What’s wrong with my hearing?

Hello All,

Sorry I am posting on here, but I feel like I might be able to get answers here. When I apologize it’s because on my hearing none of my hearing loss thresholds fall below 30 db, but I have a hard time hearing in all sorts of situations. I can hear conversation ok, but everything sounds muffled or at 50% volume. I can turn the volume up in my headphones or on my TV and feel like I still strain to hear or don’t feel like anything is loud enough, I can’t hear my phone vibrating on my desk when it’s less than a foot away. I’m really sorry if I’m being petty, but this is a problem since I was 19 and I’m 36 now and it only seems like it’s getting worse over the years. Also, I tried Lyric and another hearing aid and it only seemed to muffle my hearing more.

Thanks,

Zach

Hopefully others can comment as well but I’ve been told by ENT that if a persons original hearing was at -10 dB then a hearing loss of 30 dB is greater then if someone’s original hearing started off at 20 dB. You would notice it more because your original hearing was better. Hope that makes sense?

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Perhaps if you’ve been seeing an audiologist and a ENT specialist, you’ve already run through a whole gamut of possibilities, but here’s an encyclopedic list.

Muffled Hearing in Ears: Symptoms, Causes, and Treatments (healthline.com)

Which thresholds are at 30 though? 500-2000 Hz?

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And what is your word recognition score?

It might be that you can hear pure tones, or better said, feel it or hear distorted, but that’s far from good enough to have good word comprehension, because spoken words are so much more complex than pure tones used for test.

And our brain can struggle do decipher the proper information out of it.

WRS gives a bit more information.
Also, some sentence in noise test result will give additional information.

So far I’ve never heard about someone’s hearing getting better with age, so yeah, getting worse is unfortunately expected.

If you can find a fitter who will do proper testing.
https://drcliffaud.com/ > resources > checklist will give you good overview of what’s needed for proper hearing assesment
And from that with good fitter you’ll get the information what’s wrong, and if it can be helped.

For example, if you have something like this:

then unfortunately, no aids can really help with that, because no aid can repair cochlea, if the damage is there and reason
cochlear implant can skip cochlea, but you have to have completely useless hearing to qualify for it
so, if you hear too good for CI, and too bad for aids to be of any help, join the club, grab the rum and let’s share stories :slight_smile:

Thanks for your interest and advice. I have been slow to seek further help with the COVID. We hope to get our second shot in a few weeks so my comfort level should improve. Not the only thing I have put off due to COVID. Like most of us.