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Today in America, over 48 million people are affected by hearing loss. Over half of those ought to be wearing hearing aids, but the statistics on hearing aid use indicate that not enough people are wearing them. In fact, people tend to wait an average of seven years from the time they realize they should wear hearing aids to the time they actually get them.
Why Don’t People Get Hearing Aids Sooner?
This is partly to do with stigma against hearing aids, though that stigma is quickly fading. Americans are living longer than ever before, and with hearing loss as a nearly inevitable feature of aging—almost 100% of centenarians have hearing loss—the idea that there’s anything wrong with wearing hearing aids just doesn’t make sense.
Hearing aids are also more technologically advanced than ever before, but far from making them more difficult to use, this makes them easier to integrate into your life, as they can do many things automatically that used to require user input. Just about the hardest part of wearing hearing aids today is remembering to take them out before you get in the shower!
Another reason that hearing aid use may not be as widespread as we would expect has to do with insurance and the American health care industry. While more and more studies point to the fact that untreated hearing loss has wide-ranging ramifications on other aspects of overall health and well-being (and can even help predict serious underlying cardiovascular conditions), regular hearing tests are not yet an automatic part of getting a physical. What’s more, neither Medicare nor most private insurers cover the costs of hearing aids in most states.
While hearing aids involve a significant initial financial outlay, their importance in keeping us healthy and happy cannot be overstated. It’s also worth noting that those who get hearing aids while they are still part of the workforce, on average, make an additional $44,000 prior to retirement than those who do not treat their hearing loss with hearing aids. If you’re planning to continue working but hearing loss is making it difficult, getting a set of hearing aids will earn you many times over the return on your investment.
Hearing Loss Strains Relationships
If the betterment of health and employment aren’t good enough reasons to pursue hearing aids, the betterment of our personal relationships ought to be. Connecting with others is crucial to our sense of happiness and well-being, and it has been shown that those who don’t treat their hearing loss with hearing aids are more prone to paranoia, loneliness, depression, memory trouble, and reduced physical activity. At the heart of this is the simple fact that hearing loss makes communication more difficult, and as it progresses we tend to start communicating less.
Spousal relationships tend to suffer the most, with the better-hearing partner having to pick up the slack for the partner with hearing loss. While hearing loss is definitely frustrating for the person who is suffering from it, it can be equally frustrating for those closest to that person. Conversation, far from flowing easily as it once did, becomes a struggle involving multiple repetitions and rephrasings. We start to economize our communication down to the bare essentials, and the sense of closeness that naturally unfolds during the course of free and easy conversation starts to slip away, reduced to a shouting of nouns and verbs about only the absolute necessities of the moment. We choose restaurants based on the acoustics and the level of background noise rather than how much we enjoy the food. Slowly, our relationship starts to feel uncomfortable.
Hearing Aids Can Help
Those who get hearing aids report at a rate of 50% that hearing aids have improved their relationships at home and at work. Once we can hear each other again, we can restore the sense of closeness that we may feel has been lacking since the onset of problematic hearing loss.
Many new wearers are surprised at just how much they’ve been missing. Because hearing loss creeps in slowly and causes many small changes over a long time, the single problem of hearing loss can sometimes feel like a larger set of many problems.
If you’re struggling with hearing loss, make an appointment with us for a hearing test and find out what hearing aids can do to help. You may be surprised at how rich your relationships, and life in general, can feel once you can hear again!