Do You Need A Hearing Aid For Mild Hearing Loss?

Living with hearing loss affects everyone differently. When you’ve got mild hearing loss, it can be difficult to access the resources available to you. After all, you may feel that your level of hearing loss isn’t severe enough, or you may have heard something similar from a friend or family member.

However, mild hearing loss is often misunderstood as nothing to worry about. When living with it, it can still impact your everyday life in a way that’s unsatisfactory to you. And that’s something we want to help you better understand. Let’s go through the facts about mild hearing loss and the use of hearing aids below.

What is Mild Hearing Loss? 

Mild hearing loss refers to a level of hearing that is unable to detect sounds lower than 25 decibels. However, many cases of mild hearing loss are unable to hear sounds lower than 30 or 40 decibels too. This usually means a person struggles to pick up people whispering or talking in a hushed manner. It can also mean they miss sounds like water dripping or bird song from a slight distance.

Because these noises surround us in day-to-day life, we need to use things like hearing aids to pick them up. If you’re trying to have a private conversation with a friend, or you’re out on a hike or you haven’t turned a faucet off properly, you’d need to be able to use these cues to pick up on what’s going on.

Hearing aids Can Be Incredibly Beneficial for Mild Hearing Loss

Despite the slightly misleading name, mild hearing loss is often treated using hearing aids. As explained above, the need to understand our environments and be able to comprehend things in daily life requires the use of hearing aids in most cases. Whatever your current level of hearing, you can find any hearing aid style that suits you. Wearing hearing aids will always be beneficial. Here are just three top advantages.

Hearing Aids Can Drown Out Background Sounds

If you’re trying to focus on what a friend is saying to you, or you’re in a meeting with something noisy going on outside, a hearing aid can help to direct your hearing. You can pick up on what’s being said to you, and don’t have to use extra energy to try and block out everything else going on. If you often find it hard to pinpoint where sound is coming from, this will be the main benefit for you.

Hearing Aids Also Prevent Strain Whenever You Try to Listen

If you’re regularly experiencing headaches after participating in normal conversation, it could be a sign you’re straining to hear. That can make hearing loss worse after a period of time, and is also an awkward situation to live in. But if you have hearing aids fitted, this issue can disappear. You’ll no longer have to strain to try and focus on what’s being said or what you’re watching on the TV, which is incredibly helpful for busting the stress around living with mild hearing loss.

Finding the Right Hearing Aid

Mild hearing loss should be treated when suspected, as struggling to communicate can impact your quality of life negatively. There are several different types of hearing aids available if you have mild loss, including:

• In the ear (ITE)
• In the canal (ITC)
• Invisible in canal (IIC)
• Completely in canal (CIC)
• Behind the ear (BTE)

Your audiologist will work with you to help determine which style of hearing aid will be most beneficial to your specific needs. Additionally, your devices can be equipped with features like Bluetooth to help connect you to other forms of technology – making hearing and communicating easier than ever.

Get in Touch to Find Out More

Many cases of mild hearing loss have been successfully assuaged by the use of hearing aids. But if you want to know more, get in touch with one of our audiologists to find out how hearing aids could help you.

Here at Big Thicket Hearing Aids & Audiology, we deal with all levels of hearing loss, from mild to severe and can recommend the right course of treatment for you. If you want to try out hearing aids, book an appointment with us to go over all your options. And booking an appointment is incredibly easy. Just give us a call at (409) 751-2590 to speak to a receptionist and we’ll book a time and date that suits you. We’re always happy to talk!