ROOSKIE
Major Contributor
There are kids sitting at school staring at a blurry blackboard, my mom is trying to find just the right angle and distance to hold her phone in order to read the extra large font - these are people who will soon (hopefully) find they benefit from glasses.
As many of you already know, hearing aids can now be purchased over the counter and that will require significant consumer consumption to survive in the retail market . Therefore they are being 'discussed' and promoted.
Beyond the marketing push, the reality behind this is that like glasses many folks have either hearing losses, inborn hearing defects or both - and will benefit from a 'fitting'.
From the Wirecutters most recent post about these over the counter aids. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/signs-of-hearing-loss-otc-hearing-aids-could-help/
"The evidence pointing to widespread hearing loss among the 21-and-up crowd is eye-popping. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that hearing loss from all causes is “the third most common chronic physical condition in the United States and is twice as prevalent as diabetes or cancer,” while noise-induced hearing loss is experienced by roughly 24% of all US adults, including one in five 20- to 29-year-olds. Overall, the National Institutes of Health has found that “approximately 15% of American adults (37.5 million) aged 18 and over report some trouble hearing” and “about 28.8 million U.S. adults could benefit from using hearing aids,” even if their particular concerns fall far short of severe or total hearing loss.
Perhaps most shocking: Among those adults who self-reported having good or excellent hearing in a 2016 National Academies of Sciences study, nearly one in four of them actually exhibited measurable hearing loss—a sign of how adaptive the brain is to the gradual hearing loss that almost everyone experiences as they age, and one of the reasons younger adults may assume that hearing loss isn’t affecting them.
“Standard hearing difficulties progress so gradually that your brain just says, ‘Okay, this is my new normal,’ rather than ringing any alarms, the way it would if you woke up one morning and suddenly you could barely hear at all,” Angela Shoup, PhD, past president of the American Academy of Audiology, said in a phone interview."
That is A LOT of people.
Would you buy a pair of glasses/contacts before sinking $$$$ into a great new video display?
So for HiFi discuss the objective implications of realizing one benefits from a set of aids and the possibly very difficult (or positive/exciting) phycological implications of accepting such a situation.
Do you buy/test your hearing before that new 'Wire' purchase or more likely here at ASR that KEF Blade Meta upgrade?
I can't look in mine right now but Toole does comment some on hearing loss in his book.
As many of you already know, hearing aids can now be purchased over the counter and that will require significant consumer consumption to survive in the retail market . Therefore they are being 'discussed' and promoted.
Beyond the marketing push, the reality behind this is that like glasses many folks have either hearing losses, inborn hearing defects or both - and will benefit from a 'fitting'.
From the Wirecutters most recent post about these over the counter aids. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/signs-of-hearing-loss-otc-hearing-aids-could-help/
"The evidence pointing to widespread hearing loss among the 21-and-up crowd is eye-popping. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that hearing loss from all causes is “the third most common chronic physical condition in the United States and is twice as prevalent as diabetes or cancer,” while noise-induced hearing loss is experienced by roughly 24% of all US adults, including one in five 20- to 29-year-olds. Overall, the National Institutes of Health has found that “approximately 15% of American adults (37.5 million) aged 18 and over report some trouble hearing” and “about 28.8 million U.S. adults could benefit from using hearing aids,” even if their particular concerns fall far short of severe or total hearing loss.
Perhaps most shocking: Among those adults who self-reported having good or excellent hearing in a 2016 National Academies of Sciences study, nearly one in four of them actually exhibited measurable hearing loss—a sign of how adaptive the brain is to the gradual hearing loss that almost everyone experiences as they age, and one of the reasons younger adults may assume that hearing loss isn’t affecting them.
“Standard hearing difficulties progress so gradually that your brain just says, ‘Okay, this is my new normal,’ rather than ringing any alarms, the way it would if you woke up one morning and suddenly you could barely hear at all,” Angela Shoup, PhD, past president of the American Academy of Audiology, said in a phone interview."
That is A LOT of people.
Would you buy a pair of glasses/contacts before sinking $$$$ into a great new video display?
So for HiFi discuss the objective implications of realizing one benefits from a set of aids and the possibly very difficult (or positive/exciting) phycological implications of accepting such a situation.
Do you buy/test your hearing before that new 'Wire' purchase or more likely here at ASR that KEF Blade Meta upgrade?
I can't look in mine right now but Toole does comment some on hearing loss in his book.
