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CHANGES IN HEARING WITH AGING: WHEN TO GET MEDICAL HELP
People tend to put off getting help for hearing problems. The loss that is now a real impairment often has been advancing by inches over the years. No sudden symptom prompts an anxious call to the doctor. Also, having our hearing tested is not something we generally do, in contrast to a regular eye exam. Living with a problem is easy to rationalize: \"It\'s not so bad; people are just talking too softly. Anyway, I hate the idea of a hearing aid.\" Hearing aids (unlike glasses) do not come in designer styles. Poor hearing (as opposed to poor vision) seems so emblematic of old age.
Foot dragging has emotional costs. Because conversation is the bridge that connects us as human beings, hearing difficulties tend to limit life even more radically than vision problems. They may affect our relationships. Personality may suffer as we strain to understand half-heard words. People may become incessant talkers to ward off having to listen, or turn taciturn and withdraw rather than risk always asking, \"What did you say?\" Another reaction is to become suspicious, reading plots into half-heard whispers, or to get depressed, defeated by the strain of understanding a garbled world.
If conversations are difficult to understand, or if you continually hear hissing or ringing in your ear, you need a hearing evaluation. Call your family doctor, who will either diagnose and treat your problem directly or refer you to a hearing specialist. Two types of specialists are qualified to evaluate and treat hearing difficulties: medical doctors called otolaryngologists and audiologists - hearing specialists without an M.D. Audiologists cannot prescribe drugs or perform surgery, but they are more likely to be able to fit and sell a hearing aid.
Do not delay. If your problem is in the more external parts of the ear, it may be either curable or open to marked improvement. If you have \' \'nerve cell damage\" (the differential loss of higher-pitched sounds discussed earlier), be prepared to live with your condition. Still, a hearing aid, the sound-amplifying devices on the market (the National Association for the Deaf, in Silver Spring, Maryland, can provide a current list), or special training in understanding speech may help considerably.
Even hearing aids are no longer the badge of old age they once were. True, they have not achieved designer status, but some are now almost as good: they are invisible once in the ear.
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GENERAL HEALTH
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