Do you have hearing loss? It’s all too common for people of all ages to live with this condition for years without even realizing it. This is because hearing loss often develops slowly over years due to exposure to noise in everyday life, ongoing health complications, and even exposure to chemicals via medications or environmental toxins. Even without being aware of a hearing loss, it can affect you in many ways that many wouldn’t first expect.
Hearing loss is an important sense that helps us not only follow conversation but enhances how we interface with the world. When hearing loss starts to decline it can affect our ability to connect to loved ones, stay active, go new places and try new things. Therefore it is no surprise that hearing loss can affect your overall mood over time.
What is Mood?
Everybody gets moody—it is part of our everyday cycle. You’ll feel on top of the world at one point of the day and feel exhausted or depressed the next. A mood is part of your emotional rhythm, which if you pay attention, though difficult, you can start to predict. A mood swing often has a trigger, such as an event or experience. In the case of living with hearing loss, it can mean a stressful conversation in which you struggled to communicate, can trigger you into feelings of social anxiety, depression, and feelings of being misunderstood. Living with hearing loss can be a very isolating and lonely experience, which is only amplified by the fact that in 90 percent of cases, it is an irreversible condition.
Monitoring Your Moods Connected to Hearing Loss
Understanding your moods may help you work out what causes them and how you tend to behave when you are in different moods. Your mood can be affected by so many things including increased stress, poor sleep, hunger, the news, home life, the news—even the weather. When you can be aware of the triggers and what can affect your mood changes you have the tools to make decisions to support a more even mood and reduce mood swings. This allows you to make healthier lifestyle choices to support a better mood, make informed health decisions, in the pursuit of a better quality of life. One important lifestyle choice you can make is taking your hearing health seriously. When you can diagnose and treat a hearing loss early it gives you the tools to regulate social factors which may be increasing stress in your daily life and leading to unstable mood swings.
Treating a Hearing Loss
While there is no way to reverse a hearing loss, you can treat it with the use of hearing aids. These tiny digital devices are leading the way in micro processing by providing state of the art amplification. This can allow you to hear the people in your life at home, at work and everywhere in between. This is because based on a hearing exam we are able to program hearing aids to amplify the specific sounds that you struggle with, which gives a realistic and supportive enhancement to your everyday social interactions.
Improved Relationships
Over years, hearing loss can start to put rifts in even your closest relationships. You may struggle to understand each other and as this goes on, it can start to build resentment and frustration where there was once a sense of closeness, intimacy, and feelings of mutual support. You may feel distant and lonely from your loved ones even when by their side which can lead to chronic depression and social isolation. The good news is that with hearing aids you can start to bridge these gaps again with the people in your life that you love the most. With stronger relationships and a better sense of understanding, you can start to enjoy more even moods over time.
Addressing a Hearing Loss
While hearing aids are an amazing solution to help stabilize your everyday mood and increase your ability to connect to the people in your life and world around you, of those who could benefit from them, only 16 percent of those 12-69 have ever tried them. It’s important to push yourself towards a better quality of life, by scheduling a hearing exam today.
