The sounds around us are perceived by our hearing system 24 hours a day. Hearing is not a sense that you can ‘turn off’.
Our hearing works at several levels: With our hearing we perceive background sounds, such as traffic noise, or more relevant sounds, such as the ringing of an alarm clock. What is generally most important, however is, the ability to hear speech – to communicate.
Our hearing system must be able to distinguish speech among a multitude of sounds – from the soft rustle of leaves to complex sentences. When our hearing ability is reduced we are no longer able to hear sounds optimally, we loose sound discrimination. Our ability to discriminate between different sounds is vital to our day-to-day communication.
Hearing loss is a difficult problem to deal with for many reasons. Most who suffer with hearing loss do not recognise that they have a problem until others (usually their family) tell them. This can cause frustration and friction at home because it is often not the sufferer of hearing loss that is affected (they are unaware because they haven’t heard) but their family and friends who have to repeat themselves and live with the constant ‘pardon’, or ‘what did you say’ or worse – no response at all.
On average it takes 15 years between the onset of a hearing problem to accepting a hearing aid. This is because we adapt to the amount of sound available to us. Firstly by making sub conscious, subtle changes to how we interact with people, how we position ourselves with friends and family. We look for clues to the flow of the conversation: – lip movement, facial expression, body language and other people’s reaction. It is quite usual for people to stop attending clubs, meeting and social events because they have difficulty communicating (hearing).
There is, for some reason a reluctance to accept a hearing problem. Why? A hearing test is very straightforward and the benefits of a properly prescribed and fitted hearing aid far outweigh the disadvantages of putting up with a hearing loss and changing your life style to hide it. The longer the problem is put off the more difficult it is to rectify. Relearning sound discrimination is much harder or even impossible when a hearing problem is sever or profound. When the problem is identified at an earlier stage it is much much easier to correct and get back to a normal life.
Interesting facts: -
- More than 1/3 of all 65-year-old people have a hearing loss.
- More than 50% of those with hearing loss are working.
- There are 500 million hearing impaired people worldwide.
