Have you been noticing some changes in your hearing health? Hearing loss is usually a gradual process, and you may not even notice it at first. Just like going grey, hearing loss doesn’t happen from one day to the next. You may notice a few silver hairs years before you’re completely grey. Hearing loss is the same way. You’ll start to notice small changes in your hearing, so that’s why it’s important to be alert to any changes in your hearing health.
Here are 5 signs that you may have a hearing loss.
You Can’t Hear in Noisy Places
One of the earliest signs of hearing loss is struggling to hear in places with a lot of background noise. You might have no trouble hearing in quiet cafes, but you can’t follow conversations in a crowded restaurant.
This is because hearing loss makes it harder to distinguish between important sounds you want to hear and the distracting background sounds you’re trying to ignore. Hearing loss can make you hear all these sounds the same, so you struggle to hear in noisy places. Another reason you can’t hear in noisy places is because the background noise is usually in low pitches that you can hear clearly. Unfortunately, the speech sounds you’re straining to hear are higher pitched, and are probably in the range you can’t hear as well.
You’re Tired After a Social Event
Another sign you may have hearing loss is that you’re tired after a social event. You used to love seeing friends, but over the last few months you’ve stopped going to as many social events, and you feel completely exhausted when you come back home.
This is because you’re straining to follow conversations. During the event, you try to hear what your friends are saying, and you spend a lot of energy straining to understand speech. During the event, your brain is playing an exhausting game of fill in the blanks, trying to guess at what people are saying so you can respond appropriately. Not only that, but you are trying to hear multiple people speaking at the same time, and you also have to ignore all the distracting background sounds. No wonder you’ve been feeling tired!
You Ask People to Repeat Themselves
Have you been asking your family and friends to repeat themselves? A common sign of hearing loss is asking people what they’ve said. You often fail to catch the meaning of what was said the first time, and you have to ask people to repeat themselves several times. Even after they repeat themselves, you still might not understand what was said. Hearing loss erodes the clarity of sounds. You may think you can hear everything, but no matter how much you strain to hear, you struggle to hear what people are saying.
You Turn Up the Volume On the TV
A common sign of hearing loss is turning up the volume on the TV. Your family might be complaining that you turn up the volume too high and that it’s painful for their ears to watch TV with you. When you have hearing loss it’s hard to understand what’s being said during your favorite show. You keep turning up the volume to try to make the speech clearer, but even cranking up the volume doesn’t make the dialogue easier to hear.
Sounds Seem Muffled
If sounds seem muffled or unclear, you probably have hearing loss. You can get your doctor to check your ears for a buildup of earwax that might make sounds seem muffled. If your ear canals are clear, then you probably have hearing loss. A hearing loss can often make sounds seem muffled, or like people are talking very softly.
This is because hearing loss usually affects higher sounds at first. When you can’t hear these high sounds, the balance of sounds is off. You’ll hear more of the lower sounds and not enough of the higher sounds, making speech seem muffled and unclear.
Enticare
These are just 5 signs you may have a hearing loss. If you notice any of these signs visit us at Enticare. Find out more about hearing loss and how you can treat your hearing loss with quality hearing aids.