Hearing loss is gradual. Nobody wakes up one day unable to hear. Instead the TV volume creeps up, you ask people to repeat themselves a little more often, and restaurants slowly become places where you nod along to conversations you’re only half catching. Those are the signs. Catching them early matters, so believe your family when they mention the whole volume on the TV thing.
But most people notice the signs and do nothing. Only about one in five older Americans with hearing loss actually wears hearing aids, according to Johns Hopkins. That leaves more than 23 million people walking around with untreated hearing loss, mostly because of what they think hearing aids say about them.
Guess what?! Hearing aids got good! Noise reduction, feedback cancellation, Bluetooth, rechargeable batteries. Our dad Jake walked us through his ultra-high-tech pair in Episode 3 of the Spry Podcast.
Getting started is one appointment. An audiologist runs a hearing evaluation, tells you what’s going on, and recommends options that fit your hearing and your life.
One honest warning though, the adjustment takes time. Your brain has to relearn sounds it stopped processing a while ago, and the first weeks can be noisy in a way you didn’t expect. Be patient. It settles. And that is a lot easier to do the earlier you identify any hearing loss.
Hearing aids are not an admission of anything. They’re how you stay at the dinner table, in the phone calls, and in the room with your family. As we said in Episode 3: like gray hair, they’re sexy and cool.