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Have you recently received a hearing loss diagnosis? Like many people, you are probably thinking about whether treatment is right for you. Hearing loss often happens gradually and seldom causes physical pain which can make it hard to see exactly how beneficial treatment can be. Unfortunately, hearing loss can easily hold you back and put your health and quality of life at risk.
Better At Work, Better At School
When your hearing loss goes untreated, there’s no telling what you may miss. One big arena where people struggle with their hearing loss is at work or school. These environments often ask us to perform highly specialized tasks or take in new information and having hearing challenges can leave you open to more frequent mistakes and missed messages.
In one recent study, people with untreated hearing loss were shown to earn significantly less than their counterparts without hearing loss. The more severe the hearing loss, the wider the pay gap became demonstrating that hearing loss may keep you from your full potential and earning power.
Social Connection
Another area where people may not recognize what a difference hearing aids can make is how hearing assists our social connections. Healthy hearing allows us to fluidly connect with others and feel understood by them. When it becomes difficult to interpret what others are saying, the pleasures of socializing can transform into frustrations.
Challenges in comprehending speech can alienate you from even your most treasured friends, closest family and favorite pastimes. When listening becomes stressful instead of pleasurable, it can condition you to socially withdraw where you would normally be engaged. In fact, people with untreated hearing loss are at especially high risk of social isolation.
Hearing aids can help. Hearing aids assist by filling in the gaps in your hearing, making the nuances of speech clearer. By using hearing aids, the stress of social encounters is lessened and your community and connections are easier to maintain.
Mobility
Similar to how hearing loss impacts the ways in which we socialize, it can also constrict personal mobility if it is left unaddressed. Hearing loss doesn’t just make navigating the social landscape difficult, it can make finding your way through an actual landscape hard as well. Unfamiliar places or events can become stressful when our hearing can’t assist us in finding our way. Imagine, for example, trying to catch a plane at an airport where you are unable to hear about schedule and gate changes. To catch onto any unanticipated changes requires a lot of vigilance and attention and provokes stress and uncertainty.
As a consequence, the average mobility of people with untreated hearing loss is significantly restricted compared to those with healthy hearing. Again, hearing aids can help. Using hearing aids helps you catch the details you need to be confident in your movements. Some hearing aids are equipped with technology that can stream announcements in public places directly to your hearing aid making them easier to focus on and comprehend.
Depression
With the toll hearing loss can extract from your quality of life, it is probably unsurprising that the consequences of untreated hearing loss can also spur depression. Fed by a lack of meaningful connection with others, depression is a disease that deteriorates a person’s mental and emotional quality of life. Pressures from untreated hearing loss can make depression far more likely.
Treating hearing loss helps to mitigate this risk. Better hearing allows you to stay more well connected to the meaningful people and events in your life. When you feel supported and understood by those around you, risk of depression eases.
Anxiety
Untreated hearing loss can also elevate anxiety. Hearing loss places stress on the brain in addition to stressors coming from outside factors. All told, hearing loss strains our cognitive resources and seeds anxiousness and anxiety. Using hearing aids relieves much of this stress and is an active step towards reducing your risk of anxiety.
Other Health Risks
What’s at stake with treating your hearing loss isn’t limited to the areas we mentioned above. Hearing is part of your total health, and when it becomes disrupted the effects can echo throughout your body. Untreated hearing loss is linked to many health concerns including falling injuries, balance problems and even dementia.
Addressing the core issue can curb these additional health risks. The answer is clear: treating hearing loss can help. Ready to get started? Contact us today!