Signs & Symptoms

How We Lose Our Hearing

Changes in our hearing don't typically occur across the board or all at once. Rather, hearing loss is a gradual process that often impacts certain listening frequencies more than it affects others.

Higher frequencies or pitches are the first to go. In human speech, we can still hear vowel sounds (which are lower in pitch) even when consonants (higher in pitch) become inaudible.



As a result, someone with a hearing loss may have trouble telling the difference between words like "fish" and "dish" or "tip" and "bit." That's why many people who experience hearing loss say they can "hear the words, but not understand them."