Recognising a Hearing Loss

Recognising a hearing loss is not necessarily easy for the person who suffers it. The problem and blessing, is that a hearing loss is rarely sudden, it is a slow and basically insidious process. Because of this process, a person loses their term of reference, they are no longer aware of what normal is or should be. The other confusing thing about hearing loss is that usually a person can hear some sounds perfectly well, while other sounds are un-clear at best and not present at worst. The cultural norms that are accepted for hearing loss is that somebody is deaf, shout loud enough and you will be heard.

This is not the case, a person with hearing loss may have exactly the same ability to hear some sounds as a normal hearing person, but a radically reduced ability to hear other sounds. Shouting at them just brings discomfort and embarrassment. The issue is that most hearing impaired people have a problem hearing high frequency sounds, the consonants in speech. The consonants in speech are relatively soft sounds but they carry all the intelligibility of speech. Without them I am afraid most speech is about as intelligible as Beaker from the Muppets, or the Swedish Chef. I am showing my age here, if you don’t know who either of those are search the net for the Muppet Show and Beaker, you will understand immediately.

With the preceding in mind, it becomes easier to understand why many people are confused about their hearing, while some people can be in denial about their loss, you can see why other people just think it is everybody else who is at fault. To get a clearer idea about whether or not you or a partner or friend have a hearing loss, there are several key questions that you should ask yourself or them.

Do you or they have a problem hearing over the telephone?

Do you or they have trouble following the conversation when two or more people are talking at the same time?

Do people complain that you or they turn the TV volume up too high?

Do you or they have to strain to understand conversation?

Do you or they have trouble hearing in a noisy background?

Do you or they find yourself asking people to repeat themselves?

Do many people you or they talk to seem to mumble (or not speak clearly)?

Do you or they misunderstand what others are saying and respond inappropriately?

Do you or they have trouble understanding the speech of women and children?

Do people get annoyed because you or they misunderstand what they say?

If you have answered yes to more than a few of these questions, I would advise you to take a hearing test, it is better to be informed than not. If you find that you indeed have a loss try reading the following before moving forward.

 

Modern Hearing Aids

Maintenance of Hearing Aids