It’s never easy when you or a loved one might be losing hearing. Hearing loss can be subtle or it can progress quickly. In people over 65, hearing loss is common. Once a person is more than 75 years of age, generally one in two people will have hearing loss. However, onset can be earlier.

Resources abound for those experiencing hearing loss.

Here are 21 signs that may be indicators of hearing loss:

1. Asking others to repeat themselves. Do you catch yourself saying “What was that?” or frequently not understanding a sentence the first time it is said? This is often one of the first indicators of hearing loss.
2. You play the volume on your television or phone louder than others. If you are blasting the volume, this can be an indicator that your hearing is weakening.
3. Trouble understanding speech over the phone. Normal levels are difficult to hear.
4. Difficulty understanding words in a loud place like a restaurant or subway. One of the most common hearing loss experiences is being unable to hear one-on-one conversations in a loud or crowded place.
5. Avoiding social settings due to the difficulty that ambient noise presents to your overall hearing quality. Social group settings may become uncomfortable.
6. One ear hears less clearly than the other ear.
7. You depend on lip reading more than you have before. This became interesting during Covid when others masked and plastic walls went up between you and others. This may have indicated hearing loss where before you weren’t even aware it was progressing.
8. High pitched noises may be more difficult to hear, such as children’s voices or female voices. Or the opposite, men’s voices or lower male voices may be difficult to discern.
9. You find yourself answering inappropriately or inaccurately, because you couldn’t understand the question.
10. You have trouble ordering from drive-through because the often fuzzy audio is even more difficult for you than others to understand.
11. You suffer from tinnitus or the hearing of ringing or hissing sounds in your ears.
12. You were exposed to loud or dangerous noise levels on your job that now translates to inability to hear certain tones or voices.
13. Your family members alert you to possible hearing loss. Your kids or spouse speak super loudly around you.
14. You get annoyed at how others seem to be whispering or mumbling. You get suspicious when people speak and you can’t hear them.
15. You become more clumsy. Hearing loss can contribute to a loss of balance.
16. Jokes don’t seem as funny. When you are missing pieces of the joke or miss the punchline, it may seem like you’ve lost your sense of humor.
17. You may find yourself more easily distracted. When you are experiencing hearing loss, you may have to work harder to discern normal conversations. This requirement of more attention and focus to a simple conversation may leave you running out of focused attention sooner than others.
18. When driving, ambulances or fire trucks seem to sneak up on you before you notice it’s time to give them the right of way.
19. You may have difficulty discerning the difference between “s” or “th” as hearing loss is experienced.
20. You find others getting annoyed with you, like store clerks or waiters, because you keep asking people to repeat themselves.
21. You can’t hear when someone speaks from another room. As you may have become more dependent upon lip reading, or hearing loss has progressed, sounds in other rooms may become almost impossible to discern.

Hearing loss doesn’t influence everyone equally. You may have had experiences that contributed to the hearing loss like loud concerts or work environments, or it can be genetic. If you were a boxer, played football or other high contact sports, you may have sustained minor hearing loss early that becomes more pronounced as aging takes its toll. Simple aging can contribute to hearing loss without any one-time or pronounced obvious influences. Learn more quick facts about hearing loss. 

Hearing loss influences more than 500 million people around the world. The good news is that hearing loss remedies are becoming more and more advanced. In some cases, a simple amplifier can provide benefits. In other cases, hearing aids may provide relief.

When you are noticing advancing signs of hearing loss, reach out to your doctor or go to a clinic for a hearing test. A hearing test will provide information about the methods that may work to provide the best assistance. Assistance may need to be tailored for your own hearing loss, which may differ from those experienced by others. A hearing loss diagnosis can be a lot to process. Here is what to expect when you are diagnosed with hearing loss.

Be patient if you have a family member who doesn’t wish to deal with the onset of hearing loss. Hearing loss may make a person feel “old” or less competent. Because the tools and devices for hearing loss keep advancing, it may take time to research methodologies and new products that may provide assistance where before these advances weren’t even known. Often, support groups can help people adjust to this new way of life. Take the time, the results will be worth it.