Do you have hearing loss? If so, do you sometimes find that it seems like work just to understand what the people around you are saying? You are not alone. The feeling that listening and understanding is taxing work is common among individuals with hearing loss – even the ones that use hearing aids.

As though that wasn’t bad news enough, it might not be just your ability to hear that is affected, but also cognitive functions. Contemporary research studies have established that there is a solid association between hearing loss and your risk of contracting dementia and Alzheimer’s.

One such study was conducted by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine on 639 individuals between the ages of 36 and 90 16-year period. The data showed that 58 study volunteers – 9% of the total – had developed dementia and 37 – 6 percent of the total – had developed Alzheimer’s disease. Investigators found that for every ten decibels of hearing loss, the participants’ odds of developing dementia went up by 20 percent; the more significant the degree of hearing loss, the higher their chance of dementia.

In a similar research study, surveying 1,984 participants, investigators found a similar connection between dementia and hearing loss, but they also found that the hearing-impaired experienced noticeable decreases in their cognitive functions. Compared to individuals with normal hearing, those with hearing impairment developed memory loss 40 percent faster. In both studies, a far more dismaying finding was that this association was not lessened by using hearing aids.

Scientists have proposed several hypotheses to explain the association between hearing loss and loss of cognitive capabilities. One explanation is associated with the question at the beginning of this article, and has been given the name cognitive overload. Some researchers suspect that if you are hearing impaired, your brain tires itself just trying to hear that it has a diminished capacity to understand what is being said. The resulting lack of comprehension can cause social isolation, a factor that has been shown in other studies to cause dementia. Another theory is that neither dementia nor hearing loss cause the other, but that they’re both related to an as-yet-undiscovered pathological mechanism – possibly vascular, possibly genetic, possibly environmental – which causes both.

Even though these study outcomes are a little dismaying, there is hope to be found in them. If you wear hearing aids, visit your audiologist regularly to keep them fitted, adjusted, and programmed correctly, so that you are not straining to hear. The less work used in the mechanics of hearing, the more brain capacity available for comprehension. And, if it turns out that loss of hearing is an early indicator of dementia, detecting the hearing loss early might allow for early intervention to postpone the advancement.

A common question from patients concerns being able to hear in crowded rooms. They report that they don’t seem to have any problem hearing people and understanding what they say when they are speaking to them one-on-one, or even in small groups. Not so in crowded situations. Whether in large public space outdoors such as a football game or indoors at a party, they report being unable to distinguish the speakers’ voice over the background noise. This is true even when the speaker is close by and addressing them directly. People who complain of this also often mention having trouble hearing the consonants “S,” “F,” and “H,” no longer being able to distinguish one from the other.

If you are experiencing these symptoms, there is a possibility that you may have suffered some form or high-frequency hearing loss. When describing human speech, audiologists define the 3000 to 8000 Hz range as high-frequency. This is the range that the F, S, and H sounds typically fall into. In a crowded situation there are many sounds across the frequency spectrum competing with one another. Much of the background noise – such as people dancing or walking – occurs at lower frequencies. Speech is layered on top of this in the higher frequency ranges. Individuals with high-frequency hearing loss will report that the low-frequency sounds are much louder to them. To them it is as if the ‘background noise’ has been amplified relative to the human speech they are trying to focus on.

At least 18 percent of the population suffers from some form of high-frequency hearing loss. The most common cause of this is aging, but in recent years audiologists have found increasing numbers of teenagers and young adults suffering from it, possibly as a result of listening to overly loud music. High-frequency hearing loss can also be the result of diabetes, a side affect of certain prescription drugs or genetic factors.

The important thing to remember is that if you have suffered some degree of high-frequency hearing loss, it can be effectively treated. Hearing aids can be adjusted to amplify the higher frequencies and suppress lower frequencies, with the result that you can hear voices better in crowded rooms.

Before we get too far into treatment options, it is critical that you have a proper diagnosis. To find out if high-frequency hearing loss is the root cause behind your difficulty hearing in crowds, call and make a first appointment. There are other causes for this, and our specialists can perform tests to determine whether the cause in your case really is hearing loss, and if so, treat it.

Hearing loss has many forms – it might occur gradually (for example, as the result of aging) or all of a sudden (as the result of an injury or trauma). The hearing loss itself can be short-term or permanent, and may vary from mild (having trouble understanding conversations) to severe (total deafness). Moreover, a person can experience a loss of hearing in either one ear or both ears.

You will find a number of signs and symptoms linked to hearing loss, one of the more common of which is a growing difficulty hearing or understanding conversations. People’s voices may seem to be at too low a volume (as if the speakers were far away), or sound muffled . Alternatively, you might be able to hear people talking but notice that you’re having difficulty differentiating individual words; this could become more evident when multiple people are speaking, or when you are in busy rooms.

Other usual symptoms of hearing loss include increasing the volume on your TV or radio, having more difficulty hearing women’s voices than men’s, and being unable to differentiate sounds such as ‘s’ and ‘th’ from one another. If you feel pain, tenderness, or itching in your ears, have periods of dizziness or vertigo, or hear a constant buzzing or ringing sound, these symptoms can also be indications of hearing loss.

Because it can occur gradually, many people with hearing impairment are not aware of it. Or they might notice it but display “denial behaviors” to try to disguise or conceal their hearing loss from other people. Examples of these types of signs include having to ask people to repeat themselves frequently, avoiding conversations and social situations, acting as if you’ve heard stuff that you really didn’t, and emotions of isolation or depression.

If you have experienced any of these signs or symptoms, schedule an appointment with one of our specialists. We can help by starting with a hearing test to see if you do have hearing loss, and if you have, we can help determine what to do about it.

One subject which is rarely mentioned when it comes to hearing loss is how to keep people who have it safe inside their own homes. For instance, imagine that a fire breaks out in your house; if you’re like most of us you have smoke alarms to sound an alert so that you and your family can evacuate the premises before the fire becomes widespread, and thus deadly. But now suppose that the fire begins at night, when you are asleep, and you have taken off your hearing aid.

The smoke detectors standard in almost all houses and those required by city or state governments emit a loud warning sound at a frequency between 3,000 and 4,000 Hertz. Although the majority of people can hear these tones easily, these frequencies are among those most affected by age-related hearing loss and other forms of auditory problems. So even if you were awake, if you are one of the more than eleven million Americans with hearing loss, there is a chance that you wouldn’t hear the alarm.

Fortunately, there are home safety products that are specifically created for the requirements of the hearing impaired. For instance, there are smoke detectors that emit a low-frequency (520 Hertz) square wave tone that a majority of hearing-impaired individuals can hear. In case you are completely deaf without your hearing aid or when you turn off your cochlear implants (CIs), you’ll find alarm systems which use a combination of flashing lights, very loud alarms, and vibrating units that shake your bed to wake you up in an emergency. Several of these systems are intended to be incorporated into more complete home security systems to warn you of intruders or people thumping furiously on your doors in the case of an emergency.

Many who have hearing aids or who wear cochlear implants have elected to improve the performance of these devices by installing induction loops in their homes. An induction loop is merely a lengthy strand of wire that encircles your family room, bedroom, or children’s rooms, which activates the telecoils inside your devices to raise the volume of sounds, and thus may help you not to miss any important or emergency signals.

Not to mention the lowly telephone, which all of us tend to ignore until we need one, but which can become critical in any sort of emergency situation. Most modern phones now are available in models that are hearing aid and CI-compatible, which enable their easy use during either normal or extraordinary conditions. Other phone models integrate speakerphone systems with high volumes that can be easily used by the hearing impaired, and more importantly, can be voice-activated. These phones would allow you to voice-dial for assistance in an emergency situation. There are additional accessories for cellphones, such as vibrating wristbands that will alert you to an incoming phone call even if you are sleeping.

Other safety suggestions are less technological and more practical, like always having the telephone numbers of fire departments, ambulance companies, health care providers, and emergency services handy. We are as concerned about your safety as we are about your hearing, so if we can be of service with any further ideas or recommendations, feel free to call us.