1. Pardon?
One of my favourite Dad jokes is to say “pardon” whenever someone asks about my hearing impairment. It always throws people off guard and makes them repeat themselves only to realise my ploy when I repeat “pardon” again with a smile on my face. My Dad still gets me with the same joke all the time.
Another amusing side effect of my hearing impairment is how predictable the questions are. Without fail, the first thing people ask is, “Do you sleep with your hearing aids in?” Maybe it’s not such a weird question, but it always feels odd. Would someone wear their glasses to bed? I doubt it—20/20 vision seems pointless when your eyes are closed. For me, taking out my hearing aids after a long day is probably as satisfying as kicking off a pair of heels—plus, I get the bonus of being almost completely deaf at the one time it’s actually useful. Birds chirping? Nothing. Teenagers shrieking and kicking wheelie bins? Silence. Foxes howling in the night? Never heard a thing.
Why mention this? My cousin Marina recently introduced me to Jonathan, who’s interested in hearing impairment, wearables, and the stigma around hearing aids. As someone who wears them, I got to share insights most 34-year-olds don’t have. Still, in preparing for our conversation, the stats I found were shocking:
18 million people are affected by hearing loss in the UK, but only 2 million wear hearing aids. Of the 16 million people with some degree of hearing loss, almost 7 million would benefit from hearing aids and could improve their quality of life immeasurably but choose not to do so due to stigma, lack of awareness or doubts about hearing aid effectiveness. Source.
On average, people wait ten years before addressing their hearing loss. Source.
The NHS spends over £1 billion annually on hearing loss services, while untreated hearing loss costs the UK economy about £30 billion due to lost productivity. Source.
It’s hard to overstate how staggering these numbers are. Hearing loss isn’t just about not catching sounds; it has a host of knock-on effects. There’s mounting evidence linking untreated hearing loss to dementia, thanks to social isolation, extra strain on the brain, and even physical changes in the auditory and speech centres. Whether it’s correlation or causation, if raising awareness and fighting the stigma can help slow dementia rates, consider this my first step.
p.s. Here’s an infographic from Google Gemini that sums up many of these issues. I used Gemini’s Deep Research tool for much of my research for this letter and my chat with Jonathan. If you haven’t tried it, it’s worth a look—the results are solid, and it pulls from a set list of sources. Still, always double-check the info.
Have a great week, all 🙏
Thank you for this information - it’s really important