5 Signs of Hearing Loss

Have you been noticing some changes in your hearing health? Hearing loss, including age-related hearing loss, is usually a gradual process, and you may not even notice it at first. Damage to the inner ear, particularly the hair cells and nerve endings, can contribute to various types of hearing impairment. Just like going grey, hearing loss doesn’t happen from one day to the next. You may notice a few silver hairs years before you’re completely grey. Hearing loss is the same way. Exposure to loud noise can accelerate hearing loss, making it important to protect your ears in noisy environments. You’ll start to notice small changes in your hearing, so that’s why it’s important to be alert to any changes in your hearing health, with age-related hearing loss being a common type.

Here are five signs that you may have a hearing loss:

You Can’t Hear in Places with Background Noise

One of the earliest signs of hearing loss is struggling to hear in places with a lot of background noise. Exposure to loud noises can exacerbate this difficulty, making it even harder to follow conversations in noisy environments. You might have no trouble hearing in quiet cafes, but you can’t follow conversations in a crowded restaurant.

This is because hearing loss makes it harder to distinguish between important sounds you want to hear, and the distracting background sounds you’re trying to ignore. Hearing loss can make you hear all these sounds the same, so you struggle to hear in noisy places. Another reason you can’t hear in noisy places is because the background noise is usually in low pitches that you can hear clearly. Unfortunately, the speech sounds you’re straining to hear are higher pitched and are probably in the range you can’t hear as well. High-pitched sounds, such as children’s and female voices, are often the first to be affected by hearing loss.

You’re Tired After a Social Event Due to Age-related Hearing Loss

Another sign you may have hearing loss is that you’re tired after a social event. You used to love seeing friends, but over the last few months you’ve stopped going to as many social events, and you feel completely exhausted when you come back home. Noise-induced hearing loss can also contribute to this fatigue, as exposure to loud environments can damage your hearing health.

This is because you’re straining to follow conversations. During the event, you try to hear what your friends are saying, and you spend a lot of energy straining to understand speech. This is often due to sensorineural hearing loss, which affects the clarity of sounds. During the event, your brain is playing an exhausting game of fill-in-the-blanks, trying to guess what people are saying so you can respond appropriately. Not only that, but you are trying to hear multiple people speaking at the same time, and you also have to ignore all the distracting background sounds. No wonder you’ve been feeling tired!

You Ask People to Repeat Themselves

Have you been asking your family and friends to repeat themselves? A common sign of hearing loss is asking people what they’ve said. Hearing loss can affect one or both ears, making it difficult to catch the meaning of conversations. Problems in the middle ear can lead to difficulties in understanding conversations, as they affect the clarity of sound. You often fail to catch the meaning of what was said the first time, and you have to ask people to repeat themselves several times. Even after they repeat themselves, you still might not understand what was said. Hearing loss erodes the clarity of sounds. You may think you can hear everything, but no matter how much you strain to hear, you struggle to hear what people are saying.

You Turn Up the Volume On the TV 

A common sign of hearing loss is turning up the volume on the TV. Your family might be complaining that you turn up the volume too high and that it’s painful for their ears to watch TV with you. When you have hearing loss, it’s hard to understand what’s being said during your favorite show. Blockages or issues in the outer ear can lead to the need to increase TV volume, as sound waves struggle to pass through and vibrate the eardrum effectively. You keep turning up the volume to try to make the speech clearer, but even cranking up the volume doesn’t make the dialogue easier to hear. This could be a sign of permanent hearing loss.

Sounds Seem Muffled 

If sounds seem muffled or unclear, you probably have hearing loss. Sudden hearing loss, an unexpected and rapid loss of hearing capability, can also cause sounds to seem muffled or unclear. You can get your doctor to check your ears for a buildup of earwax that might make sounds seem muffled. A blockage in the ear canal can lead to muffled sounds and potential hearing loss. If your ear canals are clear, then you probably have hearing loss. Hearing loss can often make sounds seem muffled or like people are talking very softly.

This is because hearing loss usually affects higher sounds at first. When you can’t hear these high sounds, the balance of sounds is off. You’ll hear more of the lower sounds and not enough of the higher sounds, making speech seem muffled and unclear.

Enticare: Your Solution for Hearing Aids

These are just five signs you may have a hearing loss. If you notice any of these signs, visit us at Enticare. Find out more about hearing loss and how you can treat it with quality hearing aids. For individuals with profound hearing loss who cannot benefit from hearing aids, cochlear implants are a viable option.