Ways Hearing Loss Can Affect Your Daily Life

Are you having trouble hearing what people say, especially when you’re in a noisy room? It’s probably nothing serious, right? Well, it could be that you’re losing your hearing. According to the National Institute of Health, 15% of adults have some degree of hearing loss.

The truth is hearing loss can affect your life in many ways. Here are some examples of how it could affect your life and why it’s important to treat it.

Hearing loss can lead to isolation and depression.

When you lose your hearing, it can be hard to connect with those around you. Because you can’t hear what people say, you may be excluded from conversations and challenged to participate in social activities. This can make it hard for you to interact with others or enjoy life and even damage relationships with those closest to you.

Plus, the social isolation that results from hearing loss can lead to depression, which is a risk factor for heart disease, stroke, and dementia.

It could affect your work performance.

If you have hearing loss, it could affect your ability to do your job. For example, if you’re a construction worker and need to hear instructions from your supervisor, or if you work in retail and have to understand customers’ questions. If you can’t hear what’s going on around you at work, it’s distracting and makes it more difficult for you to get things done.

In fact, if your hearing loss is severe enough that it interferes with your ability to do the job well enough that employers notice (or people complain), they might fire or demote you. If you work a job where you need situational awareness, hearing loss could lead to injury.

If your job requires regular phone calls with clients or colleagues, you may miss important information because people are talking too quickly, or background noise muffles their voices.

It hurts your relationships with friends and loved ones.

When you have hearing loss, it’s hard to communicate with your loved ones. You might have trouble understanding what they say to you and they may not understand what you are saying back. This can lead to arguments and stress between you and the people around you. Without enough communication, feelings of isolation can set in and worsen matters.

You may be more likely to get in a car accident.

If you have hearing loss, you may be more likely to have car accidents. This is because you’re less aware of what’s going on around you, including not hearing honking horns. Hearing loss also puts you at risk for not understanding directions from your GPS and other drivers. You might also find it harder to hear sirens and move out of the way of an ambulance or fire truck in time to avoid a collision.

Hearing loss can affect brain health.

A healthy brain is important for a healthy body. While your ears may not be the first place you think about when it comes to brain health, there are ways hearing loss can affect your health and well-being as a whole.

People with hearing loss are more likely to develop dementia than those with no hearing impairment, according to research. And while this doesn’t mean all seniors with hearing loss will get dementia, or that all people with dementia have some degree of hearing loss, it’s still an important piece of the brain health puzzle.

How might hearing loss increase the risk of dementia? Research shows hearing loss causes atrophy, or shrinkage, of portions of the brain that process sound information. Brain shrinkage is harmful to cognitive function.

People with hearing loss may have trouble communicating with others and understanding instructions about how to stay healthy -- for example, what medications they should take or when they should schedule another visit for treatment.

It Can Lead to Emotional Frustration

One problem with hearing is the emotional frustration of being unable to hear well. Hearing loss can also make it difficult to enjoy music, TV shows, or movies. This may lead to a drop in your quality of life and even cause relationship problems with friends and family members who may have trouble understanding or conversing with a hearing-impaired person.

Conclusion

Hearing loss can impact every aspect of your life, from your job to your relationships with family and friends. The earlier you learn about the risks associated with hearing loss, the better equipped you’ll be to protect your ears and preserve your quality of life.

The good news is that there are many things that can be done to help with this problem. If you suffer from hearing loss, you want to learn more about what options are available to help improve hearing loss.