The Doctor’s Surgery
Have you found recently that actors and announcers, especially on the radio or television, are mumbling? Is it tiring to follow chatter at a dinner party? Can you still hear everything your contemporaries say, provided that it is in a one-to-one conversation, but are you deaf to the witticisms of grandchildren, or women with a high-pitched voice?
The BBC’S determination to abandon ‘received pronunciation’ has brought a wide variety of accents on air. Regional accents, or the speech of foreign announcers, may not always be understood by listeners from other parts of the country or from abroad. Listeners may then accuse the broadcaster of mumbling but, all too often in older people, this is not a result of the BBC’S inclusivity campaign. Instead, it can be an early sign of increasing deafness.
The more difficult someone finds it to follow a conversation, especially when there is background noise or many people are talking, the more they will withdraw from society and the lonelier they will become. The older a person, the more likely it is he or she will have a hearing loss that is inconveniencing them and those they come into contact with in their domestic, social or professional life. Forty per cent of those over fifty have significant hearing loss and, by the time they reach seventy, more than seventy per cent will be affected.
The number of people suffering from hearing loss varies from country to country. In the UK, more than eleven million people – one in six of the population – are thought to have some sort of hearing loss. This is expected to increase to fifteen million within a generation. Between 900,000 and a million people would be described by audiologists as deaf. In America, one in three people between 65 and 74 has a significant hearing loss. In nearly half of those over 75, this is severe enough to be classified as deafness.
Hearing loss, can however, occur in any age group. In younger people, so-called conductive hearing loss is likely to be the result of problems that include infections of the outer or middle ear, blocking the ear canals and affecting the transmission of sound. If this is a chronic or recurrent problem, the person, often a child, may suffer from sticky fluids collecting in the middle ear – so-called glue ear. Conductive deafness may be caused by such mundane troubles as excessive wax or even by damage to the drum. The ear canals may also suffer from trauma. It is a reasonable bet that the ears of one or two of the forwards battling it out in the Six Nations rugby competition will have suffered damage.
The other group of hearing problems are those described as sensorineural. These are related to troubles with the inner ear or the nerves that transmit sounds from the inner ear to the brain.
In older people, sensorineural problems predominate. The deafness may have been instigated by exposure to excessive noise in earlier life – loud music, gunfire, heavy machinery or even the constant exposure to noise from lawnmowers, drills or saws.
Age-related hearing loss, technically known as presbycusis, isn’t just the result of ever-increasing conductive or sensorineural causes. The efficiency of all our senses declines as we grow older. Our sense of balance, eyesight, hearing, appetite and a host of other senses diminish with age. The hearing mechanism is so complex and so delicate that it is not surprising that age deterioration is so prevalent. A few of the hearing conditions can be helped by surgery but most can be helped by hearing aids. One survey suggests that it takes ten years for people to summon up the energy to have their ears tested. There are thousands, possibly millions, of people failing to benefit from hearing aids.
If the BBC announcers seem to be mumbling, the TV seems to be too quiet, or women and children are inaudible, it is time for a hearing test. Age UK Hearing Aids, on 0800 002 9958, will advise.