Why can I hear some quiet environmental sounds, but speech is hard to understand?
Can you hear birds, footsteps, and the hum of the fridge, yet you struggle to follow conversations, especially in groups or noisy places?
This is a very common experience as speech is fast and complex and requires your brain to work much harder to separate voices from background noise. Environmental noise, however, is made up of one or two simpler sounds, which are much easier to process.
When you begin to lose your hearing, your brain doesn’t receive the information it needs and has to work overtime to fill in the gaps, often without you realising it. This extra effort can affect how tired you feel, how well you concentrate, and how connected you feel to the people around you.
If this sounds familiar, we recommend seeing an audiologist as soon as possible. To book an Ear360 assessment, please call our team on 0800 737 662.
It’s also worth reading about why some speech is hard to follow and hearing speech over background noise. You can browse the Hearing Health category page for more.
