Making Your Local Hearing Center Work for You

Do you find that you ask people to repeat themselves a lot? Does your spouse complain that the television is too loud? Are chats with your children on the telephone frustrating? Is chatting with more than one person challenging? Perhaps you have even driven by your local hearing center and thought of stopping in. Surely you're not suffering a hearing loss. Why is this happening? Presbycusis is a loss of hearing, as you grow older. No one really knows why it happens, but you are not alone. Another cause is repeated exposure to loud noise. This makes musicians, people in the military, farmers, and construction workers susceptible. Some diseases and bacteria even cause hearing loss. So what do you do now? An audiologist can help determine the severity of your hearing loss through testing. There is more than one test. An audiometry test is non invasive. It is looking to see how you hear different sounds. You will be in a quiet soundproof room with earphones on. You will hear a series of sounds in one ear and then the other. You will be asked to raise your left hand when the sound is in your left ear and right when it's coming from the right. A word recognition test checks to see how you hear people talking. They will measure this by having you repeat words being said to you. A tympanometry test is a tool used to determine if there is damage to the inner ear, wax buildup, and fluid. A soft plug will be placed in your ear canal. They will use this to change the pressure in your ear. The movement your eardrum makes will tell them of any problems. A hearing center is going to be able to use these results to determine a diagnosis and treatment. There are five types of hearing loss. We will focus on three: Sensorineural, conductive, and mixed. Sensorineural is the most common among aging adults. For examples, loud noise, injury, some viral infections like measles, diabetes, or high fever can cause damage. Treatment is usually hearing aids. Conductive hearing loss is due to something blocking sound waves from traveling properly, like fluid, wax buildup, tumor, or a foreign object in the ear canal. This type of loss can often be repaired surgically. Mixed is when you have a little of both of the first two problems. Surgery may be tried, but a hearing aid is the likely treatment. So what about hearing aids? Options. That is the word. You will want your hearing center to explain this one. There are body aids, extended wear aids, invisible in canal hearing aids, behind the ear aids. Options for sure. Now that you're ready to listen to the birds sing your hearing center will assist you.