Don’t Neglect Your Hearing Loss

Have you ever attempted to ignore a toothache? It can be pretty hard. After a while, you end up having no alternative but to consult a dentist. The same thing occurs when your eyesight begins to blur. When you have difficulties reading street signs, you'll probably schedule a consultation with an ophthalmologist. But the concern is, when your hearing begins to go you might not have such urgency.

And that may be a mistake. There are significant health issues (particularly mental health issues) that can develop due to neglected hearing loss. Regrettably, it's pretty difficult to address your diminishing hearing if you aren't aware of it. And that's problem number two.

Indications You Might Have Hearing Loss

We often take our hearing for granted. A high volume music festival? No biggie. Blasting ear pods? You prefer to listen to your podcasts this way. But each of those decisions, particularly in the long run, is going to have a considerable affect on your overall hearing.

It can, regrettably, be hard to notice these impacts. Hearing loss can creep up on you gradually, with symptoms that advance so slowly as to be essentially invisible. So you should take some time to educate yourself on some primary red flags (and to be certain you don't ignore them):

• Your short term memory seems to suddenly fail now and then
• You can't keep a set of earbuds because you keep blowing the speakers
• It's challenging to understand conversations in loud or crowded settings
• You regularly need to ask individuals to repeat themselves
• When you listen to everyday speech, you have an especially hard time making out consonants
• You always have to crank up the volume on your devices
• You feel an unexplained sense of fatigue or have significant difficulty falling asleep at night
• Distorted or dull sounding speech from individuals around you (co-workers, family, friends)

It's fairly well known what these red flags and symptoms indicate. If your hearing loss comes on particularly slowly, your brain will immediately begin to compensate for any hearing loss that develops, making you somewhat oblivious, at first, to your symptoms. That's why all of these warning signs should be taken seriously, which means you should make an appointment to see your hearing professional.

What Going to Happen if You Neglect Your Hearing Loss?

Indeed, some people are very stubborn. Or they just don't favor the thought of wearing a hearing aid. They think that wearing hearing aids causes them to look old. But in reality, most modern hearing aids are virtually undetectable (and it doesn't hurt when you can hear and engage in conversations).

Still, if you neglect hearing loss it could result in several issues:

• You could have strained relationships: There's something that occurs when you have a difficult time understanding your friends and relatives: you begin having fewer conversations with them. You don't call to say hi, you don't keep up with what's going on with them, you disengage. And that can hurt some of those relationships, particularly if no one has any clue that the root cause is hearing loss (and not because you're mad at them).
• You could cause your hearing to worsen: If you don't utilize hearing aids or increased hearing protection, you'll keep turning the volume on your television up. Or you won't utilize earplugs when you go to rock concerts. And your hearing will continue diminishing as you keep to do damage to your ears.
• You could go through depression and cognitive decline: You might start to detect symptoms of depression as your relationships falter and going out gets harder. You may also begin to go through some cognitive decline without the auditory activation your brain is used to, your neural physiology starts to experience certain changes. This can result in long term cognitive problems if your hearing loss isn't dealt with.

Don't Neglect Your Hearing Loss

Later on, clearly, bigger and more substantial issues can be triggered by hearing loss. Conversely, your quality of life can be considerably improved by recognizing and managing your hearing loss. When you hear better, your relationships get better and your every day life seems more full. And your general health will be improved by seeing a hearing specialist or at least downloading a noise monitoring app.

You definitely shouldn't neglect the health concern of hearing loss. The sooner you find the correct treatment, the happier you'll be. Take care of your hearing loss before it gets too severe to ignore.