How can I help a person with hearing loss hear me? Part 4
Most hearing health care providers will recommend hearing aids for those who are experiencing mild to moderate hearing loss. Some instances of very mild hearing loss can be easily identified and cured with a simple cleaning procedure. A build up of earwax inside the ear canal can cause mild hearing loss and should be treated prior to becoming a more serious problem. Earwax can harden inside the ear and require more extensive cleaning than a small build up. If a patient’s hearing loss is not so easily identified or correctable, the hearing professional will conduct a series of tests to determine the exact nature and severity of hearing loss.
How can I help a person with hearing loss hear me? Part 3
One thing caregivers and family members of someone with hearing loss may find difficult to accomplish is to simply get the patient to admit they have a problem hearing. Hearing loss is often a denied condition, with the patient often operating for years without an official diagnosis of hearing loss. This lack of diagnosis and treatment can make the condition much worse than necessary. Early intervention and treatment, either with medical procedures or hearing aids, are the most effective methods for handling hearing loss. With a physician’s diagnosis and prescription for hearing aids, a patient with hearing loss can find relief from a frustrating world without sound.
How can I help a person with hearing loss hear me? Part 2
One thing that should not be done when speaking to someone with hearing loss is to shout. Shouting, speaking loudly or speaking extremely slowly does not help the person with hearing loss hear more clearly. The fact is speaking loudly or shouting can cause the words being spoken to come across less clearly or unintelligible. Speaking extremely slowly can interfere with those who use lip-reading techniques to understand others. The expressions of the face and mouth can be misinterpreted or misunderstood. It is also important that, while speaking at a normal speed and tone, one should not eat or chew gum while they are speaking to someone with hearing loss. This can also interfere with lip-reading techniques.
How can I help a person with hearing loss hear me? Part 1
People with hearing loss often find themselves excluded from conversation and social gatherings. This tendency to exclude can often leave the person with hearing loss feeling anxious and depressed. If the person with hearing loss is excluded for a long enough period of time, they may start to voluntarily withdraw from family and friends. It is important to make sure to include those people you know with hearing loss in the conversation. This inclusion needs to be a conscious effort, as the natural tendency of people is to exclude those who may not fully understand what is being spoken.
How a Hearing Loss Can Affect Your Life – Part 3
It is often difficult for friends and family to get a hearing loss patient to go for a complete diagnosis and exam. Hearing loss patients so often live in denial that they have a problem. They are almost as difficult to draw out of their denial as a person with an addiction. One could say the patient is addicted to hearing clearly and is in denial of the fact they can no longer do so easily. Anger, withdrawal and confrontation are often symptoms exhibited by early stage hearing loss patients. They are often angry with loved ones who suggest they have a problem, they will withdraw from those who are making them angry and they will usually confront those who suggest they have a problem with excuses and blame.
How a Hearing Loss Can Affect Your Life – Part 2
Without medical intervention at an early stage, hearing loss can quickly progress from a minor situation requiring a small hearing aid to a major medical condition requiring more extensive treatments. What most people do not realize is that a majority of aging adults in the United States will experience some form of hearing loss as they age. Within the group of adults who begin to experience hearing loss as they age, there will be a majority who compensate for the condition for a long period of time prior to seeking medical assistance.
How a Hearing Loss Can Affect Your Life – Part 1
Hearing loss can affect your life in many ways. Affects can range from simple misunderstandings to full withdrawal from family and friends and major depression. Some people might say hearing loss is just one of those things you have to deal with as you age. Dealing with hearing loss, without professional medical assistance, can lead to many major problems in life with relationships and social situations.
Hearing Loss and the Shift of Cognitive Function from Memory
The shift of cognitive function from memory to hearing is similar to the way people with vision loss shift cognitive function to their other senses. When a child is born with a congenital defect that causes deafness or blindness, the loss of sense affects the brain so that the other senses take over for the missing ability. It has been shown patients who are blind from birth use their hearing, touch and smell with more fine tuned abilities than people who are normally sighted.
Neuroscience Professor Wingfield’s Advice for Hearing Loss
Neuroscience professor Arthur Wingfield has advised, “The study is a wake-up call to anyone who works with older people, including healthcare professionals, to be especially sensitive to how hearing loss can affect cognitive function.” Professor Wingfield advises anyone who works with older adults to modify how they speak to older adults, not necessarily dramatically slowing down their speech. Anyone who interacts with older adults who may have hearing loss should be aware this condition may also affect their memory.
Short term memory is a function of the brain that allows people to access events and information which has occurred recently. When hearing loss affects the capacity of an adult to access this recently saved information, conversation and interaction with others can become extremely difficult. Physicians and caregivers who interact with aging adults should be cognizant of possible hearing loss which may exacerbate an existing memory loss condition.
Memory and Hearing Loss Correction for Aging Adults
Brandeis University researchers have discovered older adults with mild to moderate hearing loss can lose their ability to remember words and language. Studies have shown, even when adults retain any amount of the ability to hear words and repeat them, older adults’ ability to remember the words they have heard is diminished if they are experiencing hearing loss. Additionally, the effects of hearing loss on word recognition have been found to be mostly an auditory phenomenon. In contrasting types of memory, hearing loss appears to have more of an effect on the ability to hear spoken words with little to no effect on words presented visually.
