Hearing Loss: Can I Wait a While for Hearing Aids?

Hearing versus understanding? Don’t they go together? The answer is not always. Auditory deprivation can make understanding speech nearly impossible even for individuals with a moderate hearing loss. The best way to maintain the ability to understand speech is to maximize your hearing ability, keep your brain active, stimulate the brain to understand speech and stay active in social settings.

Most people don’t understand what happens by putting off improving your hearing health. As a society we have many preventative care measures for our health. Annual physicals, mammograms, prostate exams, vision tests, but what about hearing?

It is good to have a complete audiogram the first time, around age 45

Do you have an annual hearing test? If you have no issues an annual screening is a great way to keep watch on your hearing levels. If you notice a change or a change is noted during your screening then a complete audio is preferred to assess your overall hearing health.

By doing this simple, painless hearing screening you can avoid auditory deprivation.

After 20 years of helping people with their hearing health, auditory deprivation is the hardest hearing obstacle. Let me explain. A hearing aid will certainly make sounds louder, but there’s an unfortunate side-effect when you put off getting hearing help. For some when we make sounds louder our brain only has the ability to understand a reduced amount of the speech. I’ve found that for many this idea is very tough to absorb. During a complete hearing test we conduct speech testing. When conducting a word recognition test, or speech discrimination, the volume is set to a comfortable listening level for the patient. Then there are a series of words presented for the patient to repeat. Most believe that is common sense they would repeat the words. This is where we witness auditory deprivation, for some patients with the volume increased they can still only repeat a decreased percentage of words. This deficiency is auditory deprivation and is not repairable. Hearing aids can help within amplifing speech to allow for improvments in hearing to the ability of the ear.

The BIGGEST misconception about hearing seems to be that “a hearing aid will always fix the problem.” Hearing aids can only bring back hearing to a normal level but they can NOT make your brain understand the speech.

Hearing aids will make communication better for the person wearing the hearing aids and the people trying to communicate with them. The key to having a successful hearing aid fitting really comes down to the expectations of the user and family. If the indivicual has the ability to understand speech when the sound is increased by a hearing device it is easy to perceive the benefits of the hearing device. Where it becomes difficult is when the person with the device suffers from auditory deprivation.

Auditory deprivation has been compared to a rusty brain by Dr Robert Martin. A rusting brain sounds quiet comical but when we think of auditory deprivation it is a good analogy. Dr Martin wrote about this in The Hearing Journal in January of 2004. He references why patients should wear their hearing aids. This concept can also be considered when we think about treating hearing loss. So rather you currently wear hearing aids or have a mild to moderate hearing loss it is vital to wear hearing aids to help prevent the rusty brain (auditory deprivation).

Where to start, if you haven’t yet get a hearing test. If you have and wear hearing aids make sure you are wearing them to the full potential and have speech mapping completed with your hearing aids in your ears. Doing these things will allow you to enjoy communicating with your family and loved ones and leading an active lifestyle!