7 Reasons You Don’t Need a Hearing Aid

“You need a hearing aid!” come the dreaded words from your spouse or friends or kids. Along with those words is the underlying implication: You’re getting old. Your body is beginning to wear out. These are truths (or half-truths) we don’t want to hear. But could all those naysayers be wrong? You still feel good, keep yourself healthy. Sure, there might be a few extra pounds or a couple of wrinkles showing, but you’re sure your ears are still hearing like they did ten years ago. So perhaps you don’t really need help with your hearing like your significant others are telling you. Let’s check out all the reasons why they could be wrong and your hearing is fine. You really don’t need a hearing aid—do you?

1. You had a hearing test and your hearing is only down a little bit.

So that’s good! You only have a small amount of trouble with your ears, so of course you don’t need a hearing aid. You told everyone your hearing was perfect and you were almost right. But to stay on top of it, you’ll get our hearing checked every year, just like you do with your vision.

2. Young people mumble.

To be fair, some (especially teenage boys, with a limited vocabulary of grunts and salutations such as “s'up” and “huh?”), do appear to mumble. But not everyone's guilty of this. Sure, it’s hard to hear when someone is talking to you from another room. This is because sound doesn’t travel well around corners. However, if the person you’re accusing of poor diction is standing next to you, looking at you, and there’s no background noise—perhaps their mumbling isn't the problem?

3. My wife can hear a pin drop.

Really? Isn’t that great she has such good hearing. She must be Super Woman with bionic hearing! Or perhaps her hearing is normal and yours has slipped below the normal range. If you’re turning the TV up louder than she wants, you may not need a hearing aid, but maybe an assistive listening device for the TV would help put a stop to arguments about the TV volume.

4. You hear fine with your glasses on.

Seriously, this is a thing! If one of your senses is not as sharp as it used to be, you may rely more on your other senses. If you’ve got your glasses on and you hear people better, that could be because you’re better able to read their lips and facial expressions. About one third of what we say can be lip-read. If you hear better with your glasses on, you might see better with hearing aids—who knows?

5. If there’s no background noise, you hear fine.

You have great conversations when it’s just you and one or two others in a quiet room. But when you’re at the local bar, or in large meeting and there’s lots of extraneous noise, then problems occur. Perhaps you catch some of the words, or part of them, but some seem to disappear into the room’s ambiance. Why does this happen if your hearing’s okay? If you’ve lost a bit of hearing in the high pitch range (which is where hearing first tends to be affected), soft speech sounds such as ‘sh’, ‘th’ or ‘f’ often get lost when there’s background noise. These sounds give words definition and clarity; they often occur at the beginnings and ends of words so can easily disappear in noisy environments. Is this happening to you? Perhaps it’s time to get your hearing checked to see if any of your high pitch hearing has deteriorated.

6. The Minister at church can’t project her voice.

Going to church has become difficult as you can’t hear the sermon properly and it’s because the new Minister has a soft voice. This could be true. Ask other parishioners if they are having the same problem. If they are, then you might need to get your Minister a microphone to project her voice better. However, if you’ve lost some of those high pitch sounds, hearing female voices can be more difficult than it used to be. Your hearing levels may need some optimization to be able to hear the sermon clearly.

7. Loud sounds hurt, so I can’t be deaf.

Well, yes, and no. Some people with hearing loss have a reduced dynamic range. This means their usable hearing is squashed into a smaller range. For example, I first detect sounds at around 10 decibels and sound gets uncomfortably loud around 110 decibels. My late father, on the other hand, had hearing levels kicking in around 40 decibels and then sounds got too loud for him at around 90 decibels. Therefore I have a dynamic hearing range 100, whereas Dad’s was 50. A reduced dynamic range means that sounds will grow in loudness abnormally fast, making loud sounds hurt at a lower level than when hearing is in the normal range. If this is you, perhaps you have a reduced dynamic range and a reduction in your hearing levels.

Maybe you do need a hearing aid?

Don’t despair! Hearing loss can be isolating and affects more than one in six people world-wide. Maybe you’re one of those people and you do need to get some assistance. The technology in hearing aids has improved exponentially over the last decade, with many people choosing to optimise their hearing levels sooner rather than later. We hear with our brains and our ears. Keeping this sense alive will help keep your brain engaged and active. You can then assured of hearing everything you need. You won’t be seen as ‘old’—no, you’ll be among the growing number of people augmenting their hearing and keeping connected in our ever-changing world.