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What are some positives of aging that speak to you? If you’re having a little trouble getting your list together, don’t despair: Healthy Aging Month was created as an opportunity to choose happiness for your future by taking active steps to maintain your physical and mental well-being. And where to begin isn’t as daunting as you may think.
Hearing screenings typically absent from routine doctor exams
This post originally appeared on Starkey.com
Today’s fact headlining the lack of hearing screenings at routine doctor exams may surprise you—or not.
If you’re surprised: It’s probably because you’ve been keeping up with the mounting research that strongly links hearing loss with dementia, cognitive decline, depression, loneliness, and falls.
If you’re not surprised: You may be familiar with the current state of shorter appointments in the U.S. and let’s face it—it’s not uncommon for physicians to prioritize other tests, labs, and questions before hearing. You’ve likely “been there,” and realize if you had any hearing loss concerns, it would be your role to mention them to the physician.
Regular hearing screenings are essential to your health
While the reasoning behind the lack of hearing screenings at routine exams isn’t clear-cut, we can take today’s fact as a reminder of how important it is to prioritize our hearing health. Regular hearing exams not only are the first step in helping to prevent the long-term detriments of hearing loss, such as dementia, but also play an immediate role in the early intervention of age-related hearing loss—which is gradual and often difficult to detect. As a result, people may not even realize they have hearing loss until it is further along and more challenging to treat.
On a positive note, the case integrating hearing screenings into regular health exams appears to be gaining some momentum: The esteemed National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, for example, recently recommended routine doctor hearing screenings in a published report titled Hearing Health Care for Adults: Priorities for Improving Access and Affordability.
But while progress continues to grow, taking care of our hearing is up to us.
Fortunately, there are two things you can do:
Option 1: Tell your physician about hearing concerns
If you think you may have hearing loss, or even if you’re unsure, tell your physician. They can refer you to a licensed hearing care professional in the same way they might refer you to a dermatologist for skin issues. A hearing specialist will have the equipment and expertise to evaluate your hearing and counsel you through treatment options for any hearing issues you may be experiencing.
Option 2: Visit a hearing care professional yourself
As it stands, experts recommend having your hearing screened every three years once you’re 50. So, you can feel empowered to make it a part of annual health checks. Hearing evaluations are simple and pain-free, and can easily be set up with a hearing care professional near you.
For a head start, simply type your zip code in here to generate a list of local providers. They will be happy to show you how your hearing is doing, and as mentioned, discuss treatment if needed.
If you’re interested in a hearing test, visit your closest South Suburban Hearing Health Center to learn more about your hearing health.
Hearing loss can make us socially withdraw
How to know when to test your hearing
The signs of hearing loss aren’t always as apparent as chronic pain or other medical issues. Much like vision loss — when a person may begin holding books closer or squinting while driving at night — the signs of hearing loss are usually subtle and gradual. They can even blend in with your life.
Made for face masks
Face masks have unequivocally been a good thing when it comes to helping prevent the spread of COVID-19. But they present challenges when trying to communicate with others. Especially if you or the person you’re communicating with has hearing loss.
Face masks muffle speech and block important lip-reading cues. Both are key to understanding speech. Add in social distancing or group video chats — which have nothing to do with masks but plenty to do with speech audibility — and this pandemic has made it a lot harder to hear what your family, friends, colleagues, neighbors and the local grocery store cashier are saying.
Hearing aids can help
It should be no surprise, though, that hearing aids offset these challenges and can help make it easier to hear people who are wearing face masks. By their very nature, hearing aids amplify sound which, in many cases, is all it takes to hear what face-mask wearers are saying.
Our new hearing aids can help even more
New hearing aid technology has been engineered to go above and beyond simple sound amplification to specifically tackle the challenges created by face masks, social distancing and background noise.
Our Edge Mode technology — available only in our Livio Edge AI hearing aids — has been proven to be highly effective in resolving speech intelligibility issues caused by masks.
How? By putting the power of artificial intelligence (AI) at your fingertips.
A simple double tap of your hearing aids activates Edge Mode anytime you need it. Once activated, Edge Mode scans the acoustic environment you’re in, then instantly optimizes sound — taking masks, distance and background noise into consideration — to deliver enhanced speech audibility on demand.
Not only is Edge Mode great for masks, it's handy to have anytime you encounter a noisy or particularly challenging listening environment.
Our new Mask Mode, too, was specifically designed to make people who are wearing masks easier to hear. Mask Mode is a new custom memory in our Thrive app that offsets the loss of speech audibility due to face masks by boosting sound in the affected frequency regions. Mask Mode is available on select Livio hearing aid technology levels.
The ideal hearing aid for today
But if you really want the ideal hearing solution for these mask-wearing times, you’ll want our Livio Edge AI custom rechargeable hearing aids. Not only do they help make hearing easier — thanks to Edge Mode and our proprietary Hearing Reality Pro platform — but because they fit in your ears and not behind them, they won’t get tangled or pulled off when you’re wearing or removing your face mask.
And they’re the only wireless custom rechargeable hearing aids you can buy!
Listen, 2020 has been plenty rough. Don't you think you owe it to yourself to make hearing easier?
Want to experience for yourself how hearing aids can help? Click here to contact South Suburban Hearing Health Center today!