Are hearing aids actually worth the money? People who suffer from hearing loss are normally worried about the price tag. You wouldn’t choose homelessness above paying for a new house. The real value of hearing aids is about much more than the cost.
When shopping for a big-ticket item like this you really have to ask yourself, “what do I get out of using hearing aids, and what’s the consequence of not having them?” Come to find out, you pay a financial price for choosing not to purchase hearing aids. You should factor these costs into your decision as well. Bear in mind a few good reasons why purchasing hearing aids will save you money in the long run.
You Will Wind up Spending More For Deciding on Cheaper Hearing Aids
You will probably find, when you’re shopping for hearing aids, that there are cheaper hearing aids that will seem to save you money. You could even purchase a hearing aid off of the internet costing less than a dinner.
With regards to over the counter hearing aids, you get what you pay for. These devices are not real hearing aids, they’re really amplification devices like earpods. All of the sounds around, including noises you don’t want to hear, are amplified.
A high quality hearing aid is custom programable which isn’t a feature that cheaper devices provide. You can attain an excellent sound by having a quality hearing aid tuned to address your specific hearing needs.
The batteries in over the counter hearing aids are also low quality. It becomes very expensive when you have to keep swapping out dead batteries. If you use the amplification device every day, you might possibly end up changing the battery up to a couple of times per day. You’ll need to bring extra batteries around because they will usually die when you most need them. Do you really save cash if you need to exchange worn out batteries every day?
Better electronics allow the higher quality hearing aids to have a much longer battery life. Many designs don’t even need to have their batteries replaced at all because they are rechargeable.
Problems With Your Career
Deciding to not use hearing aids, or wearing cheap ones will be costly at work. Research conducted in 2013 and published in The Hearing Journal reports that people that have hearing loss don’t earn as much money – as much as 25 percent less, and often have a hard time maintaining a job at all..
And why? There are a lot of factors involved, but communication is crucial in pretty much every industry and that’s the dominant factor. You have to be able to hear what your boss says so that you can give good results. And in order to help customers or clients, you must poses good listening skills. You’ll most likely end up missing out on the whole content of the discussion if you are always trying to hear what people are saying. Simply put, if you cannot take part in discussions, it’s really difficult to excel at work.
The struggle to hear on the job will take it’s toll on you physically, also. You will find yourself physically worn down from the energy used trying to understand what people are saying and stressed out about whether you heard them right. Some affects of stress:
- Health of your relationships
- The quality of your sleep
- Immune health
- Your quality of life
All of these have the possibility of impacting your work performance and decreasing your income as a result.
Needing to go to the Emergency Room more frequently
There are safety problems which come with loss of hearing. It will be hazardous for you to operate a vehicle or cross the street without quality hearing aids. If you can’t hear something, how can you avoid it? How about emergency warning systems like a twister alert or smoke alarm?
For numerous jobs, hearing is a must for workplace safety like job-sites or production factories. That means that not wearing hearing aids isn’t just a safety hazard but also something that can minimize your career options.
You also should take into account financial safety. Did the waitress say that you owe 25 dollars or 85? What did the sales representative say regarding the functions of the tv you’re checking out and do you really need them? Perhaps the less expensive model would be all you would require, but it is difficult to know if you can’t hear the person discuss the difference.
The Health of Your Brain
The increased chance of dementia is one of the most critical problems with hearing loss. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that every year people spend as much as 56,000 dollars treating Alzheimers disease.Dementia accounts for 11 billion dollars in Medicare costs annually.
The chance of getting dementia and Alzheimer’s disease is a risk factor involved with hearing loss. Somebody who has neglected their hearing loss for a long time raises their risk of brain impairment by five fold. A moderate hearing loss carries three times the possibility of ending up with dementia, and even a slight hearing problem doubles your chances. Hearing aids bring the danger back to a normal level.
There’s little doubt that a hearing aid will set you back a bit. If you examine the costs you will encounter by choosing not to buy hearing aids or buying cheaper ones, the choice is clear. Consult a hearing care professional to find out more about hearing aids.