We often routinely check our eyes and teeth for proper health and functionality, but what aboutyour ears? The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) estimates that approximately one third of Americans between ages 65 and 74 and nearly half of those over age 75 have some degree of hearing loss (NIDCD, 2010). Particularly in South Dakota, gunfire and hunting as well as operating loud machinery or farm equipment are often the catalysts that lead to permanent hearing loss, and in my experience, often earlier than age 65 in the above statistic.

This damage to our inner ear hearing from loud noise exposure often does not present itself immediately but rather gradually as we age. The effects of aging exacerbate auditory noise trauma that may have occurred years or even decades earlier. Unfortunately, as hearing loss tends to creep up slowly, hearing loss is often not addressed until it gets too bad to endure or not at all. A great analogy I heard once is that hearing loss is similar to a sneaky grandchild who took a penny a day out of his grandpa’s large penny can. The grandfather began to suspect something funny was happening with his pennies and made a small mark in his can. A few weeks later he could see the change compared to the mark he made in the can and he knew something was happening to his pennies!

Have you “made a mark” to measure your baseline hearing? A frequent statistic we cite at our office is that the average American waits 7 years before seeking treatment for their hearing loss. As I have found, however, is that 7 years is on the conservative side many times, with individuals often waiting even longer to seek treatment. With increased research into the links of dementia and cognition to hearing loss, this wait starts to become more costly than we realize! To return to the initial question posed at the beginning, we check our eyes and teeth routinely, but have we “made a mark” and given our ears the same treatment?