Have You Heard the News?

Hearing aids, once wildly expensive and accessible only through health professionals, are now available directly. Are you ready to finally face up to your hearing loss??

Photo by Mark Paton on Unsplash

A Pause reader recently sent me this email:

“As a speech/language pathologist, I know how important our sense of hearing is. Every year we have an annual physical, an eye exam, dermatologist, etc. But how often does anyone get a hearing evaluation? It’s very important to have a baseline. Most of my friends our age have never even had a hearing evaluation and to be honest, a couple of them definitely need to have one - and most likely a hearing aid would be prescribed.”

Do any of these sound familiar?

• You’re turning up the TV volume more frequently (or using closed caption).

• You’re having trouble carrying on conversations in crowded places, like loud restaurants.

• You or your friends are saying, “What?” or “Pardon me?” a bit too often.

Hearing loss. It’s easy to ignore, sidestep, live with…until it’s not.

Ignoring hearing loss is like ignoring a cavity in your tooth: It doesn’t get better, but instead worsens over time. By the time changes in your hearing can even be detected, 30 to 50 percent of the hair cells within your ear - which assist your brain in detecting sounds – are already damaged or destroyed. And those can’t be repaired

Hearing loss is not like vision loss, after all. You know for sure when your eyes are going bad. With hearing loss, you’re not aware of the sounds you’re missing. You can miss the chirps of crickets, the trilling of birds, the ringing of your alarm clock and the pitter-patter of raindrops outside your window. And so much more.

The Hidden Dangers - and Facts - of Hearing Loss

• Brain scans reveal that untreated hearing loss may contribute to a faster rate of brain atrophy, according to research from Johns Hopkins. 

• Untreated hearing loss can lead to major problems like dementia, cognitive decline, social withdrawal, low self-esteem, anxiety, falls, mental exhaustion and fatigue.  

• Just one concert that leaves your ears ringing permanently damages your hearing. (The Grateful Dead, Chicago, The Beach Boys, The Who, The Allman Brothers…I left those concerts with ears that rang for days. Experts concur that exposure to loud noises, especially over long periods of time, is a definite culprit. 

• Other causes of hearing loss: Medical conditions like coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, family history and something as innocuous as earwax buildup.

Why do us hearing-challenged middle-agers put up with it?

So many of us don’t want to admit we’re struggling to hear well. Hearing loss carries a stigma and causes us to think about things we’d rather not: Old age. Frailty. Being less-than-perfect; impaired.

Not hearing well feels frustrating, isolating, embarrassing and just plain sad; a blatant reminder - as loud as a trumpet once sounded - that time is marching on.

The stigma of hearing loss is reinforced by the fact that although many people could clearly  benefit from wearing hearing aids, yet too many refuse to get them. While about 15 percent of adults in the U.S. experience hearing issues, only one in five actually use hearing aids. (But what of the stigma from constantly asking someone to repeat themselves, cupping your hand behind your ear in order to hear, or dropping out of conversations completely?)

I was one of those…one who refused to get hearing aids. But after dragging my feet for about six years, and getting tired of knowing that I was not hearing well, I moved to the other side. My hearing aids sit discretely behind my ears, mostly hidden by my hair. After I got them, three of my friends did, too. We’re all so happy that we moved past our hesitation (and vanity) and wonder why we didn’t do it sooner!

Now that I have your ear, I want to share a surprising and little-known fact I learned while researching an earlier story on hearing loss. And it has to do with Alzheimer’s disease - a condition that so many of us fear.

Treating hearing loss is one of the most modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer’s in midlife. That’s because when you struggle to hear, your brain has to work harder to fill in the blanks - which depletes cognitive energy from other functions.

Have You Heard? The Cost of Hearing Aids is About to Change

The average person waits ten years before getting hearing aids. Maybe that will change now.

After many years of stalling and red tape, affordable hearing aids will soon be available for purchase over-the-counter (in retail stores and online) for people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss, without a prescription or medical exam. According to an article in the New York Times:

“Under the F.D.A.’s new rule, people with mild to moderate hearing loss should be able to buy hearing aids online and in retail stores as soon as October (2022), without being required to see a doctor for an exam to get a prescription.”

The FDA estimates that about 30 million American adults could benefit from hearing aids. If you’re one of them, maybe now is the perfect time - and opportunity - to do something about it.

For a Pause…

1. There are times you want to hear less noise - not more… these noise-canceling earbuds from Bose can do the trick nicely (and these are on sale!)

2. If you or someone you know has a set of old hearing aids, here’s a way to recycle them so they can be repurposed and reprogrammed for someone in need.

3. Hearing aids have come a very long way from “ear trumpets,” which were used to transmit sounds way back when.

4. I’ve always thought that as soon as someone makes hearing aids into a fashion statement, sales would soar. Agree?

One More Thing…

The Beatles. They were all about listening.

If you like what you’re reading, be a friend and share…don’t keep it a secret!

Until next time, stay well. Stay healthy. Stay safe.

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