How Sharp Is Your Hearing?

We expect our eyes to change with age, but hearing is often ignored. Belinda dos Santos turns to experts in the field for advice

- Belinda Dos Santos

Whether it’s for listening to Adele, crucial noises in traffic, birdsong, or just a friend’s voice, most of us would be lost without our hearing. Yet, as we age, it can be harder to catch sounds. Once we reach midlife, hearing problems are far more likely; various studies have found that 20 to 40% of over-fifties have some level of presbycusis, the blanket term for age-related hearing loss.

Yet many shy away from hearing tests. Why? Perhaps we fear it makes us appear older than we feel. Oldstyle hearing aids – quite large and unsightly – have a lot to do with it, too.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of new ways to protect our hearing and, if necessary, support or enhance it, from cochlear implants to tiny digital hearing aids. We chat to two experts for advice – ENT surgeon Professor Chris Raine, and audiologist Tanya Hanekom.

What causes age related hearing loss?

First, let’s get to grips with a ‘normal’ hearing range. Sounds are described by frequency or pitch (which is high or low) and by their intensity or loudness.

For frequency, the average range is from 20 to 20 000 hertz; while for loudness, on average, we can hear sounds from 0 up to 140 decibels, but sounds over 90 decibels are uncomfortable to hear.

With presbycusis, high frequencies are often affected first – problematic when trying to understand conversation, as most consonant sounds have high frequencies. Ageing can result in what’s called sensorineural hearing loss, which happens when there’s damage to the hearing nerve, or to the tiny inner-ear hair cells within part of the ear called the cochlea; sometimes, it’s damage to both.

On the horizon, exciting research is being conducted to discover how to regrow the hairs in the inner ear where damage to hearing occurs.

What about ear blockages?