I’m 39 and got hearing 3 yrs ago (CIC).Mild loss 30-35 range)…wore them for a while and then only in social areas where I was having trouble. Skip to last year or so wearing them more and more. Went For hearing test this past week and mild hearing Loss was gone to moderate loss and roughly 45-55 decibel loss across the board. WR score went from 98%in both ears to 68% and 84% at 75db. Worst part to see as my soft speech test CID W-22 was at 20% and 28%…dr told me I would need to be aided and advised receiver in canal. So was really apologetic about my loss that made me scared. That and she said for rest of life I would need hearing aids full time - “no question”…some questions
anyone else ever have something similar?
are they strong chances this will keep progressing?
i asked if possibility I could go deaf and was told that “we will monitor you closely over next few years and all will hopefully settle…not very convincing
As we get older our hearing get worse, the more we are around loud noise our hearing gets worse, then some of us just have bad genes and our hearing get worse. My hearing loss was noticed when I was about 29, it was mild loss at the time, I am now 73 and my hearing loss goes from mild to sever to moderately sever going from low frequencies to high frequencies. With my worse loss in the middle frequencies. I am sure my hearing loss will only get worse.
@Johnmurphy Definitely understand your fears, I’ve gone through something similar and then some but over a matter of a year or so. It’s understandably scary. Did they recommend getting checked out by an ENT, perhaps an MRI or CT to rule out other things that may be impacting your hearing? Do you have any conditions like arthritis, diabetes, are you a smoker or have high blood pressure? Noise exposure at work?
Welcome to the forum.
Your situation is similar to a large percentage of us on the forum. To answer your questions, yes, it’s possible.
From experience it’s best to wear your aids all the time. This keeps your brain active concerning speech. It’s possible that when you stopped wearing the aids you have is why your word recognition went down so rapidly.
Hang in there. You have come to a great place to learn about your hearing loss and hearing aids.
I really don’t know. It feels like this is progressing as I know I had better hearing 12 months ago then today. As I try find stuff on line about progressive SNHL they mention cochlear in plants and possibly getting a step ahead on sign language. Even though I’m really upset where I’m at - I’d rather know now the chances of progression and typical time frames - so I can deal with it and move on.
I’m probably over reacting but seems to be a lot happen in a short time.
No mention of scans and luckily have no health issues (except now moderate hearing loss!!!) and just trying to get some typical direction it goes so I can deal with it The best to suit my position and possibly future one!!
Nobody knows, but I wouldn’t expect your hearing loss to progress rapidly. You’ve had maybe a 15-20 dB loss over 3 years or so. I don’t think it will keep up at that rate. From what you said it sounds like you went awhile where you weren’t wearing them much. During that time your brain lost some ability to make sense of certain sounds because it wasn’t “hearing” them. Then your hearing got enough worse where you started hearing them again. Things were louder, but certain sounds still weren’t making sense. It feels rather sudden and like you’re going to be deaf in a couple of years but I think that’s very unlikely. Although my loss is different than yours, mine has been progressing over 16 years and I feel that I hear pretty well with hearing aids and even get by remarkably well on the rare occasions I don’t wear them. Try to spend time in the present instead of worrying about what you have little control over.
@johnmurphy I’m with @mdb here no one can say what will happen with your hearing loss particularly when there’s no clear outside influence. I did forget to ask about family history, that’s always something to keep in mind. Get your new hearing aids, wear them, practice listening to things you’re familiar with like audiobooks and that’ll help get your word recognition working better (the same kind of rehab cochlear implant patients do can help anyone; check out Angel Sounds). It’s going to be impossible, for a while, not to worry, but try not to. The best thing you can do though is wear your hearing aids, take notes on how they’re working and how they’re not, and provide that to your audiologist to help with tuning.
Maybe she was actually being apologetic about what you describe as your reluctance to wear your CIC hearing aids. Perhaps she just wanted to tell you with your loss, that you really need to wear your HA’s full-time, especially now with further loss progression. And as to recommending RIC vs. your previous CIC, you get a lot more features out of RIC/BTE HA’s. A number of users have remarked that sometimes even with very colorful HA shells, although they themselves may be very self-conscious about wearing HA’s, others often take little note of BTE devices, and with all the young’uns wearing ear buds these days, folks may just write off whatever you’re wearing as some new high-tech form of earbud.
The other thing that you don’t mention about your life style is how are you managing noise in your life? Do you use power tools? Do you ride a motorcycle at highway speeds? Do you like to go to rock concerts or listen to music at very high volume in your car or via headphones? Do you like to hunt or go to gun ranges? Play with firecrackers on the Fourth of July? I presume with your hearing loss and your awareness, you’re looking out for preserving your remaining hearing. But carpenters in their 20’s, for instance, usually suffer the hearing loss of more aged people in their 50’s from all the racket of their work.
Saying a little bit more about your hearing lifestyle and also posting your audiogram might help us understand the nature of your hearing loss better. A lot of us (like me!) can look back into our past and identify things that if we’d known more about the potential for hearing loss, we wouldn’t have done at the time. Just looking for more context for your loss, not suggesting anything else.
For example, for 7 years or so of my life, I rode NYC subways. Sometimes the noise was so painfully loud, I’m sure I must have started losing a bit of hearing there!
Even the audi will have problems trying to predict what, if any progression you will experinece. Wear your hearing aids! All.The.Time!!! I have been on this roller coaster for 40 years. My loss stabilized about 10 years ago. Now my word recognition has decided to take a nose dive (over the last 5 years or so). I hear ok in quiet with only 2 people, but that is better than some here. When you order your new hearing aids, get blue tooth if you can. Streaming has allowed me to use the phone and watch tv again…Best wishes! Avoid noise when you can, and use protection when you can’t avoid noise…
I’ve had roughly the same experience in terms of hearing decline. Don’t fear full time HA use. And, yes, for a while it will take some time to re-educate your brain to understand what you are hearing. The decline has deprived your sound-processing circuits of information and they need to relearn.
I’ve worn hearing aids now in excess of 20 years (I’m 71 with declining hearing) and with each new set I marvel and the sounds I’m hearing again. I suspect your hearing will settle down and now fall as precipitously, though I claim no special expertise other than my own experience.
Depends on whether you have a condition like hypercholestemia. A brother-in-law had a familial condition (I think both his brother and his father had heart attacks young, too) and he started taking statins at least in his early 40’s and has been on them for the past 20 years or so.
I think it would be a shame to cause Johnmurphy needless worry. You can find documentation on the Internet to support just about anything. Here’s an article from a hearing clinic (have no idea of its validity) on hearing loss and cardiovascular conditions, perhaps mainly intent on drumming up business:
Johnmurphy, IMHO you should make an appointment with an ear, nose and throat doctor and get some tests done, including an MRI. There might be something going on that could and should be treated. If not, I think it would be reassuring to have some of the scarier possible causes for your loss ruled out.
Assuming a SN (conductive might be reversible) it’s more than we would usually see, but not exceptional: you’re an outlier in terms of age but:
Flat losses are easier to fix.
You’d suit a IIC/CIC if your canals are big enough, plus the manual dexterity needed for the smallest hearing aids.
You’ll adapt better and faster to hearing aids at your age than you would in 30/40 years time.
Get the best you can afford and don’t be put off by feeling a bit bunged up for the first 2-3 weeks. It’s also possible, that’s what’s causing the decline will burn itself out in the medium term.
It’s not a noise or age-related loss, forget getting any meaningful results from a scan, the a bilateral balance of your loss precludes practically every ‘visible’ diagnosis.
I found the following OSHA manual on hearing loss interesting and they even have a section on Conductive Hearing Loss (flat loss across the frequency spectrum) with graphic illustration:
Wikipedia has an extensive listing on causes of conductive hearing loss (although Um_bongo’s post above leaves a flat sensorineural hearing loss in as a possibility):
If one does not like non-descriptive lists, it’s easy to find lots of Internet article on conductive hearing loss causes and possible remedies, e.g., 10 Possible Causes of Conductive Hearing Loss (emphasis at end on an audiologist or ENT exam to differentiate between sensorineural and conductive loss).
There’s a priori probability and posteriori probability. One has to be careful not to assign the former probabilities to the latter, i.e., someone shows up at age 39, who’s collapsed, has shortness of breath, pain in chest, etc., you don’t say, “There’s only a 1 in 100,000 chance it’s a heart attack, on to the next thing.” The presenting case changes the probabilities as to what might be involved.
A simpler example would be: “What are the chances I’m going to get a skin infection?” If you’ve scratched yourself, the answer is a lot higher probability than if not.
So here the presenting case is an unusual apparent conductive hearing loss at a young age.
If you already come from a family line with a history of hyperlipidemia/hypercholestemia (as my brother-in-law) does, the a priori chances of having bad outcomes at a very young age are not the same either: Hyperlipidemia: Symptoms, Causes, Treatment, and More
So we might be worrying the heck out of Johnmurphy here, but I imagine early onset of just about anything is a good excuse these days (now that more and more molecular genetic tools are becoming available) to look into whether family history factors might be coming into play in whatever is causing the presenting symptoms (while not disregarding possible environmental causes in the least).
I guess the important thing that Johnmurphy does not mention are what are his bone conductive losses, if any, across the frequency spectrum. Presumably his audi has done these and the results might be available. And maybe the HT audiogram tools should have a way to represent bone conduction results? (guess they could always be textually listed)
