Some nights, it’s fun to make a home-cooked meal or order a pizza from Sapori di Napoli. Others, it’s nice to get dressed up and go out to a restaurant with your friends or partner.
Unfortunately, when you have hearing loss, sitting down at a crowded restaurant can mean an evening of saying, “What?” or “Huh?” every few minutes. For people with undiagnosed hearing loss, restaurants often offer the first sign that it’s time for a hearing test.
Restaurants Create Extra Listening Strain
When there’s little background noise, it’s easier for your brain to pick out the voice you want to hear. But when restaurants expose you to multiple sounds that are all competing for your attention, understanding speech takes far more effort, especially if you have hearing loss.
A 2021 study on a skill called the “cocktail party effect,” which allows you to isolate and understand one voice in a crowd, found that hearing loss can cause your ears to fuse sounds in noisy places.[1]
Restaurants are noisy places by nature. You have conversations happening all around you, dishes clinking, chairs moving and tons of sizzling kitchen sounds.
Hearing difficulties can become more pronounced as hearing loss progresses and as your environment gets louder.
Why You May Notice Hearing Loss First at Dinner
A restaurant exposes your hearing to challenges that may not exist in your daily life. That can make restaurants an early warning sign for hearing loss. You may not notice a problem during a quiet conversation at home, but put yourself in a busy dining room and suddenly it becomes all too apparent.
You don’t have to wait until everyday conversations are difficult before getting your hearing checked. If you notice that dining out has become more of a chore than a treat, contact Advanced Hearing to schedule a hearing test with one of our specialists.
[1] Glyde, H., Cameron, S., Dillon, H., Hickson, L., Seeto, M., & Goldsworthy, R. (2021). The effects of hearing impairment and aging on spatial release from masking. Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 22, 493–507. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10162-021-00790-7