If you feel that you are experiencing a significant degree of hearing loss, it is important that you schedule an appointment at a hearing clinic and go in to see an audiologist. Though some may be at first hesitant to go into a hearing clinic, many people in the United States do not realize exactly how widespread hearing loss is throughout the population. In fact, at least twenty percent of all residents of the United States alone suffer from some degree of hearing loss.

Hearing loss and the need to go into a hearing clinic is often associated with age and the process of the aging. To a certain extent, this is true. Hearing loss does often become much more pronounced with age, and is known to commonly develop to some extent by the time that a person passes the age of sixty five. Statistics show that of adults aged sixty five and older, a large portion of them – around one third of them – had varying degrees of hearing loss by the time that they became classified as senior citizens.

Though many elderly people will need to go into a hearing clinic for a hearing evaluation, hearing loss does not just affect those who are older than the age of sixty five. On the contrary, many children are affected by a hearing impairment as well. By the time that children become of a school age, around fifteen percent have hearing loss to some extent – this means that around three babies out of every one thousand babies born are born with hearing loss already – and some will go on to develop it. A hearing clinic can diagnose the extent of the hearing loss in your child if you suspect there is a problem, but for children who have had some extent of hearing loss since birth, the problem is usually identified before the baby and the mother even leave the hospital as part of the routine testing done on newborns to ensure that they are healthy and strong enough to leave.

Aside from genetic factors, any hearing clinic will tell you that hearing loss is all too often caused by exposure to loud noises. From loud concerts to even just turning the volume on your phone up too loud when you have headphones in, hearing loss due to sound exposure is widespread across the United States. In fact, of the adults in the United States who are between the ages of twenty and sixty nine (from young adulthood to the elderly), nearly as much as twenty percent of this demographic experience a degree of hearing loss, often minor, directly related to exposure to sounds that were too loud. Fortunately, this type of hearing loss can typically be prevented by utilizing methods of hearing protection as advised by an audiologist. Using proper methods of hearing protection can also prevent further hearing loss from occurring even if some degree of hearing impairment has already occurred.

Finally, tinnitus is another common hearing related problem in the United States, and can be diagnosed through a tinnitus exam or specialized tinnitus examination at any hearing clinic. Tinnitus is all too prevalent, characterized by a sometimes debilitating ringing in the ears and affecting at least fifteen percent of all adult Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States. Tinnitus cannot be cured, but it is typically able to be treated in a number of different ways, but it is important to visit an audiologist at a hearing clinic to develop the most beneficial course of treatment for you as an individual.

Hearing loss and other hearing related problems like tinnitus can certainly be debilitating, but through a proper diagnosis and working on crafting the best treatment plan possible with an experienced audiologist, most hearing problems can be managed effectively.