Myths About Hearing and Hearing Aids
There are a lot of misconceptions about hearing loss and hearing aids – see if you can differentiate between the myths and the real facts:
Myth or Fact: Hearing aids are ugly, noisy, noticeable and unattractive devices.
Myth: Hearing aids got a bad rap in the last century for being big, clunky, loud things that squealed if you got to close to them. Just as cell phones have come a long way in getting smaller, sleeker, and just plain better – so have hearing aids! A lot of the new devices might surprise you in how different they look, both in your hand and on your ear.
Myth or Fact: Only very loud noises cause hearing damage or loss.
Myth: A noise doesn’t have to be excruciatingly loud to cause hearing loss. Exposure to a constant loud noise (a busy subway, construction sites, even iPods turned up too loud) for just 15 minutes a day can gradually cause permanent damage.
Myth or Fact: If you have a hearing impairment, you know about it.
Myth: In most cases, hearing loss happens so gradually that millions of Americans have no idea that they have correctable hearing loss.
Myth or Fact: Most people with hearing loss DO NOT get it corrected.
Fact: Unfortunately, only 25% with a hearing impairment choose to reconnect with life.
Myth or Fact: Hearing aid users are usually elderly.
Myth: Only 30% of the 38 million Americans with hearing loss are 65 or older.
Myth or Fact: Hearing aids are clunky looking and embarrassing to wear.
Myth: Design and digital technology innovations have made possible a wide range of stylish, streamlined and discrete hearing devices.
Myth or Fact: Hearing aids not only amplify everything (including the things you don’t want to hear) but they also whistle.
Myth: This might have been a fact many years ago, but today’s advanced digital technologies detect and distinguish speech from noise to improve your ability to hear clearly in noisy environments.
Myth or Fact: Hearing aids have joined the wireless revolution and connect to entertainment & communications devices.
Fact: Bluetooth technology (or Connectivity as we like to call it) enables those with hearing loss to be wirelessly connected to phones, TVs and other audio sources – in the home and while on the go to improve one-on-one communication in difficult listening situations.
Myth or Fact: Hearing aids are difficult to use.
Myth: Hearing aids can be programmed easily for hearing preferences and different environments so they automatically adjust as the user moves from one place to another.