Hearing loss affects nearly 20% of the global population. If you’re among that number, you might be thinking about how your hearing loss will affect your ability to join in on all the fast-approaching holiday events—and the conversations that come with them.
While hearing loss makes communication a little more difficult, it doesn’t have to stop you from enjoying time with your family. Let’s look at five tips to help you connect this holiday season.
1. Wear Your Hearing Aids
This tip may seem obvious, but it’s one of the most important pieces of effective communication. Your hearing aids are technologically advanced devices designed to amplify speech sounds and reduce the distracting background noise of TVs and clanking dishes.
Before Thanksgiving, thoroughly clean your devices with a hearing aid cleaning kit, and give them a quick daily clean. Clean hearing aids will deliver the best sound. The night before any big event, charge your device or replace the batteries in hearing aids with disposable batteries.
If it’s been a while since your last appointment, call us to schedule a service & repair appointment. We’ll clean your devices and adjust the settings as necessary.
2. Turn Down the Background Noise
Festive music and the sounds of cooking can set a cozy mood, but they also make it harder to follow conversations. Lower the volume or turn off background music during dinner. If you love having a little ambiance, keep a speaker playing softly in another room so it doesn’t compete with your guests’ voices.
3. Take Advantage of Bluetooth®
Modern hearing aids can connect to most smart devices via Bluetooth, including, in some cases, smart TVs. If you’re sitting down to watch the football game or the Thanksgiving Day parade, connect your devices to the TV for clearer sound. That way, you can enjoy every game-winning call and themed float with your loved ones.
4. Find a Good Seat
Where someone sits can significantly affect how well they can hear. If you’re sitting at the end of a long table, for example, you might struggle to understand people at the other end. Instead, sit in the middle where you can see the most people. Sitting at a round table is the easiest way to do this. If you’re having a big gathering, make sure you’re sitting next to the people you think you’ll want to talk to most.
5. Speak Up for Yourself
When people gather in large groups, they’re more likely to talk over each other. Politely ask people to take turns speaking and repeat or rephrase themselves when you don’t catch something.
The holidays are the perfect time to reconnect with your friends and family. Don’t let hearing loss get in the way of that. Contact Audiology and Hearing Aid Services today to schedule a hearing loss evaluation or hearing aid service appointment with one of our specialists.