Most people don’t notice their own hearing loss and wait too long to get help. Children and teenagers seldom complain about the symptoms of hearing loss. Adults may lose their hearing so gradually they do not realize it is happening. With some types of hearing loss, you may not even be aware of the loss, but it can be detected with a hearing test.
Signs & Symptoms of Hearing Loss
Here are some signs that you may have a hearing loss:
- Difficulty hearing people in noisy environments such as a restaurant, shopping mall, in cars, or at the movie theater.
- Trouble distinguishing the consonant sounds in words.
- Muffling of speech or it seems like more people “mumble”
- Family, friends, or colleagues often need to repeat themselves when speaking with you.
- You have trouble distinguishing what people say when they are not facing you or are further away, such as a meeting or across the room.
- You have trouble following conversations.
- Needing to turn up the volume of the television or radio.
- You have ringing, buzzing, or hissing sounds in your ears.
- Withdrawal from conversations or avoidance of situations where you know you will struggle to hear clearly.
If you have one or more of these symptoms, consult with an audiologist to find out more about your hearing levels.
Long-term impacts of untreated hearing loss
People with untreated hearing loss (people with hearing loss who do not wear hearing aids) experience a decreased quality of life.
Untreated hearing loss has been shown to cause sadness, depression, anxiety, increased cognitive decline, paranoia, and poor social relationships.
People with untreated hearing loss may have a difficult time in their careers—often earning thousands of dollars less than their hearing peers.
Treating hearing loss with hearing aids has been shown to prevent or reduce these effects. It’s very common for people who wear hearing aids to say “I don’t know why I waited so long to get them.”
Types of hearing loss:
There is more than one type of hearing loss, changes to different parts of the hearing system will result in one of three types of hearing loss: sensorineural, conductive, or mixed.
Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) results from changes in the inner ear (cochlea) and/or the auditory nerve from the inner ear to the auditory cortex of the brain. More often, these changes cause permanent hearing loss that is not treatable with medicine or surgery. Some of the known causes of SNHL include the following: age, noise exposure, genetics, malformations of the inner ear, benign tumor, illnesses, medications known to be toxic to the ear, and head trauma. Hearing aids are a common solution used to assist with this type of hearing loss.
Conductive hearing loss (CHL) results from changes in the outer ear and/or middle ear. With a CHL, sound is not able to travel (be conducted) efficiently down the ear canal, through the eardrum, and along the ossicles (middle ear bones). Some of the more common causes of CHL include the following: fluid in the middle ear, ear infection in either the outer or middle ear space, a hole in the eardrum, earwax blockage, a foreign object in the ear canal. This type of hearing loss is often corrected with medical management or surgery. In some cases, hearing aids may be recommended.
Mixed hearing loss (MHL) results from the presence of both a SNHL and CHL at the same time. For example. Sometimes MHL can improve with medical management, while other times, it is permanent.