However, even when adjusted and worn appropriately, hearing aids are not always perfect. Some listening situations are always less than ideal, resulting in miscommunication. It’s important for everyone—especially those with hearing loss—to keep in mind some basic communication tips, so they can handle these situations most effectively.

Hearing Loss Tip 1 – Take Control of the Situation

First, be your own advocate. You can avoid many communication issues entirely if you approach the situation in the right way. If the person you’re talking with speaks quickly, too quietly, or has an accent, or you know you’ll be somewhere with significant background noise, be the first to provide a solution. Be open with them and ask to move the conversation to a quieter area to avoid embarrassing misunderstandings.

Other tips include:

• Asking the speaker to “rephrase” instead of “repeat”
• Requesting the speaker slow down
• Writing down important details
• Reminding the speaker to look directly at you while speaking

Hearing Loss Tip 2 – Be Aware of Your Surroundings

People with hearing loss often struggle to understand conversations in noisy restaurants or at family gatherings. These places are typically crowded and tend to have hard floors and walls. All these reflective surfaces create huge amounts of distracting noise. If you have input, opt for a quieter restaurant with carpets and other sound absorbing fabrics.

If possible, choose a booth away from noisy areas like the bar, kitchen, or restrooms. If none of those options are available, find an area with good lighting and stand or sit less than six feet from whomever you are speaking with.

You can also implement these tips in the home. In your home, use sound absorbing materials, reduce background noise, and ensure good lighting and seating arrangements.

Hearing Loss Tip 3 – Pay Attention to Body Gestures and Facial Cues

The benefit of good lighting is often overlooked. Many people don’t realize how often they lip-read and use gestures to supplement what they’re hearing. Even without formal training, you can pay attention to facial cues to help improve your speech understanding.

Things to Watch Out For

It’s important to note that understanding speech is more difficult when you’re tired, stressed, or distracted. It is extremely helpful to have family and friends get the attention of the listener first and remain face to face throughout the conversation to minimize errors. Shouting complicated requests from the opposite side of the house while doing dishes is difficult for everyone involved.

Knowing and using these tips can help anyone—with or without hearing loss—to communicate more effectively. When understanding becomes tricky, the speaker and listener should be patient with each other and find a solution that works for both of them.

Learn more about how TruHearing can help you with your hearing health.

The post 3 Tips to Improve Communication for Those with Hearing Loss appeared first on TruHearing.

When you put hearing aids into your ears for the first time, you may have a similar experience. If you haven’t heard some sounds for a long time, they may not sound the way you remember or may sound completely foreign.

New hearing aids take some time to get used to. However, if you stick with them and commit to retraining your ears to hear again, you’ll open yourself up to a fuller life. Here are five ways to help retrain your ears as quickly and as easily as possible.

1) Be patient

Many hearing aid wearers report miraculous results from the moment they put on their new hearing aids, but there are just as many who have to work their way into hearing aids slowly before they feel completely comfortable with them. New sounds may be overwhelming at first, and getting used to the feel of hearing aids in your ears can take some time. That’s perfectly normal.

To get used to your new hearing aids, wear them regularly for four to six weeks at a minimum. Four to six weeks will give your body and mind enough experience with them to determine if they are helping you hear more of the world around you. If you haven’t been wearing your hearing aids regularly, now is the time to start. Your provider can help you get back on track.

2) Be honest

You’ll speed your path to better hearing by being honest with your hearing healthcare provider, your friends and family, and–most importantly–yourself.

Your provider needs honest feedback in order to give you the solutions you need to improve your hearing. If you only wear your hearing aids three days a week, tell your provider, so they can understand the problems you face and adjust your program to better suit your needs.

When you are open about your hearing loss and hearing aids with your friends, family, and co-workers, they can help you communicate better. They support you and are on your team. Help them help you by telling them about your loss and talking about ways you can communicate better with them.

Lastly, be honest with yourself. Put on your hearing aids with the intention of hearing better. Work toward that goal every day. Ultimately, you are responsible for improving your hearing. So keep yourself honest and working toward the right goals.

3) Educate yourself

When you put on your first pair of hearing aids, your journey to better hearing health has begun. Your provider can offer support, tools, and educational materials to help you, but they only work if you use them.

Your provider has undergone special training to help you achieve better hearing and wants to help you succeed. They may give you pamphlets, articles, books, or other materials to help educate you on the best strategies for improving your hearing through hearing aids. Read them. Follow them.

Some providers may even offer support groups or group education sessions where you can benefit from the experience of other people who are also starting their journey with hearing aids. These group meetings can be extremely beneficial for your hearing education. They can also help you feel that you’re not doing this alone.

4) Focus

Hearing aids will not solve all of your hearing loss issues in all circumstances for the rest of your life. You will still encounter situations where your hearing aids do not provide all the help you may want. Instead of focusing on the negative, focus on the positive, and work toward fixing what can be fixed.

For example, write down the top three places or situations where you experience difficulties while wearing your hearing aids. Discuss these experiences with your provider. The provider can make adjustments to assist with those three things and make them the best they can possibly be.

Focusing on one area of your life at a time will help keep you on track and increase the efficiency of your hearing aids quicker.

5) Follow up and check up

If you wear glasses, you know that your eyesight changes over time, and you may need to update your prescription as time passes. The same is true with hearing aids. Follow-up appointments and regular checkups are ways to touch base with your provider and make adjustments to your hearing aids to keep them at optimal levels.

These follow ups also give you a chance to talk about issues you’re having with your hearing aids and discuss ways to improve them.

Conclusion

The best way to improve your hearing is to become a full participant in your own hearing health. Give yourself time to get used to your hearing aids and make every effort to educate yourself and improve your communication strategies so you can hear better and feel better too.

If you found this information helpful, there is more on the way. In our next newsletter, we’ll discuss some specific aural rehabilitation tools and resources that can help you continue to improve your hearing after wearing hearing aids.

Learn more about how TruHearing can help you on your hearing health journey.

The post 5 Ways to Train Your Ears to Hear Again appeared first on TruHearing.

Despite the ability of your hearing aids to enhance your life and help maximize your ability to hear, they are not supersonic listening devices.

Even people with normal hearing will have trouble hearing the TV or talking to friends in a crowded restaurant from time to time. But many of the people around you may be under the impression that your hearing aids make you hear like a Golden Retriever. Be ready to set the expectation that—although your hearing aids are helpful—there are still situations when you can’t hear as well as those around you.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Be open about your hearing aids. Make sure your friends and family know you are wearing hearing aids. Being up front makes it easier for everyone to communicate. If they’re aware of what’s going on, they’re more likely to be respectful and attentive to your hearing needs.

Be direct. There’s no reason to be ashamed of your hearing aids! Using best practices for hearing aid wearers only makes communication more effective and easier for everyone. For example, ask people to:

• Look at you when they’re talking
• Slow down if they’re talking too fast
• “Rephrase” instead of “repeat” what they just said

Additionally, if you find yourself in an environment with too much background noise, you can always ask to move your conversation to a quieter location.

Be aware of your surroundings. If possible, take control of your physical surroundings. For example, arrange your living room so that people will naturally sit across from you rather than next to you. In business settings, arrange your workspace so that people sit directly in front of you when they come into your office. Also, try and get to meetings a minute or two early so you can make sure to sit near the front of the room and have the best chance at hearing everything.

Don’t forget: better hearing will result from a combination of the right devices and the right strategies for communication. Combined, you should increase your likelihood of understanding everything going on around you.

Learn more about how TruHearing can help with your hearing health.

The post The 3 Be’s of Better Communication with Hearing Aids appeared first on TruHearing.

What is speech reading?

The terms “lip reading” and “speech reading” are sometimes used interchangeably, but most experts prefer the latter. “Lip reading” means you are watching the speaker’s mouth for clues to what they are saying. Using the term “speech reading” helps to remind us that important clues in the conversation come from many sources, in addition to the lips.

While it is difficult to “lip read” perfectly, knowing some basic lip and speech reading techniques can supplement what you are able to hear and keep conversation flowing smoothly. Essentially, learning to use these visual cues is a game of narrowing down the possible sounds or meanings of a specific portion of speech to help you make a more educated guess at what someone is saying.

In English, about 30% of speech sounds can be visualized.

These sounds tend to make very specific shapes near the front of the mouth. So, if you can determine where a tricky sound or letter is being made in a person’s mouth it can help to decipher what that word may be.

Exercises for your lips

For example, making these sounds in front of a mirror while looking at your lips:/p>

• Words with /p/, /b/, /m/, and /w/ are made by pursing the lips together. Good practice words to visualize these are: mom, map, we, pill, boat, etc.
• Words with /v/ and /f/ are made by pressing the upper teeth to the lower lip. Practice words like: fat, vein, very, have, sofa, food, etc.
• The sounds /s/ and /sh/ make a rounded shape, with the speaker’s teeth close together. The /r/ sound also makes a rounded shape, but the teeth are slightly separated. Practice with shirt, round, rat, etc.
• Vowels tend to leave the speaker’s mouth open. Try saying bat, meet, suit, my, etc.

It can be very difficult to pick out specific sounds in speech, especially if they have the same placement in the mouth. But, narrowing the options to just a few possible sounds makes it much easier to guess what is being said.

Lip reading can be particularly helpful for those with hearing loss as many of these visible sounds fall in the ranges where most people tend to lose hearing first.

Just as sounds that tend to be easier to see are usually more difficult to hear, sounds that are easier to hear are generally more difficult to see.

Speech reading is about more that your mouth

As stated above, “speech reading” means incorporating cues from all aspects of the conversation including: body language, gestures, interests, context, and even current events.

Here are some tips that go beyond trying to “read” someone’s words that will help you have better communication overall:

• Try to find out the topic of conversation as soon as possible. This will help you fill in the gaps of a conversation if you run into lip reading difficulties.
• Focus on the big picture instead of each sound/word. Understanding a sentence or comment as a whole is much more important than pinpointing a single word.
• Make sure you are able to see the other individual’s face. Being aware of facial expressions and gestures they are making can provide clues about their speech and mood. Some gestures can be entire comments in and of themselves. Simply being aware that someone has nodded their head, shrugged, raised their eyebrows, or winked can provide a lot of information about the conversation that has nothing to do with the words coming out of their mouth.

• Use context to fill in the blanks. Considering your own situation can help to distinguish between words that look similar by lip reading only. For example a waiter is more likely to say “Would you like a CUP of water?” than “Would you like a TUB of water?”
• Keep up to date with current issues and the interests of friends and family. This will help you to know which topics or even keywords or buzzwords they are likely use regularly.

Some of these techniques come naturally to all of us, but by paying even a little more attention to the context and visual cues of a conversation can help you ain greater understanding and communicate more effectively.

The most important thing

The most important thing to remember while speech reading, particularly if you have a hearing loss is to be patient with yourself and those you are speaking with. Learning the finer details of lip and speech reading takes practice and patience from everyone involved.

All these tips and methods above can be practiced informally, just by talking with friends and family. However, if you are interested in learning more about speech reading, there are many formal classes and websites (like this one and this one) that provide extensive information as well as video-based practice lessons. (Click here for a great list of books, videos, and advice on finding a local speech reading class.) If you want more information on speech reading and learning to use visual cues, talk to your hearing healthcare provider and they’ll point you in the right direction.

Learn more about how TruHearing can help with your hearing health.

The post How Speech Reading Can Help Maximize the Benefits of Your Hearing Aid appeared first on TruHearing.

But hearing aids do much more than enrich your social life. They may actually have a profound impact on your brain by keeping you mentally sharp, lowering your risk of depression, and improving your balance.

If you already wear hearing aids all the time, pat yourself on the back; you may already be improving your brain function! If you only wear them occasionally (or rarely), here are four facts—backed by medical studies—that may encourage you to wear them more often.

1) Hearing Aids May Lower Your Risk of Age-related Cognitive Decline

In this 25-year study, scientists measured mental decline in people with hearing loss and people with normal hearing. The study found that people who had hearing loss—and chose not to wear hearing aids—showed significant mental decline compared to people with normal hearing. However, people with hearing loss who wore hearing aids performed the same on cognitive tests as people without any hearing loss! Want to stay sharp as you age? Keep wearing those hearing aids.

2) Hearing Aids Can Improve Memory and Mental Acuity

A recent study from Texas A&M University tested a group of people with hearing loss on a series of tasks to measure their memory, ability to focus, and the speed at which they process information. Then they gave the participants hearing aids. After only six weeks of wearing hearing aids, participants saw improvements in all areas of cognitive function. They could remember things better, focus better, and showed they were processing information faster than before. Not only can hearing aids keep you mentally sharp, but having better memory and focus as well as faster mental processing actually makes you seem younger to the people you interact with every day!

3) People Who Wear Hearing Aids Report Lower Levels of Depression

Research has shown that hearing loss is associated with increased levels of depression as well as increased rates of antidepressant  medication use and utilization of mental health services. These studies suggest wearing hearing aids may lower your risk of depression. 

4) Hearing Aids Improve Balance and May Reduce the Risk of Falling for People Over 65

Although hearing loss has long been associated with an increased risk of falls in older adults, researchers at The Washington University School of Medicine found that, people with hearing loss performed better on balance tests and were less likely to fall when they wore hearing aids. Having better balance with hearing aids means a reduced chance of major injuries and a lower risk of expensive hospitalizations.

Do you want to experience better brain function, lower your risk of depression and mental decline, and be at lower risk of falling? Wearing your hearing aids more often can help. As a side benefit, the families of people who have hearing loss report that those who wear hearing aids participate more in social activities and have better relationships with the people they love as a result—creating a higher quality of life overall.

We encourage you not only to wear your hearing aids more often for your own benefit but to also pass this information on to family and friends who haven’t yet addressed their hearing loss and encourage them to get it checked out.

Let’s help everyone improve their lives and long-term health by treating hearing loss today! Learn how TruHearing can help.

The post How Wearing Hearing Aids Positively Affects Your Mental Health appeared first on TruHearing.

Not only does it take time for you to adjust to wearing hearing aids, but it will take your family some adjustment time as well. However, there are some things you can do to help them communicate with you better. It is extremely important to educate your family and friends about your specific hearing needs as well as basic communication tips in order to have consistently clear and effective conversations.

What your family should understand about your hearing loss

The first and most important thing you and your loved ones need to understand is that hearing aids are not magic. A lot of people have the misconception that hearing aids will give people super-sonic hearing or restore their hearing to that of a 20 year old.

Although hearing aids do an incredibly good job of returning sounds to a level that is accessible and comfortable, it may still be difficult for you to understand all the information in every situation, regardless of how well the aids have been adjusted. Your family needs to understand that troublesome listening situations that are difficult for people with normal hearing to communicate in—like a busy bar or restaurant—will probably still be difficult for you, even with the best possible hearing aid function.

Talk to your family about how hearing aids improve your speech understanding, but how they also have limitations.

What you should understand about your family

Hearing loss is an invisible problem. It’s something very few people even think about, unless it affects them personally. For individuals with hearing loss, even if family and friends know about it, they routinely forget. They may forget to do or say things that normally help you to understand because they’re not actively thinking about your hearing loss.

It is important to be patient if this happens.

Simply reminding a relative to get your attention before speaking or letting them know you’re having a hard time hearing them can help reduce the frustration in situations like these.

A second major issue is that most people are lazy in their speech. Hearing loss or not, we all take short cuts in our language. People shorten phrases, use slang words, mumble, or simply look away or cover their mouth when talking.

While there are many ways to approach this issue, the most common is asking them to repeat themselves. However, this does not always solve the problem. If you’re having trouble understanding a family member, try asking them to rephrase what they have said or ask them to speak more clearly.

Tips to teach your family members

There are many ways to help reduce miscommunication. The important step is to share your ideas with family, friends, and other individuals you communicate with. Learning to advocate for yourself in conversation, especially if you have a hearing loss, is an important way to avoid feeling left out or frustrated with your hearing ability.

Here are some basic suggestions to share with loved ones to help them be more effective in communicating with you and other people with hearing loss.

Tips for communicating with someone who has hearing loss:

1. Get the person’s attention before you begin speaking to them. Sometimes saying their name isn’t enough. Tap them on the shoulder or face them so they know you are speaking.
2. Make sure you are close enough and the lighting is bright enough that the person you are speaking with can see your face. This will enable them to use visual cues to understand you more easily.
3. If a person with hearing loss misunderstands, try rephrasing what you said instead of repeating. This causes you to slow down slightly, and it reduces your inclination to shout. Shouting often causes the sounds to distort and become even more difficult to understand.
4. Write down (or text) important details. Addresses, phone numbers, and name spellings can be difficult to catch precisely. Send them a message or write a quick note to ensure they have the correct information.
5. If there is too much noise, try choosing a quieter area to talk. Places with excessive background noise and lots of distractions can make conversation difficult for anyone and hearing loss only accentuates the confusion.

These are just a few of the potential tips for enhancing conversation. What works best for you will depend on who you are speaking with, your current situation, and your unique hearing loss.

Educate your loved ones about your hearing situation. Let them know what they can expect from your hearing aids. Share these suggestions with them, and you won’t have to smile and nod to move the conversation forward.

Learn more about how TruHearing can help you with your hearing health.

The post Tips to Improve Communication with Your Family After Hearing Loss appeared first on TruHearing.

Truhearing’s hearing benefit solutions keep you fully engaged in life by making hearing healthcare affordable and accessible. We love to be able to change lives and hear how our hearing benefits have helped those in need. The following is a thank you from one of our satisfied customers:

Dear TruHearing,

Because of you, my husband heard a bird yesterday…the first time he’s heard that sound in seven years.

My name is Susan and I want to take a moment to thank you with all my heart for offering assistance to those needing hearing aids.

The aids my husband already had we knew to be outdated & dying. We repeatedly priced new hearing aids but we could not afford what we were told he needed. On the flip side, we made too much income to qualify for veteran’s assistance.

Without being able to hear, my husband became isolated & resentful. He often embarrassed himself at group gatherings because he misunderstood conversations, so he simply quit socializing or joining any volunteer opportunities. There were several times that our safety was compromised because he couldn’t hear. I was his lone contact with the hearing world, which was incredible pressure for me. Our marriage suffered greatly and I was despondent that our “golden years” together would end with bitterness & anger.

Then, you made a miracle possible for us.

Because of your discount offer, we could afford good hearing aids. My husband’s continuing care has also been nothing less than exceptional.

In the last month, this proud man is now seeking out social activities! The “volume” in our home has lowered times 10 as has any discord. He can hear children & women’s voices again and yesterday, he called me at work to tell me that he had heard a bird! His quality of life is returning, but it’s actually two lives you’ve saved; his and mine!

Long ago I read that Helen Keller was once asked what she would choose if she could have her sight or her hearing restored? Without hesitation, she chose her hearing.

I just don’t have words adequate enough to express the gratitude we both feel that you’ve offered this program. Thank you. Thank you.

In less than 5 minutes you can find out how your hearing is doing. Check your hearing and learn how Truhearing can help change your life with our hearing benefit solutions.

The post Hearing Benefit Solutions – I Heard a Bird Yesterday appeared first on TruHearing.