Last year, when my daughter Marianne visited me, she sometimes would say
something while in another room, and I would only comprehend every third word,
requiring me to constantly shout, What?” or “Wait till I’m in the room with you
to talk.”
Never one to be indirect, Marianne told me I really ought to
think about getting a hearing aid. Most of the time, in personal conversations,
I’ve experienced no problem, but sometimes phone conversations or understanding
all of the lines in a theatrical production can prove difficult.
When I
had my hearing tested, I was told that my hearing loss was “age appropriate,”
whatever that means and that a hearing aid would be beneficial. (Well, of course
they think so, they are selling them.) However, I have been doing some serious
research on the subject and here’s what I found out:
About two-thirds of
adults age 70 and older have hearing loss. After age 80, the percent jumps to 79
percent.
Most important is that recent studies strongly indicate a relationship
between hearing loss and declining cognitive function. In fact, in an
observational study, baseline hearing loss was associated with 30 to 40 percent
greater cognitive decline per year as compared with similar patients without
hearing loss.
One of the reasons may be that hearing loss can cause older
adults to withdraw socially. When it becomes hard to hear what other people are
saying, you definitely feel cut off from those around you.
Another
possibility, according to Dr. Frank Lin at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine,
is that hearing loss forces the brain to devote extra resources to processing
the “garbled” signals it is getting from the ears. “If you are redirecting brain
resources to help with hearing,” Lin explained, “that probably comes at the
expense of something else — like working memory.”
Hearing loss is more
than an inconvenience or source of embarrassment; hearing represents a critical
portal to conversation, a behavior that connects humans to one another socially.
Hearing loss creeps up on people “slowly and insidiously,” according to Lin, so
it might not be you who notices it, but the people around you. (Certainly true
in my case!)
There is often confusion over the terms “hearing impaired,”
“hard of hearing,” “deaf” and “deafened.
Hearing impaired is often used
to describe people with any degree of hearing loss from mild to profound,
including those who are deaf. But deaf usually refers to a hearing loss so
severe there is very little or no functional hearing.
Deafened usually refers to a person who becomes deaf as an adult and, therefore, faces different challenges than those of a person who was deaf at birth or became deaf as a small child.
AND NOW FOR SOME REALLY GOOD NEWS
I have found and tested a special and helpful phone called Caption Call, which, when you answer your phone, simultaneously displays the entire conversation on a screen which is part of the phone. I keep it next to my regular phone and use both. It is the most helpful accessory since my GPS. And best of all, if you have Internet service (needed for the connection) it is absolutely free. It is subsidized and paid for by a small tax we all pay on our phone bills (Who knew?) and you are entitled if you are even slightly hearing impaired.
It almost sounded too good to be true, so after I heard about it a few months ago, I waited, got mine installed and have been using it for almost eight weeks before feeling I could tell readers about it. Find out more at CaptionCall.com or 877-557-2227 where you may also put in an order.
Contact Jean Cherni, certified senior adviser for Senior Living Solutions and Pearce Plus, a helpful, full-service program for seniors contemplating a move, at jeancherni@sbcglobal.net or 15 The Ponds at 101 Hotchkiss Grove, Branford 06405.
