By ANDY WAITS
Special to The Citizen

May is the month to bring your hearing back into focus if you're missing parts of speech or you lose part of a conversation.

Hearing loss affects over 25 million Americans but with newer and better technology available many are receiving the help they need. Adults naturally begin losing some of their hearing around the age of 50 and the problem can be made worse by noise exposure, head trauma, ototoxic medicine, and genetics.

Obtaining help for one's hearing loss may allow a person to continue working, make communication with family and friends easier, or help a child learn how to speak.

There is a significant relationship between hearing loss and physical and psychosocial impairment. Laforge, et al, studied 1408 elderly adults and found that persons with visual or auditory impairment were more than three times as likely to have a “decline in functional health” than were unimpaired individuals, including a higher incidence of heart disease, hypertension and osteoarthritis.

The data from these and other studies indicate that individuals may experience increased feelings of isolation, depression, loneliness, anger and frustration. Researchers have speculated that the increased incidence of health dysfunction may be a result of these feelings of isolation, depression and frustration.

In my own experiences I've seen so many lives changed for the better when they received the help that they needed; the quality of life for the family members improved also.

Be sure to wear proper ear protection when exposed to any high levels of noise such as lawn mowers. For children who have pressure equalization tubes proper swim plugs are a must.

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