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Hearing vs. Understanding 

Have you ever felt like you can hear, but don’t  understand?

The number one complaint hearing care professionals get from new patients is, “I hear, but I can’t understand.” If this is you, it may be a hearing loss. Hearing loss involves not only the ears, but also the brain where sound is translated into meaningful words. Symptoms vary, but most people, especially older adults, have mild-to-moderate hearing loss, especially the type that makes it harder to hear high-pitched sounds. In this case, the only symptom may be difficulty with word understanding, especially when their’s background noise.  People with a high frequency loss, are able to hear loud sounds, like vowels or noise, almost as clearly as someone with normal hearing. These are the low frequency sounds.  But, high-frequency sounds are softer sounds, (like woman’s voices and consonants).  If you “hear but don’t understand,” these frequencies (also known as pitch) will need to be much louder before you can hear them.  In speech, the vowel sounds (A, E, I, O and U) are low in pitch while consonant sounds like S, F, Th, S,V, K, P, are high in pitch. Think of the keys of a piano; we go from low pitch to high pitch. 

Being able to hear low pitch sounds tells your brain that speech is present, but it’s the consonant sounds that give speech meaning.  These sounds  help you distinguish one word from another. Without being able to hear the differences between consonants, words like “cat” and “hat,” “show” and “throw,”are hard to differentiate when you have a high frequency hearing loss. This is why people “hear, but not understand” what is being said.  When there’s background noise, or several people are talking at once, it is  nearly impossible to follow the conversation. People with an untreated  hearing loss may begin to avoid certain social situations or public places they once enjoyed, because interacting with others is too difficult.  It can be painful to lose special times with people that are important to you.  Initially, you may think that others didn’t enunciate, or that the place itself had gotten noisier than it used to be.  Yet, it could’ve been a hearing loss waiting for you to acknowledge it.

It’s important to recognize that family members, friends and work colleagues, can get frustrated and feel you that aren’t listening to them when they speak to you. Your spouse may accuse you of having “selective hearing.”  Sometimes, you may answer questions inappropriately or miss the punch lines of jokes. Other times, because you are having trouble hearing, you may “smile and nod” when someone speaks to give the impression you are listening when in fact, you do not understand what was just said.  Untreated hearing loss can hurt and even destroy relationships with friends, family, spouses and children.  Untreated hearing loss can have a negative effect on your career and your daily life without you even knowing that it is happening!  Get tested today!