Be proactive about your hearing health
Helen Keller, the deaf and blind author, political activist and lecturer, cast a unique light on the handicaps she so bravely overcame. “Blindness separates us from things,” she said; “deafness separates us from people.”
That’s the thing about hearing loss, says Andreas Seelisch, a registered audiologist with Hearing Solutions, an Ontario- wide company that offers hearing evaluations as well as aids. It is insidious and its effects can be profound.
Over time, those who suffer from hearing loss begin to struggle to understand and compensate to get by, becoming more isolated from the people around them in the process. Some remain in denial until they can no longer function.
“That’s at the core of why it’s so important to do something about our hearing, “says Seelisch.
“Hearing enriches people’s lives because it is how we connect and interact with people. It’s something that we’re using all the time — all day, every day.”
Hearing loss is a different process than most people might think. It can come with age, genetics, disease, sustained exposure to noise or any combination of these.
Many imagine hearing loss to be a simple loss of volume. If that were so, Seelisch says, the problem would be more obvious and more people would seek treatment earlier.
Instead, the impairment tends to start with the gradual loss of part of a sufferer’s hearing range — usually the higher regions affecting soft consonants such as s and f. They may not even realize it’s happening.
These sounds are called the fricatives (f ) and sibilants ( s) — sounds that don’t use the vocal cords but are instead produced by air rushing over the tongue and teeth.
“It will start robbing speech of clarity,” says Seelisch. “You start missing certain details of conversation. You now have to work backwards; you have to use your brain’s ability to mentally repair these gaps.”
“That’s not what people expect and they may not even realize that what they’re experiencing is hearing loss.”
The effects reach beyond hearing alone. Filling the gaps caused by hearing loss taps on archival and environmental information such as knowledge of the language, knowledge of the individual, context and lip-reading.
Doing so in a quiet room is one thing. Add background noise, music and multiple voices, and it’s quite another. It requires added degrees of attention and concentration that are more in demand as the condition progresses.
“Rather than focusing on conversation, you’re focusing on words. ‘Did they say this or did they say that?’ You’re trying to work from behind. Meanwhile, the conversation is getting ahead of you.”
All that extra brainwork can be stressful, exhausting and ultimately life-inhibiting. Some people give up, forgoing party invitations, for example, because it’s much easier to stay home than to carry on conversations in noisy, crowdedrooms.
The stress and frustration can alter personalities and interfere with relationships, and the isolation can contribute to a host of other problems, even depression.
“When someone in the family has a hearing loss, the whole family has a hearing problem,” Dr. Mark Ross, an American rehabilitation audiologist, once wrote.
Some with clinical hearing loss will blame others, saying they mumble or don’t speak clearly. But it’s usually others who notice there’s an issue before the person with hearing loss realizes it.
This is the reason Seelisch encourages people to bring a friend, spouse or family mem- ber to a hearing test so that their observations can help the audiologist pinpoint and address the problem.
He encourages people to be proactive about their hearing. Treat it like a dental visit or an annual checkup. Address what you can control.
While labour regulation has made the workplace a safer hearing environment, earbuds and other technologies are ubiquitous. Be mindful that noise has never been so portable, and reduce your exposure wherever and whenever possible.
But the top contributors to hearing loss remain genetics and aging. Whatever the cause, hearing loss is usually gradual. On average, people will go for 10 years after its onset before taking steps to deal with it.
Before people actually recognize the problem, they start by trying to adapt. Unfortunately, by relying on coping for this long, their brain actually begins to think the missing sounds are normal making accepting treatment later even harder. But early diagnosis and treatment inevitably result in better outcomes on a number of levels, including cognitive abilities. Johns Hopkins University researchers have linked progressive hearing loss to the impairment of seemingly unrelated things like dementia.
Tremendous strides are being made in hearing aid technologies. These are not the hearing aids of your grandparents’ era.
Today they are comfortable and virtually invisible. Their ability to reduce or filter background sound is uncanny. And they don’t whistle and hum.
They can make a huge difference in what a person hears. Seelisch says a common reaction among firsttime hearing aid users is: “Wow, I didn’t realize what I was missing.”
Furthermore, wireless technologies have enabled them to connect directly to mobile phones, televisions and music players.
There are 20 Hearing Solutions clinics across Ontario. Check their website at www.hearingsolutions.ca for a location near you, along with more i nformation about hearing loss and the new technologies designed to address it.
Hearing enriches people’s lives because it is how we connect and interact with people. It’s something that we’re using all the time — all day, every day.
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