Addressing hearing loss helps women stay physically, cognitively, and socially active, the Better Hearing Institute (BHI) advises, as part of its outreach in recognition of National Women’s Health Week. Research shows that hearing loss is frequently associated with other physical, mental, and emotional health conditions, and that women who address their hearing loss often experience better quality of life.
BHI is urging women of all ages to take the free, quick, and confidential online BHI HearingCheck at www.hearingcheck.org during National Women’s Health Week. Anyone can take the online survey to determine if they need a comprehensive hearing test by a hearing healthcare professional.
For the vast majority of people with hearing loss there are solutions that help. And modernhearing aids are among them. Eight out of 10 hearing aid users, in fact, say they’re satisfied with the changes that have occurred in their lives specifically due to their hearing aids. From how they feel about themselves to the positive changes they see in their relationships, social interactions, and work lives, hearing aid users are reaping the benefits of today’s technology.
When people with even mild hearing loss use hearing aids, they often improve their job performance; enhance their communication skills; increase their earnings potential; improve their professional and interpersonal relationships; stave off depression; gain an enhanced sense of control over their lives; and better their quality of life.
But when left unaddressed, hearing loss interferes with a woman’s life and negatively affects virtually every aspect of her day-to-day living—including how she communicates with her doctor. And because hearing loss has been linked to several chronic diseases—as well as to an increased risk of falling—it’s important that women and their healthcare providers routinely address hearing health as part of their medical care. Millions of women in North America suffer from unaddressed hearing loss. Most are still in the workforce.
Studies show that people with heart disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and depression may all have an increased risk of hearing loss. When left untreated,hearing loss also can lead to a wide range of physical and emotional conditions. Impaired memory and the impaired ability to learn new tasks, reduced alertness, increased risk to personal safety, irritability, negativism, anger, fatigue, tension, and stress are among its more common side effects.
More About Hearing Aids
Today’s hearing aids combine high-performance technology and style with durability and ease-of-use, transcending the old-world notion that a condition as common as hearing loss is something to hide. The options are so varied that there is an attractive solution for just about anyone. Designers offer styles that appeal to the fashion conscious, the trendsetter, the partygoer, the intellectual, the active sports enthusiast, the cautious grandmother, the romantic, the weekend warrior, and even those just tired of arguing about the volume on the TV.
Whether they sit discreetly inside your ear canal, or wrap aesthetically around the contour of your outer ear like the latest fashion accessory, today’s high-performance hearing aids amplify life. They unabashedly send the message: “I’m too young and full of life to stop doing the things I love best.” In fact, today’s hearing aids are the #1 Must-Have Consumer Electronic for enhancing life in 2013.