Hearing loss affects 40 million people in the United States. This makes it a very common health condition, which means that you do not need to feel shy about admitting to your hearing loss. It is sad that people with hearing loss wait for as long as ten years before they finally decide to get help for their condition. There are several reasons why you need not wait that long.
When it comes to hearing damage, it is an irreversible condition. Unlike a hiccup or a twitchy eye, your hearing loss won’t just “go away” if you ignore it. On the contrary, untreated hearing loss can actually cause severe damage to your mental and physical wellbeing.
Untreated hearing loss has been found to result in cognitive difficulties and even dementia, by the Johns Hopkins University. Elderly adults with untreated hearing loss are at a much higher risk of developing dementia and having problems with their short term and long term memory and reasoning skills.
Hearing loss puts you and your loved ones at risk of threats that are ever present in our everyday world. Be it natural disasters, emergencies, or burglars, if you are unable to hear alarms or sirens, you are putting yourself and your family at risk of severe harm.
Many times hearing loss can actually be a result of an underlying infection or simply excessive amounts of earwax. Either of these cases are easily treatable and do not result in permanent hearing damage. By ignoring your hearing loss, you may be worsening an underlying medical ailment that might actually be very easy to heal.
Hearing loss impacts your productivity in the workplace and results in a severe loss of income per annum. If you are unable to hear what is going on in the workplace, giving your best is no longer possible. Your colleagues may ignore you and your boss may doubt your capabilities as an employee, even though you may be capable of much higher productivity simply with the use of hearing aids.
In fact, using hearing aids to treat hearing loss has been shown to improve workplace productivity and increase earning power by several thousand dollars. This can be a great motivation to start treating your hearing loss today.
Other dangers of hearing loss often lurk unseen, in the depths of our mind. Depression is a silent disease, as is anxiety, paranoia, phobia and mania. Hearing loss can be an extremely isolating experience, and can result in social withdrawal. Being alone for such prolonged amounts of time can have an adverse effect on your psychological wellbeing.
Think of all those who love you, and all those voices you are unable to hear due to your hearing loss. Your conflict with your spouse and children may simply be a result of your untreated hearing loss. By getting hearing aids, you will not only be improving your own health, you will also get the opportunity to improve your interpersonal relationships with your loved ones.