One question that I hear often in the clinic is “But my hearing is normal for my age, right?” When we test your hearing, we test frequencies from 250 Hz up to 8000 Hz.
The human ear can hear actually from 20 Hz to 20 000 Hz which is a much wider range than the frequencies we test. We test the frequencies that are important to hear speech sounds.
Each phoneme, or speech sound, can be plotted on an audiogram somewhere within the frequency range that we test. We call it a speech banana.
If your hearing loss falls below the normal hearing range it means that you are not hearing some or all of the speech sounds.
An age-related hearing loss is common and a survey from the United States suggested more than half of baby boomers are reporting difficulties hearing.
An age-related hearing loss happens gradually over time and usually begins to affect the high frequencies first. This type of hearing loss is expected to cause difficulty hearing in crowds,
soft-spoken people and can make speech sound muffled.
So, there is no such thing as normal hearing for your age; your hearing is either within the normal range or you are missing some speech sounds.