Are hearing aids actually worth the cost? People who suffer from hearing loss are commonly concerned with the price. Even so, when you invest in a house you never see the price and say, “well, being homeless is less expensive”! The actual value of hearing aids is about much more than the price tag.
You really need to ask yourself what the consequences of not purchasing hearing aids will be and what the actual value of using hearing aids is.” Come to find out, you pay a financial price for deciding not to purchase hearing aids. You should factor these expenses into your choice as well. Take into account a few good reasons why buying hearing aids will save you money over time.
You Will Find Yourself Spending More For Deciding on Cheaper Hearing Aids
You will likely find, while shopping for hearing aids, that there are cheaper hearing aids that will appear to save you money. You could even purchase a hearing aid off of the internet that cost less than a dinner.
You get what you pay for in quality when you buy cheap hearing devices. When you purchase these devices, you’re actually buying an amplification device similar to earbuds, not a genuine hearing aid. They just crank up the sound all around you, including unwanted noise.
A quality hearing aid is custom programable which is not a feature that cheaper devices provide. If your hearing aids can be programmed to target your particular hearing needs, you will have a much higher quality experience.
Over the counter hearing devices use cheap batteries also. It becomes very expensive when you need to keep swapping out dead batteries. If you use the amplification device every day, you could possibly end up changing the battery up to a couple of times every day. The battery is likely to fail when you need it most, also, so prepare to carry lots of extras around with you everywhere you go. Do you actually save money if you have to exchange worn out batteries all of the time?
Better electronics allow the higher quality hearing aids to have a lot longer battery life. Some even have rechargeable batteries, doing away with the need for constant replacements.
Career Issues
Deciding to not use hearing aids, or using cheap ones will be costly at your job. A 2013 study published in The Hearing Journal says that adults that have hearing loss don’t make as much money – as much as 25 percent less, and are more likely to be jobless.
Why? There are lots of variables involved, but communication is crucial in just about every industry and that’s the dominant factor. If you’re going to deliver good results, you have to be able to hear what your manager is saying. And in order to assist consumers or clients, you must poses strong listening skills. You’ll most likely end up missing the whole content of the conversation if you are always struggling to hear what people are saying. The bottom line is that it’s just about impossible to succeed if you can’t be a part of the conversation.
The struggle to hear on the job will cause stress to you physically, as well. Even if you manage to get through a day with compromise hearing, the stress that happens if you worry about whether you heard something right and the energy needed to make out as much as possible, will make you fatigued and stressed out. Here are some outcomes of stress:
- Immune health
- Your ability to sleep
- Your overall quality of life
- Health of your relationships
All of these have the chance of impacting your work efficiency and bringing down your income as a result.
Having to go to the Emergency Room more frequently
There are safety problems which come with hearing loss. It will be hazardous for you to operate a vehicle or cross the street if you don’t use quality hearing aids. If you can’t hear something, how can you avoid it? And you risk missing a public warning alert system such as a smoke alarm or severe storm warning alarm.
For jobs like a manufacturing facility or a construction site, you have to be able to hear in order for you and your coworkers to be safe. So your safety, and your career options, will be limited if you don’t wear the quality hearing aids you need.
You also need to take into account financial safety. Did the server say that you owe 25 or 85 dollars? What did the salesperson say about the features of the tv you’re checking out and do you require them? Perhaps the lower priced style would be all you would need, but it is hard to know if you’re unable to hear the clerk talk about the difference.
Brain Health
The increased chance of dementia is one of the most significant issues with hearing loss. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that every year people spend as much as 56,000 dollars dealing with Alzheimers disease.Dementia accounts for 11 billion dollars in Medicare costs annually.
Hearing loss is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease and a variety of other types of dementia. Somebody who has neglected their hearing loss for a long time increases their risk of brain impairment by five fold. A moderate hearing loss carries three times the possibility of getting dementia, and even a minor hearing issue doubles your chances. Hearing aids mitigate these dangers.
There’s little doubt that a hearing aid will set you back a bit. If you analyze all the problems that come with going without one or buying a lower quality device, it’s undoubtedly a sound financial decision. Consult a hearing care specialist to find out more about hearing aids.