Signs and symptoms of hearing loss
Do you know the signs of hearing loss?
There are many types of hearing loss and many possible symptoms. Someone with moderate hearing loss in both ears may experience different symptoms from someone with more severe loss, even if it affects only one ear.
Common symptoms
If you are an adult and think you may have hearing loss, these are some signs that you may not be hearing as well as you could:
- Friends or family say the television is too loud.
- You find it hard to understand words, especially in noisy places.
- You have difficulty understanding people on the phone.
- You can hear people speaking but have trouble understanding them.
- You are unsure where a sound is coming from.
- You often ask people to repeat what they have just said.
- You rely on your partner to confirm whether you heard something correctly.
- You avoid social gatherings.
- You feel tired after social events; this is sometimes called listening fatigue.
- You have noticed tinnitus or an unpleasant sound in your ears.
- Some sounds seem unusually loud compared with others.
Signs of hearing loss
A sign is something a hearing care professional can detect through testing.
When you visit a hearing clinic for help, the professional will usually ask about the symptoms you have noticed before carrying out a test.
After the test, the results are shown on an audiogram so you can see the degree of hearing loss in each ear.
What is the most common type of hearing loss?
The most common type is caused by damage to the inner ear or the auditory nerves.
This is called sensorineural hearing loss. It can be caused by damage to the hair cells or to the nerve pathways that carry information to the brain.
It is common as people get older, although hearing can also change for other reasons, such as ongoing exposure to noise or a sedentary lifestyle.