Noise Induced Hearing loss can lead to hearing, other health and safety problems that can influence your day-to-day living

Symptoms of early stages of hearing loss, 'Mild-Moderate Hearing Loss' are:

• Trouble hearing speech in noisy places

• Find it hard to follow speech in groups

• Trouble hearing on the phone

• Listening makes you tired

• Turn up TV or radio volume, and other people complain it is too loud

• Trouble hearing when you can't see who is talking

• Ask others to speak more slowly or repeat what they said

These symptoms get worse if the hearing loss progresses due to unsafe noise

 

Noise can cause hearing and other health problems

• Repeated exposures worsen early stages of hearing loss

• Ringing in the ears (tinnitus)

• Sleep disturbances, sometimes due to tinnitus

• Fatigue from trying to hear and from disturbed sleep

• Stress due to hearing loss

• Less family, social, professional engagements

• Lower doctor visits

• High blood pressure and heart diseases due to stress and less health checkups

• Harm pregnancy and developing baby due to stress

 

Lower balance and situational awareness

1. Brain gets incomplete information on head position with respect to gravity

2. Brain also gets incomplete information on the type of sound, direction and distance of sound

3. This harms understanding of environmental surroundings and changes within them

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Vertigo or dizziness

• Due to vestibular disorders

• Can last for few seconds, minutes to hours or for many days

• Can be triggered by changes in head position, loud noise

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More falls 

• Disturbed situational awareness of what is happening around a person including signals, alarms, verbal warnings

• Fatigue and tiredness due to the brain overworking to hear

• Made worse if combined with vision problems

• Made worse if muscle strength is weak

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For those with hearing loss