As a practicing hearing aid audiologist fitting hearing aids to clients every day, one question that seems to crop up regularly is ‘why has my hearing dropped when my husband / wife has perfect hearing?’
Some people start to lose their hearing through medical conditions, perforated ear drums, hereditary factors and the like, commonly people can have reduced hearing due to exposure to excessive noise (more common than you might think and from an earlier point in life often), but the most common type of hearing loss I come across in my professional capacity is age related (or presbyacusis).
It doesn’t affect everyone in the same way and to the same degree, genetic pre-disposition means you are more, or less disposed to having hearing loss due to the ageing factor. It really is luck of the draw. I often hear clients tell me that they had ‘perfect’ hearing as a younger person.
The main bulk of my clients tend to start wearing hearing aids from around mid fifties, clients younger than this tend to need assistance with hearing aids because of exposure to excessive noise, hereditary factors, disease, infections, trauma and medical conditions, but this section of my clients is much smaller than the over fifties.
Unfortunately there isn’t too much you can do to avoid the onset of age related hearing loss. When it starts to develop and also the severity of the hearing loss is pretty much pre-determined, but obviously protecting yourself from excessive noise is one of the major ways to avoid damaging your hearing. The effects of exposing your ears to excessive noise might not be apparent until many years after the damage has been done.
