounds and in specific scenarios. So, if you can hear normally on some occasions, you’ll have the tendency to pin the blame on other factors or other people for the times you do have trouble hearing.

Second, hearing loss appears slowly as time goes by, so it’s challenging to recognize the slow progression. It’s faster and easier to find fault with other people for mumbling, or to turn up the TV volume a little higher, than to confess that you may possibly have hearing loss.

As a result, the signs can be elusive. You need to understand what to watch for, and while it’s easy to disavow that you have hearing loss, you should be truthful with yourself about the warning signs.

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

1. You experience ringing in the ears – this may be a sign of permanent hearing injury. Hearing aids can not only allow you to hear better, but they may additionally have the ability to eliminate the ringing in your ears.
2. You are not able to hear normal household sounds – hearing loss can make it difficult to hear the doorbell, the telephone ringing, or another person calling your name from another room.
3. You have difficulty understanding TV dialogue – speech is ordinarily much more challenging to hear than other types of sound. This frequently shows itself as difficulty following movie or television show plots.
4. You have your cellphone, TV, or radio at max volume – if you can hear the television, phone, or radio better than you can hear face-to-face conversations, check the volume settings on your devices. You may have these devices set at elevated volumes while concurrently thinking that everyone else speaks too quietly.
5. You ask people to repeat themselves often – you recognize that you say “what?” a lot, or that you have to ask people to repeat themselves when you’re not facing them.
6. You often misinterpret what people are saying – consonants are higher-pitched, and therefore much more difficult to hear, than the lower-pitched vowels. Seeing as consonants convey the majority of the meaning in a sentence, speech comprehension suffers.
7. You have trouble hearing all the words in a discussion – specific sounds and letters are more difficult 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.
8. You have trouble hearing when your back is to the speaker – you may be dependent on lip reading, nonverbal communication, and other tips to meaning more than you think. When you’re not facing the speaker, and can’t use these hints, you may have trouble comprehending speech.
9. You have a hard time hearing with a great deal of background noise – as hearing loss becomes worse, competing noise becomes more of a problem. You might have the ability to hear speech in quiet settings, but it becomes increasingly difficult to follow discussions in a noisy setting like a restaurant.
10. People complain 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 habit to shout. 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, schedule your hearing test today, and take the steps to begin living an improved, more productive, and healthier life.