Explaining Hearing Loss to Your Loved Ones

Hearing loss is something that you cannot fully understand until you start to experience it yourself. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t try to explain to your loved ones that this is what you experience on a daily basis and this is what it’s like. It might not be easy, but we’re here to help you through it. Down below, we’re going to be taking a look at how you can go about explaining hearing loss to your loved ones, so keep reading if you would like to find out more.

Understanding Hearing Loss Yourself

The first thing that you need to do before you can even explain hearing loss to your loved ones is make sure that you understand it yourself. Perhaps you will never fully understand hearing loss, and it’s a very personal experience seeing as no two people typically experience it exactly the same. The only thing that you can do is speak about you, the way it impacts you and what you do to manage it.

It’s important that if you’re going to take the time to explain hearing loss that you are completely open and honest. Don’t hide things because you think people are going to judge you, and don’t withhold information that would be useful to them to know. While they won’t be able to help you with the hearing loss itself, they may be able to do things for you that will make your life easier.

Talk About Your Symptoms

One of the questions that people are going to want the answer to be what kind of symptoms you experience and how you can manage them. So, you need to be open and honest about this as well. Talk to them about any and all symptoms that you experience due to your hearing loss and there are a few to note especially. Tinnitus is a sign of hearing loss, so that’s something to mention for sure, especially seeing as some people find this really difficult to cope with.

Of course, there is the typical response of sounds sounding quieter than others, depending on the decibel at which the sound travels. They may have noticed things themselves such as you needing to turn the TV up super high and seeming unbothered by it, despite the fact that it’s really loud. Or it could be the case that you need to ask people to repeat things a few times before you finally hear what they are saying. Just be honest, that’s the best thing that you can do.

Hearing Tests

Hearing tests are an important part of diagnosing hearing loss and the level at which you are experiencing hearing loss. You can talk to them about how hearing tests don’t hurt, what they do, and the fact that you can be sent to a hearing instrument specialist (HIS) to get things like hearing aids if they are needed. If they are interested and you know the answer, you can also discuss things like the different types of hearing aids, which is better for your specific hearing loss and so on.

The Causes of Hearing Loss

There are two main causes for hearing loss, one of them is damage to the auditory nerve and the other is damage to the sensitive hairs inside of your ear. This can stop the sound signals making it to the brain correctly, which then causes hearing loss. It’s true to say that there is nothing that can be done to fix this, just ways to live with it.

However, there are things that can be done to take care of hearing health and they need to know that. You are likely doing a lot of these things already such as wearing earplugs if you are going to be exposed to constant loud noise.

As well as this, you want to avoid putting anything in your ears as this can be extremely damaging. Lifestyle changes can also preserve your hearing health for a little bit longer such as quitting smoking and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, full of all the vitamins and nutrients that you need.

If you would like to speak to a professional about your hearing loss, or you would like to simply gather some more information, you can learn more about Nu-Life Hearing Centre. Get in touch at (855) 867-7449 to speak to a friendly member of the team who will do whatever they can to help you. We look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.