Why you may not notice hearing loss
Without a hearing test, you might not notice mild to moderate loss at first. “If you look at an audiogram, which graphs how you hear at different frequencies, like low or high notes on a piano, most people lose in the high frequencies first, ”. “It affects consonant sounds like s, sh, th—you start to lose those sounds before you lose vowel sounds, so you know people are talking, it’s just not clear what they’re saying.” In fact, a CDC survey found that about one in four adults who say their hearing is good or excellent actually have hearing damage. “You could be doing just fine in quiet; it’s bringing it outside where there’s some wind or in an environment with a lot of ambient noise that you’re going to have a problem.”
