Are hearing aids really worth the money? The cost is commonly a worry for people who deal with hearing loss. Still, when you invest in a house you don’t see the price and think, “well, being homeless is less costly”! The real value of hearing aids is about much more than the price tag.
When shopping for a big-ticket item such as this you really need to ask yourself, “what do I get out of wearing hearing aids, and what’s the consequence of not having them?” If you decide not to get hearing aids, there will be a monetary cost, in fact. Your decisions should also factor in these expenses. Understand why you will save money over time if you decide to purchase hearing aids.
You Will Find Yourself Spending More if You Decide on Inexpensive Hearing Aids
While shopping the hearing aids marketplace, you will undoubtedly encounter cheaper devices that appear to be less costly. You could even purchase a hearing aid from the internet that cost less than a dinner.
You get what you pay for in quality with cheap hearing devices. These devices are not authentic hearing aids, they’re really amplification devices similar to earpods. All of the sounds around you, including ones you don’t want to hear, are cranked up.
Personalized programming is the best feature of a high-quality hearing aid, that you don’t have if you purchase a low-cost hearing device. If your hearing aids can be programmed to target your distinct hearing needs, you will have a much higher quality experience.
Store bought hearing devices use cheap batteries also. Spending large amounts of extra cash on batteries will get expensive. You could end up switching out batteries a couple of times every day if you decide on a cheap amplification device. The battery is very likely to fail when you need it most, also, so prepare to bring lots of extras around with you wherever you go. Do you actually save cash if you have to exchange worn out batteries every day?
Better electronics allow the higher quality hearing aids to have a lot longer battery life. Many designs don’t even need replacement batteries at all because they are rechargeable.
Career Problems
Deciding to not wear hearing aids, or wearing cheap ones will be costly at work. Research conducted in 2013 and published in The Hearing Journal states that less money is made by people with hearing loss – as much as 25 percent less, and often have a hard time maintaining a job at all..
Why? There are lots of factors involved, but communication is crucial in just about every industry and that’s the major factor. If you’re going to give good results, you need to be able to hear what your manager is saying. You have to be capable of listening to clients so that you can assist them. You’ll most likely end up missing the whole content of the discussion if you are always trying to hear what people are saying. Simply put, if you cannot participate in conversations, it’s very difficult to excel at work.
You will also endure a physical toll from struggling to here while at work. Even if you manage to get through a day with compromise hearing, the stress that happens if you worry about whether you heard something correctly and the energy necessary to make out as much as you can, will cause you to be fatigued and stressed out. Here are some consequences of stress:
- Health of your relationships
- Your ability to sleep
- Your immune system
- Your quality of life
All of these have the chance of affecting your work performance and lowering your income as a consequence.
Needing to go to the Emergency Room more frequently
hearing loss comes with safety concerns. It will be hazardous for you to operate a vehicle or cross the street without quality hearing aids. How can you stay clear of something if you’re not able to hear it? And you risk missing a public warning alert system such as a smoke alarm or severe storm warning alert.
For a good number of jobs, hearing is a necessity for workplace safety such as construction sites or production factories. That means that not wearing hearing aids is not simply a safety hazard but also something that can minimize your career possibilities.
You also need to take into consideration financial security. Did you pay the waitress too much for dinner because you couldn’t hear her? Do you really require all those new television functions that you failed to hear the salesperson discussing with you? Perhaps the less expensive model would be all you would need, but it is difficult to know if you’re unable to hear the person talk about the difference.
Brain Health
The increased risk of dementia is one of the most critical issues with hearing loss. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that each year people spend as much as 56,000 dollars dealing with 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 linked to hearing loss. Someone who has ignored their hearing loss for a long time raises their chance of brain impairment by five fold. The chance of getting dementia goes up by three times with moderate hearing loss and doubles with even slight hearing loss. Hearing aids return the danger to normal.
There is no doubt that a hearing aid will cost you a bit. If you analyze all the worries that come with going without one or buying a cheaper device, it’s undoubtedly a sound financial choice. Make an appointment with your hearing care professional today.