Noisy restaurants, muffled voices: How hearing loss creeps up on us [View all]
Loud noise travelled everywhere with Daryl Holmes. When he drove by, you could hear his car radio blaring. At dinner, he shouted. At night, his wife couldnt sleep over the roar of the TV in the loungeroom. Any time she spoke to him from just a few feet away, hed shoot back, What did you say?
Fifty years earlier, hed been driving cranes in the steel industry. Then hed worked in mines. Hed never worn ear protection, despite the cacophony of clangs, rumblings and the odd explosion that were part of a days work. So the signs ought to have been obvious. But by the time he was 73, Daryl had gone years without acknowledging his fading hearing. In fact, people take five years, on average, to get a test after the first signs of trouble. You muddle along because you dont understand the impact, he tells us. I was walking around in sublime ignorance.
At least one in six Australians has a hearing problem. Most are 70 or older, by which age half of people have hearing difficulties. Restaurants become too loud to hear the soft voices of grandchildren. Conversations become stilted and awkward. Our ears are remarkable organs. Damage to their inner workings cant be reversed. That damage can influence other areas of our health too. What were now seeing over the last 10 to 20 years of research is that hearing loss has got such a strong knock-on effect on so many aspects of wellbeing, says Barbra Timmer, president of Audiology Australia.
So how do we hear? What goes wrong with hearing as we age? And how can we get it back?
https://www.theage.com.au/national/noisy-restaurants-muffled-voices-how-hearing-loss-creeps-up-on-us-20250707-p5md5p.html
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