Cranking up the volume doesn’t always solve hearing loss issues. Here’s something to consider: Many people can’t hear conversations even though they are able to hear soft sounds. The reason for this is hearing loss often occurs unevenly. Certain frequencies get lost while you can hear others without any problem.
Types of Hearing Loss
- Conductive hearing loss develops when the ear has internal mechanical issues. It could be a congenital structural issue or a result of an ear infection or excessive wax accumulation. Your underlying condition, in many circumstances, can be addressed by your hearing specialist and they can, if needed, recommend hearing aids to help fill in any remaining hearing loss.
- Sensorineural hearing loss is more prevalent and caused by issues with the little hairs, or cilia, in the inner ear. When sound is perceived, it vibrates these hairs which deliver chemical messages to the auditory nerve to be sent to the brain for translation. When these little hairs in your inner ear are damaged or killed, they don’t regenerate. This is why the common aging process is often the cause of sensorineural hearing loss. Over the course of our lives, sensorineural hearing loss develops because we expose ourselves to loud noise, have underlying health conditions, and take certain medications.
Sensorineural Hearing Loss Symptoms
You might hear a little better if people speak louder to you, but it’s not going to completely deal with your hearing loss issues. Certain sounds, including consonant sounds, can become hard to hear for people who suffer from sensorineural hearing loss. Even though people around them are speaking clearly, someone with this condition might think that people are mumbling.
When somebody is coping with hearing loss, the frequency of consonants often makes them hard to distinguish. Pitch is measured in hertz (Hz), and many consonants register in our ears at a higher pitch than other sounds. For example, a short “o” registers at 250 to 1,000 Hz, depending on the voice of the person speaking. But consonants including “f” or “s” will be anywhere from 1,500 to 6,000 hertz. Due to damage to the inner ear, these higher pitches are difficult to hear for individuals who have sensorineural hearing loss.
Because of this, simply talking louder is not always helpful. If you can’t hear some of the letters in a word like “shift,” it won’t make much difference how loudly the other person speaks.
How Can Using Hearing Aids Help With This?
Hearing aids come with a component that fits into the ear, so sounds reach your auditory system without the interference you would normally hear in your environment. Hearing aids also help you by amplifying the frequencies you’re unable to hear and balancing that with the frequencies you can hear. This makes what you hear a lot more clear. Modern hearing aids can also block out background sound to make it easier to understand speech.
