How Hearing Loss Affects Your Ability to Distinguish Words and Why Even Mild Hearing Loss Should Be Treated
Did you say…share or chair?…Throne or phone?…Back or bag? Have you ever wondered why you can hear some sounds perfectly well, but struggle to hear certain words? This is known as a loss of speech clarity, and it’s a common sign of mild to moderate hearing loss.
Human speech is spoken at a relatively low volume across many different pitches, and at different speeds. This means even a slight decrease in your hearing ability can vastly change the meaning you pull from a spoken sentence.
Vowel sounds (a/e/i/o/u) are lower-pitched and carry most of the volume of speech, while consonant sounds are often higher-pitched and provide the meaningful distinctions between words.
Often, it’s the consonant sounds that are harder for people to hear. That’s because most people have high-frequency hearing loss due to aging, noise damage or drug side effects. As an example, it might be harder to hear the difference between sat, fat, that, cat, hat,and chat. Numbers are also a very common misunderstanding. Like you might confuse 16 with 60, or 30 for 13. Another is understanding someone’s name for the first time.
While “mild” hearing loss sounds harmless, the truth is; even just slight hearing loss will impact your ability to understand those around you. This is often especially true when there’s background noise or you’re far away from the speaker. Noise and distance make it harder to understand the finer nuances of a conversation, leaving you wondering why you can hear but not understand.
Although high-frequency hearing loss is one of the most common forms of hearing loss, it can often go undiagnosed. Since the onset is gradual, people tend to compensate by raising the volume on their television or asking people to repeat themselves. They may avoid thinking too deeply about whether they have a problem hearing.
If someone feels they are hearing words incorrectly they should see an audiologist to establish a baseline and determine if any future action is needed.
#audiology #hearing #hearingaids #ears #earhealth #healthy #betterhearing #wellness