If you have a hearing issue, it might be a problem with your ear’s ability to conduct sound or your brain’s ability to process signals or both depending on your exact symptoms.
Age, overall wellness, brain function, and the physical makeup of your ear all play a role in your ability to process sound. You might be dealing with one of the following kinds of hearing loss if you have the annoying experience of hearing people talk but not being able to understand what they are saying.
Conductive Hearing Loss
When we tug on our ears, continuously swallow, and say over and over to ourselves with growing aggravation, “something’s in my ear,” we could be experiencing conductive hearing loss. Problems with the middle and outer ear like fluid in the ear, earwax buildup, ear infections, or damage to your eardrum all diminish the ear’s ability to conduct sound to the brain. Depending on the severity of problems going on in your ear, you could be able to make out some individuals, with louder voices, versus hearing partial words from others talking in normal or lower tones.
Sensorineural Hearing Loss
Unlike conductive hearing loss, which impacts the middle and outer ear, Sensorineural hearing loss impacts the inner ear. Sounds to the brain can be stopped if the auditory nerve or the hair like nerves are injured. Voices might sound slurred or unclean to you, and sounds can sound as either too low or too high. If you cannot differentiate voices from background noise or have a hard time hearing women and children’s voices in particular, then you may be experiencing high-frequency hearing loss.
