Category — Hearing Loss Info

With age comes a lower level of tolerance for many people and nothing contributes to those low tolerance levels quite like an undiagnosed hearing loss. When you lose your ability to hear and do not get it corrected with a hearing aid, you begin to lose not only one of your senses, but you lose your sense of who you are.

You no longer have any confidence that you can follow a conversation in a group setting – there goes your social skills.

The dialogue in the movie theater is distorted – there goes your outing to the movies with friends and loved ones.

It’s a beautiful sunny day and you’re driving along, minding your own business when suddenly a car backs out of a driveway right in front of you but you don’t have time to react because your view was blocked by a cube van parked at the curb. You shout to your passenger, “Did you see that? Why didn’t you warn me?”

Your passenger looks at you and you realize that they did warn you but you didn’t hear them.

Maybe you have been slowly losing your hearing or your doctor hasn’t diagnosed your hearing loss yet. In any case, a hearing aid could have prevented this accident or one much worse where someone could have been hurt very badly.

There are roughly 76 million Baby Boomers in the United States at this very moment. The leading edge of this number is now half way through their 60^th year. At 59 ½, you can begin collecting on certain retirement benefits with no penalty, but you also may begin to develop presbycusis.

Presbycusis is a form of hearing loss that creeps up on some of us gradually as we grow older. It most commonly affects people over 50 and many of those people are likely to lose a bit more of their ability to hear every year. As a result of having presbycusis, you may find it difficult to hear what others are saying and you may find it hard to tolerate loud sounds.

Did you know that 25% of Americans 65-75 and 75% of those over 75 have hearing loss to some degree? Considering those numbers, would it shock you to learn that only about 20% of those people ever buy a device that will restore some of their hearing capabilities?

Almost every patient I see in my private practice has no idea that a serious consequence of losing our hearing is that we actually lose the ability to process sounds into words. The more prolonged and severe the hearing loss, the worse the ability to process and understand words becomes. 8% of my patients have zero ability to understand words. By the time some people finally get around to addressing their hearing loss it’s often too late and they have already lost the ability to form words from incoming sounds.

One of the side effects of someone who has a hearing loss and doesn’t get it corrected with a hearing aid is a loss of Self-Esteem.

Imagine you have a hearing loss and you have been guessing and getting it wrong when engaging in conversations.  How long would it take making poor or wrong decisions based on information you thought you heard correctly however you actually didn’t get it right?

How would you feel if someone you’re close to said something to you and because of misunderstanding on your part you felt upset, mad or a deep hurt?  What if people stop having conversations with you because of the effort they have to go thru to get you to understand correctly what they are talking about?  How would that make you feel about them?

If you’re like most people you take your hearing for granted. We all agree our ability to communicate is one of the marvels of man. Hearing sounds and then translating the sounds into meaningful words.

Let’s face it where would we be without the ability to communicate and have an interchange of ideas?

Imagine you have had a progressive hearing loss for the last 15 to 25 or more years. On a daily bases you misunderstand or have to guess what people are talking about. Would you be compelled to join in conversations? Would you go into situations or places that were not ideal for you to hear in? This is what is happening to millions on a daily basis who have a hearing loss.

A Hearing Loss has inevitable consequences that most won’t be able to escape. 

Ask any one who has a hearing loss and they will tell you “no” it hasn’t changed them at all. Ask anyone who is close to a person with a hearing loss and they will tell you about enormous changes in behavior and attitude that has deeply changed who they use to be.

This is how it all starts.

Imagine you’re at work, with friends or especially with someone you’re close to.  You were having a conversation and you misunderstood what was being said because you didn’t hear a key word correct or you just filled in the part you didn’t get.  Come to find out what you thought you heard was completely off the wall. 

With your help it is possible.

Winning in Washington means we the people have to be heard. An avalanche of letters from you the people may have begun what is considered a milestone in the hearing health of our nation. You can join the movement today.

Go to: http://www.hearingaidtaxcredit.org/

It’s difficult to express in words what this would mean to millions of Americans who needlessly suffer from one of the most social disabling disorders of our time. Hearing is what keeps us in touch with everyone and everything we are around.

Since time immemorial, people have referred to the eyes as “windows to the soul”, yet blind and deaf Helen Keller said “Hearing is the deepest, most philosophical sense man possesses.” For centuries, sight impaired people have worn glasses without being labeled “mentally defective.” Meanwhile, hearing impaired people have suffered enormous prejudice. Labeled as “old”, “stupid”, “mentally ill”, or “selective listeners”, many hearing impaired people live in denial, or refuse to wear hearing aids for hearing loss treatment because they are afraid of being branded.

For decades, quality eye glasses and contact lenses have been purchased for around 100 dollars but until recently, hearing aids were so expensive that only the wealthy could afford high quality corrective instruments.  Year upon year, eye glasses are fashionably designed in various shapes and colors to enhance physically attractiveness. Conversely, hearing aids are designed to be “discreet”, and manufactured in skin tones because they are deemed unsightly.