Presbycusis: The Aging Ear

Presbycusis is the high frequency hearing loss that occurs later in life. The ear changes as we get older, just as our eyes change. There comes a point in our adult life when we have to have our eyes checked every year and get new contacts or glasses. So too, it is normal for there to be some loss of hearing sensitivity as we get a little older. It will happen to all of us in time. This change in hearing sensitivity is called presbycusis.

It is important to correct presbycusis with amplification because it is the high frequencies that give intelligibility to speech. When we don't hear the high frequencies, we don't hear the consonants in speech. Those sounds that come at the beginning and at the ending of words in English give us the meaning of the word. The high frequency "s", "sh", "c", "ch", "f", "h", "v", "t", "th", and others in English, tell us what the word is. When we don't hear the consonant sounds, and we only hear the vowels, the "a", "e", "i", "o" and "u" in the word, then that sounds like mumbling.

So what does the unaided person with high frequency hearing loss do? They work very hard at trying to compensate for what they don't hear. Their brain goes into overdrive trying to figure out what that word might be according to the context of the sentence, or the subject of the conversation. They also look at the face of the speaker to read cues from the lip movement of the speaker. It is exhausting work.

When this kind of hearing loss is corrected with hearing aids, the person is greatly benefited. The hearing aids provide the high frequencies that he has not been hearing, so he now understands conversations. He is not working so hard at it either, and actually has more energy. And an added benefit for some: they no longer appear to have dementia, and they show improved short term memory.