The first week of March is Hearing Awareness Week. One in six people is affected by hearing loss. There can be various reasons why someone will start to lose their hearing, but the elderly often slowly lose their hearing. Sometimes it can be so slow, that they don’t even notice they are not hearing as well as they once did. Health conditions like high blood pressure or diabetes can contribute to hearing loss.
Presbycusis, a gradual loss of hearing, is thought to affect 1 in 3 elderly. It’s a common health issue in seniors. Seniors will first lose the ability to hear high-pitched sounds, and then it increases and affects other hearing, and can affect the quality of life. Hearing is an important sense of connecting to others and enjoying the world around them. So let’s look at some symptoms of hearing loss that you or your elder care team might have noticed. This can be used to open up the conversation about hearing loss with your loved one, and take the next steps to discover the next steps in finding him help.
Symptoms of Hearing Loss
Turning up the volume
Have you noticed that when you enter the room where your loved one watches television, the volume is unpleasantly loud to you? Maybe you’ve even noticed you can hear the TV clearly from another room. You might also notice your loved one having the ringer on his phone at the top volume or having the music in his car turned up. If he’s watching a show with a guest, like someone on his elder care team, he may ask to have subtitles on the TV or increase the volume.
Having trouble with conversations
If your loved one is struggling with hearing loss, he might continue to ask people to repeat themselves, especially in noisy environments. He has a difficult time understanding words when there is constant noise in the background. Since he loses hearing of high-pitched noises first, he might have more trouble hearing a woman’s voice or a child’s voice, but no problem hearing a man’s voice, which is usually lower. So if he has multiple elder care providers, he might start enjoying the presence of the male providers and have more conversations with them.
He stops engaging in social interactions
Because it’s a struggle to hear conversations, and he might even be embarrassed to ask someone to repeat themselves, you might find your elderly loved one simply withdrawing from conversations. He might do a lot of nodding, but when asked later about something discussed in a group conversation, he will not have any recollection of it because he couldn’t hear it well.
Being able to hear helps us connect with others and enjoy many of the small pleasures of this world, like a child laughing or a bird singing. Helping your parent seek help for his hearing loss will improve his quality of life.
If you or an aging loved one is considering hiring Elder Care in Geneva, IL, please contact the caring staff at A Mishle Group Services, Inc. today. at (630) 888-6644
Sources:
https://www.deafness.org.au/about-hearing-loss
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/presbycusis