You are over 40
- Hearing impairment generally worsens with age.
- Hearing impairment is often ignored until it seriously interferes with work or social activities.
- Early detection and remediation can improve the quality of your life.
You have trouble understanding conversations
Research shows that people who have trouble in conversations are likely to have
impaired hearing. People with hearing loss often have the following problems:
- They must ask people to repeat more often than they used to.
- Conversing in noisy restaurants is especially difficult.
- Their relatives accuse them of not paying attention.
You are exposed to intense noise
- Frequent exposure to intense noise is a leading cause of hearing loss.
- Some sources of damaging occupational noise are power tools, heavy
machinery, factories, and gunfire. - The cumulative effects of noise exposure over long periods are permanent. To
lessen the damage to your hearing, wear ear plugs, ear defenders, or both in
noisy environments.
You listen to loud music
- Loud music is as damaging to hearing as gunfire or heavy machinery.
- The more you listen to loud music, the worse the damage.
- Permanent hearing loss results when the loudness exceeds certain levels. The effects are
cumulative when the loudness exceeds certain levels, with the result of permanent hearing loss.