Do You Have the Early Signs of Hearing Loss?

You might think that hearing loss should be simple to spot, but it’s not as easy to notice as you may think.

To start with, many people with hearing loss have difficulty only with specified sounds and in specified situations. So, if you can hear normally on some occasions, you’ll tend to blame other factors or other people for the times you do have a hard time hearing.

Second, hearing loss arises slowly and gradually over time, so it’s challenging to detect the slow progression. It’s more convenient to find fault with others for mumbling, or to turn up the TV volume a little higher, than to confess that you might have hearing loss.

So, the signs and symptoms can be elusive. 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 exam.

1. You experience ringing or buzzing in the ears – this might be a sign of permanent hearing damage. Hearing aids can not only enable you to hear better, but they may additionally be able to eliminate the ringing in your ears.
2. You can’t hear regular household sounds – hearing loss can make it challenging to hear the doorbell, the telephone ringing, or a friend shouting your name from another room.
3. You have difficulty comprehending TV dialogue – speech is commonly 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 phone, television, or radio at max volume – if you can hear the television, phone, or radio much better than you can hear face-to-face discussions, check the volume settings on your technology. You may have these devices set at excessive volumes while at the same time thinking that everyone else talks too quietly.
5. You ask people to repeat themselves often – you realize that you say “what?” a lot, or that you have to ask people to repeat themselves when you’re not facing them.
6. You commonly misinterpret what people are saying – consonants are higher-pitched, and thus more difficult to hear, than vowels. Seeing that consonants convey the majority of the meaning in a sentence, speech comprehension suffers.
7. You have trouble hearing all the words in a discussion – select 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 frequently try to fill in the blanks.
8. You have trouble hearing when your back is to the speaker – you may rely on lip reading, body gestures, and other cues to meaning significantly more than you think. When you’re not facing the speaker, and can’t use these hints, you may have difficulty comprehending speech.
9. You have difficulty hearing with a great deal of background noise – as hearing loss becomes worse, competing noise becomes more of a challenge. You might manage to hear speech in tranquil locations, but it becomes more and more difficult to follow conversations in a loud environment like a restaurant.
10. People say that you shout or have the TV volume too loud – people may notice that you have the TV volume too loud or that you have the proclivity to yell. 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 so, set up your hearing test today, and take the steps to begin living an improved, more productive, and healthier life.