Reporting by Jeannette Beebe
Photo by Tijana Stepic
When you can’t hear as well as you used to, it’s not just frustrating — it’s alienating, too. At the dinner table, surrounded by friends (and noise), you somehow feel out of it, separate.
Often hearing loss is so gradual you don’t realize it’s happening. This can contribute to “feelings of loneliness and social isolation,” says Maria Pomponio, a clinical audiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
While it’s true that aging can cause hearing loss — it affects about one-third of Americans between ages 65 and 74 and nearly half of those older than 75, according to the National Institutes of Health — it’s important to protect what you’ve got and to preserve it for as long as you can. And fortunately, some hearing loss is preventable. “There is definitely reason for hope,” Pomponio says.
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Read the original article on AARP here.
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