Benefits of Treating Hearing Loss

If you are dealing with hearing loss, you are probably starting to notice how it can affect your life. Hearing loss takes a toll on our mental and physical well-being and can hold you back from experiences and opportunities. While most hearing loss is permanent, more and more people are discovering that it can be effectively managed with hearing aids and assistive listening devices. Treating hearing loss is an important part of minimizing the way it affects our life, making us healthier and happier.

It is important to understand how important your hearing is. Hearing loss often limits us in ways that are difficult to quantify, but have a big impact nonetheless. Since hearing loss is so fundamental to how we communicate, our quality of life can be significantly reduced when we allow hearing loss to go unaddressed.

Have you ever declined an invitation or stayed home from an interesting event because it is frustrating to navigate the noise of the environment? Hearing loss makes changes in our social patterns. We may instinctively avoid activities we once enjoyed, like travel, movies, or sporting events because our hearing loss limits our enjoyment. Not being able to follow conversational speech can cause us to reduce the time we spend with friends and family.

In fact, hearing loss greatly increases our risk of social isolation and limited mobility while treating hearing loss helps us stay socially engaged and keeps us involved in the activities we love. Managing hearing loss is an important step to staying active, even as we age.

By making communication more difficult and encouraging social isolation, untreated hearing loss can exacerbate mental health issues. When we have difficulty feeling understood by others, and trouble understanding what they say to us, it can be stressful and frustrating. Unaddressed hearing issues make us vulnerable to depression and anxiety.

Treating hearing loss can make communication and connection much easier, and re-engage us with important social relationships. When you use hearing aids, it helps you enjoy and understand the people around you.

Untreated hearing loss doesn’t help us where we need it most - on the job. Hearing is essential to keeping up with today’s busy workplaces, from making the most of meetings to catching important updates on projects. In fact, untreated hearing issues are correlated with lower pay rates and higher unemployment.

While employers cannot discriminate against employees with hearing disabilities, hearing loss often makes jobs more challenging. Treating hearing loss not only relieves workplace stress, it connects you with hearing technology that helps you stay on top.

Picture trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle where half of the pieces have been removed. You won’t always make the right connections, and it’ll be hard to discern the final image. You’ll work harder with less reward. Trying to comprehend speech with untreated hearing loss is similar. Your brain has to work overtime for less accurate results.

Trying to comprehend sounds with untreated hearing loss is difficult. It pulls cognitive attention away from other tasks and creates a cognitive burden as we struggle to hear. This stress is thought to be behind increased rates of dementia in people with unaddressed hearing loss.

The good news? Treating hearing loss relieves that cognitive strain and gives your brain a boost. When it is easier to hear, your cognitive functioning feels that relief and performance improves for other cognitive tasks.

Your auditory system isn’t isolated from the rest of your health and untreated hearing loss can have unexpected consequences for your overall well-being. When hearing loss is left unaddressed, it taxes our cognitive abilities and that can make physical tasks harder too. Cognitive strain can pull our attention away from coordination and balance, making us more prone to falling accidents. Hearing challenges can also keep us from hearing important sound cues that signal danger.

Additionally, many diseases are correlated with untreated hearing loss. Heart disease, diabetes and anemia are all more prevalent in people with unaddressed hearing issues. Treating hearing loss can help us participate in better bodily wellness.

At Ascent Hearing & Audiology, we know your hearing is a vital part of who you are. That’s why we specialize in treating permanent hearing loss and helping you optimize your hearing and protect your health, well-being, and quality of life.