In May, we celebrate National Speech-Language-Hearing Month, a chance to raise awareness of communication disorders involving speech and hearing and get excited about the life-changing treatments available to help with them. One such treatment is hearing aids.
How Hearing Loss Interrupts Healthy Communication
Communication is a two-way street: someone speaking and someone listening. If youāre having trouble hearing what someone else is saying, practicing healthy communication becomes increasingly difficult. When communication breaks down, relationships can suffer. This might look like:
- Opting out of family traditions, such as game night or movie night.
- Not answering phone calls from loved ones.
- Getting unusually frustrated at family members because it sounds like theyāre mumbling.
- Avoiding going out into public, where noise levels can be overpowering.
This pattern is why untreated hearing loss is often associated with loneliness and isolation. Humans are a social species; we have as much a need for communication and connection as we do for food, water and shelter. Being a part of a community, having a strong support system and participating in social activities all directly improve our health and overall well-being. But on the other hand, when weāre deprived of these things, other facets of our health can suffer.
How Hearing Aids Can Help
Quite simply, hearing aids reconnect you to the people around you and make healthy communication possible again. Being able to hear and understand what people are saying to you is critical for good communication. With hearing aids, youāll be able to fully engage with every conversation. Empowered by hearing aids, many people notice the following:
- Improved social relationships
- Increased social interactions
- Renewed confidence
- Decreased feelings of loneliness
- Decreased rates of depression and anxiety
How They Do It
In the past, hearing aids were analog: a microphone picked up all sounds and amplified them into a speaker. This amplified all sounds more or less indiscriminately. Now, modern hearing aids are digital, meaning that the microphone picks up sounds, then the hearing aid runs those sounds through a computer chip that digitally processes them. In this processing and sorting stage, your hearing aid can automatically deduce what sounds are speech and background noise, as well as isolate and amplify the pitches that you might struggle to hear the most.
This smart processing prioritizes speech sound, so you can be confident youāre hearing every word. These are exactly the kinds of treatments and technology that we want to celebrate during National Speech-Language-Hearing Month!
If youāre ready to start your journey with hearing aids, get reconnected to the world around you and enjoy clearer communication, give us a call at Waterville Audiology.