You don’t abruptly lose your hearing one morning when you wake up. Hearing loss comes gradually over time for most people, especially when it comes to aging. Age-related hearing loss affects about one in three people in this country. Many of them are over the age of 75 before they recognize a change. You may not detect the trouble immediately even though some signs show up earlier.
The initial signs of gradual hearing loss are subtle. Recognizing them as soon as possible is essential to slow down the progression of hearing loss or other health problems related to hearing loss. However, if you don’t know what the signs are, you can’t recognize them. You might have hearing loss if you have any of these eight barely noticeable signs.
1. Ringing in The Ears
This is one that people have a tendency to neglect if it doesn’t get too disruptive and it’s really not that subtle. Tinnitus, the medical name for the ringing, is a typical sign of hearing loss.
Triggers are a major factor with tinnitus so it can be sporadic, too. For example, perhaps the ringing, buzzing or roaring only happens when you first get up or when you are tired.
It’s crucial that you don’t neglect tinnitus because it is a symptom that something is happening with your body. It may be hearing loss, but it might also be a sign of high blood pressure, circulatory problems or trauma. You won’t know for certain until you consult your doctor, though.
2. Talking on The Phone is Stressful
Here are some common excuses for phone issues:
- It’s a new phone, and I’m just not used to it yet.
- My phone is damaged from being dropped.
- My phone is out dated.
Consider why you dislike talking on our phone. Get someone you know to test the phone for you if the volume is up and you still don’t hear it. If you can’t hear the conversation but they can then you have a hearing issue.
3. These Days it Seems As if Everybody Mumbles
Recently, it’s not only your kids, but your neighbor, the news anchor, and even your spouse that have begun to mumble to you. Could it actually be true that suddenly everyone in your life has poor enunciation.
It’s much more probable that you may not be hearing words in the same way. One of the initial indications that your hearing is changing is when talking sounds like mumbling and consonants like “S” and “T” drop off.
4. What?
You might not even realize that you can’t hear conversations any more until someone points out that you say “What? a lot. Very often, the people you see every day like coworkers or family are the first to notice you are struggling to hear. Pay attention if someone says something about it.
5. You Hear Some People Perfectly Fine But Not Others
Perhaps you can understand the neighbor perfectly, but when his wife joins the conversation, everything gets messed up. It’s a common sign of sensorineural hearing loss or damage to the nerves that send electrical messages to the brain.
Her voice is higher pitched, and that’s why it’s not as clear. Your daughter or grandchild might present the same issue. Even when you are in common situations, something as basic as trying to hear the sound of an alarm clock ar a microwave can make things complicated. Those tones are also high pitched.
6. Going Out Isn’t as Much Fun as it Once Was
Again, there are those mumbling people, and that’s not fun. Also, being in noisy places makes understanding what people say that much harder. It becomes impossible to hear anything when you are at dinner and people start conversing around you or the AC comes on.
7. You Never Used to Feel so Tired
Struggling to comprehend words is fatiguing. Your brain has to work overtime to manage what it does hear, so you are more exhausted than usual. Your other senses might also experience changes. What’s left for your other senses when your brain is working at 110 percent of its energy to understand words? If your last eye examination was normal, then the next thing to get checked is your hearing.
8. That Darn TV
Instead of blaming the service provider when you have to keep cranking the TV up, consider getting a hearing exam. It can be hard to hear people talking on TV shows when you suffer from loss of hearing. For instance, when the background music is playing, it makes everything sound unclear. How about the other stuff in the room like the AC or the ceiling fan? Your hearing is most likely beginning to fail if you need to keep turning up the volume.
A professional hearing exam will tell you for certain and that’s the good news. Hearing aids should get things back to normal if it turns out that your hearing has declined.