Understanding Presbycusis: The Most Common Age-Related Hearing Condition

As we get older, the hair cells in our ears age with us and slowly lose functionality as a result. If you’ve been struggling to hear voices in conversations or find yourself turning the TV volume up louder and louder, you might be dealing with an age-related hearing loss yourself.

However, you don’t have to deal with presbycusis alone. With the help of professional hearing care and advanced technology, you can rejoin the conversations you’ve been missing out on and hear the life you love once more.

What Causes Presbycusis, and How Do I Know If I Have It?

Presbycusis is incredibly common because it happens to a large percentage of us as we age. As our bodies get older and functionality of different systems declines, including the auditory system, age-related hearing loss can happen without us noticing.

Some individuals are also genetically predisposed to dealing with presbycusis; if your parents or grandparents dealt with hearing challenges as they got older, there’s a high chance that you will, too. Repeated loud noise exposure can also lead to presbycusis.

Symptoms to watch out for include the gradual loss of high-frequency sounds, difficulty understanding speech in noisy environments, and sounds feeling muffled or far away.

How Presbycusis Impacts Quality of Life

Age-related hearing loss doesn’t just affect your hearing – it affects your mental well-being and overall quality of life.

Communication challenges between loved ones can lead to feelings of frustration or isolation, especially when you’re trying to navigate conversations in busy and overwhelming spaces.

Untreated hearing loss has long been linked to various other health conditions, including cognitive decline and an increased risk of dementia.

But with the help of professional, personalized hearing care, you can avoid these risks and negative effects and get back to hearing your life with full clarity.

How Do You Diagnose and Treat Presbycusis?

You can understand your current range of hearing and what your ears need to succeed with a comprehensive hearing assessment.

Our diagnostic assessment will include various tests to see what’s going on in your ears and how our team of experts can assist with treating your age-related hearing loss.

There are various treatment options for age-related hearing loss, including communication strategies between patients and families and assistive listening devices for bolstered amplification in busy spaces, but the most common way to address hearing loss is with hearing aids.

While many shy away at the idea of hearing aids, imagining the old, bulky devices of the past, advanced hearing aid technology has come far beyond its predecessors with fancy features, sleek designs, and more compact technology that is practically invisible.