Health and Wellness Tips
Detecting Hearing Loss
It's been called a silent epidemic. An estimated 28 million Americans suffer from partial or full hearing loss. This problem now affects about one out of three people over the age of 65. And a growing number of people between ages 45 and 64 are also affected by hearing loss. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hearing problems in that age group have increased 26 percent over the last few decades.
Hearing loss can be suttle at first. Voices may sound as loud as ever, but certain words may become harder to pick up.
For a copy of a quick quiz to help you decide if you and/or someone you care about has a hearing problem, please call or email a note to me. Be sure to include your location/address.
Remember, if you find you have a hearing problem, don't just blame it on getting older. See your physician to rule out correctable causes such as earwax, inner-ear infections, side effects of common medications, circulatory disorders, hypothyroidism, Paget's disease of the bone, and rheumatoid arthritis.
If there is no medically correctable cause for your hearing loss, hearing aids and other assistive devices may be able to help you reconnect with the sound around you.
Some sample questions included on the quiz are:
- Do you have a problem hearing over the telephone?
- Do you have trouble following a conversation when two or more people are talking at the same time?
- Do people complain that you turn up the TV or radio volume too high?
- Do you have to strain to understand conversations?
- Do you misunderstand what others are saying and make inappropriate responses?
