Reports: Wearing masks revealed an underlying health problem

“Fox News” reported that recent reports claimed that the face masks we wear to protect ourselves and others from “Covid-19” have helped uncover a new health problem facing those with hearing problems.
Reports indicated that audiologists in the United States noticed a slight increase in visits to patients who realized their addiction to lip reading and facial expressions after people began wearing masks covering their noses and faces. mouth.
“Most likely, these are people who have suffered from some kind of hearing loss in the past but have been able to cope,” said Andrea Gomert, director of the University of Texas Hearing Clinic at the Caller Center for Communication Disorders. by Dalai.
Most of the time, hearing loss occurs gradually, and people often wait around seven years for a hearing test, according to professional audiologists who evaluate hearing.
“We would have seen these people at the end of the day, but it would be a few years before they saw the doctors, not now,” said Kathryn Palmer, director of audiology at UPMC Healthcare in western Pennsylvania.
In turn, audiologists explain that the lack of visual expression makes hearing difficult and that plastic masks and barriers also reduce the sound level, as well as that “Covid-19” makes us adhere to social distance and us it makes you stay away from the person we are talking to, which is another mechanism that should be adapted.
Palmer, who just finished his term as president of the American Academy of Audiology, said people with normal hearing can check for slightly muffled voices, but those with some hearing loss face a much more difficult time. . And that’s exactly what Nancy Tay Murray, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis said, “The visual image is a powerful complement to hearing.” Adding that most people “don’t realize they suffer from hearing problems because they depend a lot on the image, and people with normal hearing depend on it too, for example when they are in a noisy restaurant”. Pointing out that adults can usually fill in the blanks and find words they can’t hear, but it’s exhausting.
Once hearing aids are provided, people realize that “much of this listening effort is wasted,” said Laurie Delia, an audiologist at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio.