When you have a high frequency hearing loss, you may: People with hearing loss may begin to avoid lively social situations or public places they once enjoyed because interacting with others is too difficult. If you have a high-frequency hearing loss, you may notice problems understanding speech even in a relatively quiet environment, but when background noise is present or several people are talking at once, it can become nearly impossible to follow a conversation. Trouble hearing with background noise If you feel like you can hear but not This is why so many people with age-related hearing loss or excessive noise exposure have difficulty understanding even when they know sound is present. Without being able to hear subtle differences between consonants, words like “cat” and “hat,” “parrot” and “ferret” and “show” and “throw” can be hard to differentiate. Being able to hear vowel sounds is helpful and will alert you that speech is present, but it’s the consonant sounds that give speech meaning and help you distinguish one word from another. In speech, the vowel sounds (A, E, I, O and U) are low in pitch while consonant sounds like S, F, Th, Sh, V, K, P and others are high in pitch. While not always the case, high-frequency hearing loss is often the cause of feeling like you can hear but can’t understand. But, high-pitched sounds (such as children's voices) need to be much louder before you can hear them. If you have a sloping hearing loss, it means you are able to hear low-pitched sounds (such as thunder), sometimes even as clearly as someone with normal hearing.
People with high-frequency hearing loss are said to have a “sloping” hearing loss. When your hearing is tested, the results are plotted on an audiogram. In this case, the chief symptom may be difficulty with word understanding, especially in noisy situations. Hearing loss comes in all degrees from mild to profound.īut most people, especially older adults, have mild-to-moderate hearing loss, especially the type that makes it harder to hear high-pitched sounds. Hearing loss involves not only the ears, but also the brain where sound is translated into meaningful words. What’s the number one complaint hearing care professionals hear from their new patients with hearing loss? Ask them and they’ll likely say it’s, “I can hear, but I can’t understand.” If this is what you’re experiencing, you may have hearing loss.