You’re having a meeting in a quiet room with a few people, and you can hear just about everything they say. Later, you’re in a noisy restaurant and someone at your table tells a joke—you know it’s a joke because everyone is laughing. You laugh, too, even though you haven’t heard enough to understand the joke. This experience is typical of people whose hearing has begun to decline, especially those whose hearing loss is age-related, noise-related, or a combination of the two.
Hearing loss usually comes on so gradually, over so many years, that it can be hard to realize that you don’t hear as well as you used to. The difference at first may not be so noticeable because people have a marvelous capacity to compensate for what they can’t hear. For example, you may fill in gaps by picking up on the facial expressions and gestures of the person talking.
Although the term “hearing loss” implies trouble hearing all sounds, this may not be the case for you, especially early on. In fact, most people start off having trouble hearing just certain sounds. People with agerelated hearing loss usually have most trouble hearing high-frequency, low-decibel sounds like a hiss, a whisper, or the “s” or “th” sounds that begin a word. In practical terms, what this means is that you can hear the vowels just fine, but consonants like “f ” and “th” give you trouble. You might not be able to tell whether someone said “fish” or “this,” “thing” or “sing.” And you may have trouble hearing over the phone or when there’s a lot of background noise. In a quiet room, you may do just fine.
As years pass, high-frequency sounds become harder to hear, even when the room is quiet. The doorbell or the telephone may ring and ring before you notice it. Lower frequency sounds can also become problematic over time. You may find yourself increasingly asking others to repeat themselves, or holding back from conversation to avoid embarrassment.