Hearing is crucial for your quality of life. Pay attention to your ears! The first signs of a slowly diminishing hearing ability are often difficult to identify – this is because what you no longer hear is initially supplemented by your brain from stored experiences. However, over the long term, it loses the ability to detect and decipher sound signals. Therefore: the earlier hearing loss is identified and corrected, the better. Yet because the usual auditory impressions appear to remain unchanged at first, many people either hardly notice or do not notice the initial signs of decreased hearing over long periods at all and they therefore ignore them.

At first, in most cases, only the high frequencies become steadily quieter, for example, wind rustling or birds chirping – until they finally completely disappear from the usual auditory impression. Thereafter, it becomes more and more difficult to understand speech. Often you can no longer clearly identify high, unvoiced consonants, especially in noisy situations, such as in a crowd of people, and this leads to frequent questions. Because your brain is constantly trying to supplement what is no longer heard, you quickly become tired. Communication becomes exhausting for you. If hearing loss is not treated for a long time, your brain must relearn how to correctly decipher sound signals. This is why hearing experts recommend having hearing ability checked when initial signs appear.