When Your Hearing Is “Good Enough”

You hear well. In fact, you hear what you want to hear.You just don’t catch all the words. Other than having slightdifficulty in noisy settings or hearing people with reallysoft voices, you hear ‘good enough’. If people would onlystop mumbling, everything would be fine. Right? Wrong!

These symptoms of hearing loss are indicative of ahigh frequency hearing loss. High frequency hearingloss is the most common type of hearing loss today.For many, particularly those who have been exposed tohigh levels of noise or music, the high frequency hearingis the first to deteriorate. These people may haveperfectly normal hearing for low-pitched sounds but havea considerable loss for high-pitched speech sounds suchas t, f, s, k and th. They hear but can’t distinguish certainspeech sounds making it much more difficult tounderstand high-pitch females, small children andconversations in a noisy environment.

As one’s hearing loss slowly progresses, the eyesand brain compensate for the deficit. In fact, you onlyneed to hear about 25% of speech sounds in order tounderstand speech. The other 75% of speech soundscan be inaudible, and you can still get the drift of theconversation. With the help of the eyes, the brain piecestogether the missing information, trying to make senseof the conversation. The human brain is an amazingthing. It actually consumes enough power to light a 20watt light bulb, and even more when you are forced towork hard.

In essence, hearing and understanding in noiserequires extra processing from the brain. When the brainis fed sufficient information, it can separate the speechsignal from the noise signal. It gives us automatic noisesuppression with little conscious effort. By the way, youneed two ears working together in stereo to do this.

A person with a high frequency hearing loss cannothear these sounds and therefore, has little or noinformation to piece together. Their brain simply doesnot receive enough information to put the conversation

AllEars

Betty Vosters - Kemp

Senior Magazine – March 2011

together, regardless of how smart or how hard onetries.

The person who “hears what he wants to hear” isprobably using all his available brain power on listening.It is not likely that he will be able to exert that much effortvery long. Most people check out of a conversation afterten minutes. (By the way, this is true for people withnormal hearing also! We all get resigned about missingsome of the conversation that we rationalize it’s not worthlistening.) After straining for a while, you simply give upbecause it’s exhausting.

Believe it or not, this seemingly minor hearing lossis the most insidious of all hearing losses. While yourhearing gradually deteriorates so can yourrelationships and psychological well-being. Untreatedhearing loss affects every aspect of one’s life: social,emotional, mental and even physical.

The first step is to have a thorough hearing evaluationto find out what you have been missing. If possible,request a “Speech-In-Noise” test so that you candetermine how much your relatively minor hearing lossis affecting your ability to follow conversation in a noisyplace such as a restaurant. This test will reveal a lot toyou. It serves no purpose to put this off. Waiting to gethelp for your hearing may be detrimental to follow-uprehabilitation.

Today, most hearing and clarity problems can behelped. Properly fit hearing instruments made especiallyfor high frequency hearing loss make speech soundsmore audible, reducing the power drain on your brain.With some brain power left over, you are more likely toenjoy conversation. That extra power would be there toenjoy others, not to decipher chopped up speechsounds.

The important thing to remember is not to wait“until your hearing gets worse”. By the time youperceive that your hearing is bad enough, you willhave waited too long for your own good.

More information and a complimentary consultationis available from Betty Vosters-Kemp, Avalon Hearing AidCenters, Inc.,

Sacramento: 1260 Fulton Avenue, Suite BFair Oaks: 8146 Greenback Lane, Suite 100Woodland: 433 Second Street, Suite 104

Call (916) 483-9064www.AvalonHearing.com