Being aware of the impact of hearing loss

One of the main problems that comes with hearing loss is that it can do a great deal of harm in terms of being sociable and maintaining confidence.

That doesn't have to be the case, and we can explain the best ways to avoid it during your free hearing test with us, but unfortunately sometimes it does happen.

Often people find they lose confidence during the first few weeks of their treatment because they struggle to communicate with others as they go about their normal day or face difficulties doing what they normally would.

Digital hearing aids take some getting used to and it's important that you are aware of what they entail before you start wearing them and that you prepare yourself for things to be a bit difficult.

Another issue that has been highlighted from research recently is how hearing loss can have an impact on mental ability and decline.

Unfortunately, cognitive decline is, to varying extents, inevitable as you grow older and a recent survey from the US suggested that there could be a link between hearing loss and mental ability.

The theory, which remains far from definitive, is that the brain has to work harder to hear things when deafness sets in and, as such, this impacts on how well it copes with other tasks.

Professor David McAlpine, the director of the UCL Ear Institute, said recently in a piece for the BBC that "left undiagnosed and untreated, deafness and other hearing problems will have an increasingly detrimental impact on the well-being of individuals and society at large for some time to come".

He said that around one in seven people within the UK currently has some form of hearing loss and it can cause real problems when it comes to "education, employment and even earning potential".

These are all things to be aware of but our audiologists can explain to you how best to cope, ensuring you can go on living the normal life you are used to.