A New Year signals a new beginning and always inspires us to reassess and focus on bettering ourselves. What is important to the quality of your life? For some it is friendships, family, work-life balance, spiritual and physical needs for others it can be as simple as a 5-minute practice of deep breathing.
Whatever you have established as your goals for this year, your overall health might play a major role. Your hearing health should be factored into your health regimen. It is quite common to have a yearly checkup and this year let’s pay attention to sustaining a fuller hearing life.
The easiest place to start would be with your primary care doctor or, should the need arise, your hearing health specialist.
Get a screening
A very quick, non-intrusive pass/fail screening also known as a pure tone test will let you know if further investigation is required. Screening locations can be found at your local health departments and school districts for infants to teens. A primary care doctor will be able to advise or conduct them for adults that require screening every 10 years for those below the age of 50 and every 3 years for those above. It is common knowledge that people over the age of 65 have a higher incidence of hearing loss but those statistics are fast changing. Almost 10 million people suffer from some form of hearing decline and they range in age from young adults to the middle-aged.
Hearing Testing with us at Ear-Tronics
After the screening if there is reason for further tests, your next step would be to consult a hearing health professional. At Ear-Tronics, we provide comprehensive hearing tests and if a hearing loss is detected, we will analyze the type and level of hearing loss you might have and all the possible treatment programs available for your needs and your budget.
Why Treating Hearing Loss is Important
Being complacent about hearing loss due to age or negligence is the single most preventative factor to healthy hearing. Hearing decline can be gradual and our ability to adapt different coping strategies to compensate can actually inhibit the healing our natural hearing process might require!
Some of the signs that a hearing test is required are:
- Hearing distorted speech in environments with a noisy background
- Turning up the TV to a volume uncomfortable for others
- Experiencing undue stress attempting to hear details in a meeting or conversation
- Increased avoidance of social and familial activities
For more information on hearing loss, check out the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) website here: https://www.asha.org
Our need to communicate is often predicated on our sense of hearing. It also signals possible danger and need for caution whether in traffic or in extreme noise filled environments that might cause damage like incessant construction or loud musical venues.
External circumstances aside, we build our intimacies and uniqueness in our relationships to others through our sense of hearing and as well as our speech. A loss in our hearing ability will definitively and negatively impact the wide range of relationships we maintain on a daily level.
From the boardroom to the gym to the kitchen table we rely on our social, familial and professional connections to contribute to a full living experience.
Once we lose the ability to pick up on the sounds of our loved ones or to gain insight from interactions from our coworkers, we leave ourselves open to isolation and depression.
Our cognitive health is also impacted. From an early age our brain creates pathways of sound that we rely upon and build upon forming intricate and essential pathways for a life filled with interpreted layers of sound from our mother’s call to complex pieces of classical music. If any part of the hearing process is compromised it affects our ability to hear sounds correctly. This in turn will be detrimental to our communication and the joy of a full hearing experience with people and our immediate environs.
Schedule a Hearing Test with Ear-Tronics
You are your own best advocate for a life of quality. As we take on this New Year, it will be in our best interest to better the level of our lifestyle choices and initiatives. We are constantly tuning in to the changing needs of ourselves and life’s’ incessant demands. Being proactive about our health is only to our gain and to those closest to us!
At Ear-Tronics, we offer informed and educated choices for those seeking better hearing health. We look forward to hearing from you, or those close to you, regarding any questions pertaining to a richer hearing experience. One phone call and an appointment will set us together onto the path to a better, healthier you for 2020!