Not aging gracefully...

Joined
Jun 5, 2003
Messages
27,885
Location
Apple Valley, California
As I have gotten older I have realized that my hearing is going bad/ changing. I can't hear deep tones. I can't hear a C130 right over my house or a 4 stroke dirt bike turning around at my gate.

But it seems like my high pitch hearing is getting better. I can hear brakes or a belt squealing 2 blocks away or a vacuum leak as soon as the car pulls up even before the hood is opened.

But this morning my wife was talking to a friend on the phone.

Not really paying attention to that I heard a beep and immediately recognized it as a smoke alarm with a dying battery.

Then it beeped again..then a minute later again.

So I set out to find it and put new batteries in it. I could not find it! Went to every room and determined that it was in our den where my wife was.

Started tearing that room up,looked under the couch etc. Somewhere there is a smoke alarm beeping.

This was getting frustrating as I could not find it.

Turns out it was at her friends house and I was hearing it on my wife's phone! Funny thing is that her friend had no idea as she could not hear it in her own house.

But I can hear it 3 rooms away with a phone stuck to my wife's ear!
 
Interesting-I always heard that high pitched hearing was the first to go. I remember being able to hear the high pitched ringing of a CRT flyback transformer (~19 kHz), but that’s long gone at 57.
And I also heard that we lose our close vision. I see great up close. Can't read a street sign @60 ft though
 
I'm sitting here with my 6 day old Costco hearing aid in my left ear. I lost the right one raking leaves Tuesday morning. No big deal, the warranty allows for a free one if you lose them. I'll pick it up when I go in for my 2 wk check up. I love them. My excuse for not getting them was not knowing what they would for my tinnitus. Answer to that is NOTHING. It seems to fade into the background due to the novelty of being able to hear stuff.
 
You might want to get that checked by someone besides a hearing aid dispenser, apparently low frequency loss is rare and has numerous causes besides age. I also have Costco aids going on 3 years. Typical high frequency loss, I was ignoring it for a while but was not gently reminded how hard it was when my bullheaded dad refused to do something about his hearing loss so I got checked and the loss isn't severe but enough to need help. Definitely made a difference and wife isn't disgusted for having to repeat herself. Who knew walking on gravel and crumpling up paper made so much noise? Still almost impossible to understand British accents on TV but so what. Some days I don't know they're in there and others I can't stand them in my ears.
 
I dont have any problem hearing things, even with the tinnitus high pitched noises are still no problem but I have found that I have trouble understanding what women are saying :giggle: . I can hear them fine and I see their mouth moving but the words are all garbled.
 
If you're interested in testing your hearing, here is a simple test, but it does require the use of either high quality full range speakers or good headphones. If all you have is laptop speakers, don't bother as it won't be accurate.



Here is another that also tests low end:


In my mid 40s, I can't hear anything past about 15kHz.

As for my eyesight, things have started going south after I hit 40. I can't read things up close without glasses. Far vision is still fine.

Here is another more detailed hearing test:
 
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And I also heard that we lose our close vision. I see great up close. Can't read a street sign @60 ft though
If you are near sighted to start, you don't really lose your close vision. You do have a hard time seeing things close up when corrected for distance. In contacts, I have monovision. My non-dominant eye has less correction for distance meaning I can still see both close and far. In single vision glasses, I just take them off to read.
 
I have Mouse Blocker Pro on our vehicles. Daughter can hear them easily inside our house. I can only hear them if I am right next to the car. High frequency.

And I have tinnitus. Too much loud rock music in late 1960s and 1970s.
 
My wife tells me my hearing is going. She says it is selective.

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When my mother was in her early 80's, I purchased her a fancy new-fangled digital thermometer. After keeping the tip of it under your tongue for so many seconds, it would emit 3 or 4 loud digital beeps to let you know if was done.

So, I sit across from my mother at the dinner table while she tries it out for the first time and - you guessed it - she sits there with the thermometer in her mouth while it beeps incessantly.

"You planning on taking that thermometer out of your mouth?"

"Is it done?"

"You can't hear that loud obnoxious beeping?"

"What beeping?"

:LOL: Suffice to say, we stuck with the tried-and-true mercury thermometer.
 
I have tinnitus. It really screws with my hearing. Last night my Wife asked me what that squeaking was. I couldn't hear it. She got up and took me over to the dryer. Asked if I could hear it. I couldn't. She was shocked. Took half the load out and said it went away. I would have never known. My hearing is pretty good from 200-7000 kHz
 
my hearing is not great so i will see if an ear cleaning can help as i worked in a dusty dirty trade + noisy too! we all "slide" as we age BUT we can help ourselves sometimes by proper eating + controlling our insulin-weight control + keep moving the best you can. lots of free great info on-line but reader beware lots of BULL as well!
 
Basic advice but go see a doctor, there could be other things going on. I also don't mean the "doctor" at Costco or Sam's Club, these are not physicians / medical doctors (no MCAT), they don't have 20,000+ hours of med school training. See an MD or DO, not an NP or PA (500 -1000hrs) see the real deal and then shop around for hearing aids.

The FDA recently changed the rules about where you can buy professional hearing aids from, which means that prices for hearing aids should drop hopefully due to increased competition for this 90's era technology.

 
As I have gotten older I have realized that my hearing is going bad/ changing. I can't hear deep tones. I can't hear a C130 right over my house or a 4 stroke dirt bike turning around at my gate.

But it seems like my high pitch hearing is getting better. I can hear brakes or a belt squealing 2 blocks away or a vacuum leak as soon as the car pulls up even before the hood is opened.

But this morning my wife was talking to a friend on the phone.

Not really paying attention to that I heard a beep and immediately recognized it as a smoke alarm with a dying battery.

Then it beeped again..then a minute later again.

So I set out to find it and put new batteries in it. I could not find it! Went to every room and determined that it was in our den where my wife was.

Started tearing that room up,looked under the couch etc. Somewhere there is a smoke alarm beeping.

This was getting frustrating as I could not find it.

Turns out it was at her friends house and I was hearing it on my wife's phone! Funny thing is that her friend had no idea as she could not hear it in her own house.

But I can hear it 3 rooms away with a phone stuck to my wife's ear!
That is a good one. I get told by the wife 100 times a day that "YOU NEED A HEARING AID!" It is true I do. But what is crazy though is I will be all the way across the house way in another room (long 4 bedroom house) and she thinks I can hear and converse back and forth at that distance. No one can! The thing is SHE needs a hearing aid also and won't admit or accept the fact. I accept I am broke down and too old already at just 65 which used to seem ancient. Women have a much harder time accepting the creep of older age.
 
That is a good one. I get told by the wife 100 times a day that "YOU NEED A HEARING AID!" It is true I do. But what is crazy though is I will be all the way across the house way in another room (long 4 bedroom house) and she thinks I can hear and converse back and forth at that distance. No one can! The thing is SHE needs a hearing aid also and won't admit or accept the fact. I accept I am broke down and too old already at just 65 which used to seem ancient. Women have a much harder time accepting the creep of older age.

Some years back I had my hearing checked by an Ear, Nose, and Throat Doctor because of a bit of friction like you mentioned.

After testing, he said I had a slight hearing loss in my left ear, but it did not warrant a hearing aid. Mentioned to him how upset my spouse could get sometimes because she felt I couldn't hear very well at all.

He remarked that it was interesting to him that when people see a blind person struggling to make their way, they will usually offer to help. But someone having difficulty hearing is frequently met with anger, or at least indifference.

Just earlier tonight I was trying to have a conversation with a person who would only speak in a whisper in a busy hallway. Could NOT hear her and told her so three times, while moving closer to the point I could have kissed her. Even still I could not understand her, she would not speak louder. I moved on. Could barely understand her at all. There wasn't any point pretending we were conversing.
 
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