Hearing loss

Music’s power to communicate can fade with age as a significant portion of the population loses its ability to hear.

People have been talking about the recent deaths of David Bowie and Prince. There are plenty of older Americans who have trouble hearing both those discussions and the music created by those auditory artists. For them, the music is slowly dying.

Statistics reveal a staggering number of us are affected by hearing loss.

Half of Americans age 75 or older have disabling hearing loss, according to The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. A quarter of Americans between 65 and 74 have disabling hearing loss. The figure falls to 8.5 percent for ages 55 to 64 and 2 percent for ages 45 to 54.

Aging obviously contributes to hearing problems.

Still, about 15 percent of American adults, ages 18 or above, report some trouble hearing. Based on standard hearing examinations, the NIDCD said, 13 percent of people in the U.S. age 12 or older — 30 million citizens — have some hearing loss in both ears. A recent study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins Hospital concluded that the number could be even higher. That study used the World Health Organization’s definition for hearing loss — not being able to hear sounds of 25 decibels or less during regular speech — and estimated that as many as 48 million could have hearing loss in at least one ear.

“This gives us the real scope of the problem for the first time and shows us how big of a problem hearing loss really is,” says study leader Frank Lin, M.D. 

Some people are born with hearing disorders, but exposure to excessive noise is a leading cause of hearing loss. The institute estimates that about 15 percent of Americans between the ages of 20 and 69 have high-frequency hearing loss caused by exposure to loud noise at work or during leisure activities.

Great strides have been made in improving ear protection in the workplace. Many workers who decades ago toiled in loud environments suffered severe hearing loss because of that exposure. Laws today require employers to provide adequate ear protection to shield workers from exposure to loud noises. Such regulations didn’t exist a few decades ago, and many retirees can’t hear well because of workplace noise.

“Our ears are under siege by a number of potential factors,” Dr. John Niparko, director of Otology, Audiology and Neurotology at Johns Hopkins Hospital, told the Hearing Loss Association of America. “The most common forms of hearing loss relate to a combination of the aging affect and exposure to noise.”

Leisure activities today probably offer more threat to future hearing loss than the modern workplace. Think rock concerts, music festivals, motorcycles, car stereos, headphones and ultra-bass speakers that make guts quiver. All are enjoyed by many. But the long-term effects of high-volume fun can make communication — both in speech and in music — difficult later in life.

“In some cases it can be a relatively mild amount of sound,” Niparko says. “But (it’s) the fact that it is continuous over many hours in a given day for so many young adults in our society…our ears are being barraged by an ongoing level of sound.”

And unfortunately, since hearing loss itself is permanent, taking steps to avoid it altogether is the best thing we can do.

“The unfortunate thing about hearing loss is that it’s not reversible,” says Dave Hutcheson, publications editor with the Hearing Loss Association of America. “You can get a pair of glasses, and that will correct your vision. But a hearing aid will only help you hear better — it won’t correct the condition. Prevention is without a doubt the best medicine, which means hearing protection at concerts, hearing protection on the job, turn down the volume on the earbuds.”

The Traverse City, Michigan Record-Eagle contributed to this story.