What are the signs of hearing loss?
You may notice a number of early warning signs and changes in
your behavior that may be related to hearing loss. You may begin to:
- Complain that people are mumbling
- Frequently ask people to repeat what they have said
- Have increased difficulty understanding what people are saying in
background
- noise such as noisy rooms, social occasions, or family
gatherings
- Prefer the television or radio louder than other people
- Have trouble understanding what is being said at the movies or theater,
your house of worship, or other public gatherings
- Have difficulty understanding conversations in a group
- Become more impatient, irritable, frustrated, or withdrawn
- Have difficulty understanding people when you cannot see their faces
Why can I hear people but not understand them?
A common type of hearing loss is one in which people have normal
or nearly normal hearing in the low- and mid-pitched sounds, but have hearing
loss in the high-pitched sounds. Some examples of low-pitched sounds in speech
are vowel sounds like "o, ooh, ah, a, e," etc. Some examples of high-pitched
sounds in speech are "s, f, th," etc. These high-pitched consonant sounds carry
the meaning of words so they help us understand speech, but tend to be very soft
in volume.
The low-pitched vowel sounds carry the volume of speech, but do
not have much meaning. Therefore, vowel sounds help us hear speech, but do not
help us understand what is said. In normal conversation, speech might sound loud
enough but not clear enough if a hearing loss is present. This problem is worse
in background noise, since background noise interferes with and covers up
speech. This problem is often associated with sensorineural hearing loss, which
results from damage in the inner ear and/or in the auditory nerve endings.
What can I expect from my hearing aids?
Unlike eyeglasses, hearing aids cannot provide complete
correction for the impairment. No hearing aid will restore your hearing to
normal or provide a perfect substitute for normal hearing. The benefits derived
from wearing hearing aids, even the most technologically advanced, will vary
from person to person. The greatest benefit will be experienced with consistent
use of hearing aids.
What hearing aids can do:
- Hearing aids make sounds louder (amplify sounds) so that you can hear
them. The goal is to make soft sounds audible, the sound of normal
conversation comfortable, and loud sounds loud, but not too loud.
- Hearing aids improve a person's ability to understand speech (such as
conversations) by amplifying the sounds (such as high-pitched consonants)
not audible to the individual. The extent a hearing aid can improve speech
understanding will depend on the degree of the person's hearing loss and how
much noise is present in the listening situations.
- Some hearing aids can amplify high-pitched consonant sounds more than
low-pitched vowel sounds to help you hear better in noisy situations. There
are no hearing aids, however, that can completely eliminate troublesome
background noise.
- Some advanced hearing aid systems use multiple microphone technology to
further enhance communication in noisy environments.