Some people are born with hearing impairment, while others are diagnosed with hearing loss using tests such as general screening tests, tone audiology, and tuning fork tests. Regardless of that, having a hearing impairment does impact your lifestyle significantly. However, it should never stop you from leading a normal healthier life. Instead of getting depressed, you should take control of your life to make it as seamless as a healthy person.
Several simple and basic lifestyle changes can help improve the quality of your life. These lifestyle changes will help you perform and complete your daily chores easily without any major support from anyone. Here, we enlist all the lifestyle changes that you can easily adapt to make your life much more seamless.
Accept that you have a hearing impairment.
Several people don’t accept that they are hard-on-hearing. They try to act as if they can hear every bit of what others are talking about when they can’t. Hearing loss is a common disorder across the world. According to WHO, over 5 percent of the world’s population has mild to major hearing loss. Hence, cope with the hearing impairment and don’t let any baseless thoughts enter your mind.
Accepting your hearing loss is the biggest change that you need to bring into your life. This will make your life a lot easier. It would also help if you let your family members and friends know about your impairment. Knowing about your deafness will help them take some minor efforts so that you don’t feel left alone.
Before starting a conversation with any stranger or someone who doesn’t know about your hearing loss, make them aware of it. Also, consider asking them to speak more clearly, not loudly.
Consider using hearing aids.
Hearing aids are technical devices that will help you hear more clearly and precisely. They have proven to be a major help for several people with hearing loss. With technical advancements, the quality and usage of hearing aids are on the rise. The market size of hearing aids is projected to reach a whopping $9.78 billion by 2020.
Hearing aids have the potential to improve the quality of your life significantly. Their major impact is on your social lives. They will help you easily become a part of any social activity. Hearing impairment deteriorates confidence in a person due to a lack of speech and communication. However, hearing aids can bring back that confidence by developing lost psychological functioning.
Learn to read lips and sign language.
If hearing aids are not proving useful, it is important to learn to communicate in different ways. The best way to do this is by learning how to read lips and use sign language for communication. It would be best if you also considered asking your family members and close friends to learn sign language for easy communication. Several colleges and private institutions out there will be happy to teach you the sign language and other communication essentials required.
Several more tips can help you easily communicate. Firstly, you should always communicate while facing a person. Facial expressions and lips tell a lot about what a person is trying to say. Hence, facing a person will help you understand what he or she is trying to say and what feeling (with the use of expressions). Secondly, you should try to avoid communicating in noisy areas. Another thing is to ask the speakers to speak steadily at a constant speed that is not too fast for you to understand, especially if you are trying to read lips.
Don’t hesitate to ask for help.
You will require help at some point in time, mostly while communicating. For instance, you might require help to communicate with a person who is not familiar and does not know about your hearing impairment. As mentioned earlier, you should never hesitate to ask for help from whomsoever. Whenever you feel that you want the other person in the communication to repeat something for you, go ahead and ask for it. This is much better than regretting later.
Adapting these lifestyle changes will help you and your family to cope up with hearing impairment. It will provide you with a sense of equality and that you can lead a normal life. But remember, it will help if you pay frequent visits to your doctor to see if there is even a minute chance of treatment. Taking medication is as important as lifestyle changes to avoid deterioration of the quality of life.
