If you have ARHL, sounds may seem less clear and lower in volume. With ARHL, the speech of others may seem muted, mumbled or slurred. Adults with ARHL generally experience the following symptoms:
– Difficulty separating high-pitched sounds like “s” or “th”.
– Difficulty understanding speech, especially in background noise.
– Male voices become easier to understand than higher frequency woman’s voices.
– Certain sounds may seem too loud.
– Tinnitus (a ringing, roaring, or hissing sound) may develop.
Is ARHL the same for men and women? While men develop high frequency hearing loss, women tend to have more problems with lower frequencies (see the Audiogram, bottom, left). Women with ARHL have more difficulty with low-pitched vowel sounds (o, a, ah, i, e), and men have more problems hearing high-pitched consonant sounds (p, h, g, k, f, s, th, ch, sh).
Since the softer high-pitched consonant sounds carry the meaning of speech, people (especially men) with prominent high-frequency hearing loss often have trouble understanding normal speech, especially in background noise.
The figure (bottom) shows average male and female audiograms of a group of men and women (age range 50-89 years, left), and the progression of ARHL from age 20 to age 60 (right panel). Both figures show the prominance of high frequency hearing loss: the left panel shows that men lose the high frequencies more dramatically than women as they age.