Baby Boomers
Becoming Hard of Hearing -
Getting Older, Listening Harder
 Courtesy of the
Hearing Foundation of Canada
Aging baby boomers may think everyone is mumbling, but what they may not want to admit is that they are becoming hard of hearing.
Getting older, listening harder.
An estimated three million Canadians have some form of hearing loss, with increasing numbers of aging baby boomers joining their ranks for one big reason - they have progressively damaged their hearing by exposure to loud noises. And they have grown up in an increasingly noisy world.
"It’s a cumulative thing. There are hairs inside the inner ear that get damaged by exposure to loud noise over the years," says Brenda Carson, development manager of The Hearing Foundation of Canada, a fund-raising and awareness-raising foundation based in Toronto.
"And more boomers are starting to realize they are losing a bit of their hearing. That’s why we want to get the message out on hearing loss prevention, so that teens can be aware of it," she said.
"It’s a disability that people don’t pay a lot of attention to because it’s invisible," she said.
"It’s very hard for us to get teens to understand the impact of noise on their hearing. They blast away with CD plays, and even though we tell them [not to], they don’t really pay attention. They are very hard to reach. I don’t think they take it seriously. They feel invincible, and I think that boomers thought the same thing."
And boomers in particular feel a stigma about wearing a hearing aid device "because it says you’re getting old," Carson noted. The newest hearing aids on the market are targeted at aging boomers with inconspicuous devices, and even a disposable hearing aid "so they can get used to the idea of wearing a hearing aid," Carson observed.
Keith Christopher, an Ottawa-based speech-language pathologist and executive director of the Canadian Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists, says most of the assault on our ears comes from the noisy world in which we live.
"It’s our environment that does it."
Anyone even living in a quiet environment will lose hearing with aging. It’s called presbycusis, and it’s a normal phenomena. But how much hearing loss a person experiences depends on the person and their extent of exposure to loud sounds.
"You will see people who are involved with bands, loud ones, who will lose their hearing much quicker than others. The more loudness you are exposed to, the quicker on average your hearing will deteriorate," Christopher said.
"Hearing loss is a terrible loss because we live in a very auditory world. We need language. Hearing loss isolates people. The worst thing about it is that it’s insidious. You don’t notice it until you realize you can’t function in groups, for example."
One of the first signs boomers will notice is just that - when they are part of a large group or meeting, they have trouble hearing an individual, he said.
"Normally a person can take in ambient noise and still hear a person talk," he said.
Notice, he said, how seniors tend to sit in small groups, not big groups, in retirement and nursing homes. "They can’t distinguish individual from group noises" in a crowd.
Other signs of hearing loss that boomers will notice include needing to turn up the volume on the telephone and television.
"The problem with hearing loss is that it’s not just a matter of loudness. You are not able to discriminate among sounds, so making it louder doesn’t always solve the problem," Christopher said, adding that the association offers a Web site http://www.casipa.ca for anyone with speech or hearing problems.
Audiologists’ services for testing of hearing and fitting of hearing devices are already in high demand, and the aging baby boomers who notice their hearing loss will only increase the demand, notes Lori Montcalm, an audiologist in private practice, Audiology and Hearing Aid Services, in Burlington, Ont.
"I will do hearing tests, take a case history, do counselling and talk about how the hearing loss affects their lifestyle and what needs to be done in order to remedy that," said Montcalm. "Someone who works for a big corporation and goes from board meeting to a small meeting to a shareholders’ meeting will have significantly different hearing concerns than someone who is at home watching TV," she said.
Hearing aid devices are fitted according to those needs, she said. Cost for a hearing aid can range from $800 to $2,000. Digital, completely-in-the-ear (termed CIC) hearing aids are the top of the scale, she said. "It’s completely in the ear so its virtually invisible. Someone would have to be looking down your ear to see it," she said.
Baby boomers aged 50 and up who grew up with amplified music are showing up at her office more and more, she noted. Montcalm, an audiologist for 12 years, said her patients were mostly seniors a decade ago.
The aging baby boomers typically, are noticing they have difficulty hearing in a noisy environment like a cocktail party. "They’re straining to hear, to understand what’s being said. Even more so, they notice that people are mumbling - when in fact, the trouble is that they’re not hearing well."
About 20 per cent of the general population over the age of 50, and 40 per cent of those over the age of 65, have significant hearing loss, she said. "Hearing impairment or loss haunts us all."
Montcalm urges anyone who suspects hearing loss not to wait to seek professional help.
"The longer the hearing loss has been there without treatment, the more difficult it is to successfully fit the person with an amplification device because the brain gets used to not hearing those sounds. The longer they go without remediation, the more the brain adapts to not hearing certain sounds. Then, when we reintroduce the sounds, it takes longer for the brain to readapt to hearing sounds it hasn’t heard for some time," she said.
"I wouldn’t wait, if I was having hearing difficulties." An audiologist can typically deal with about 15 different hearing aid manufacturers, she said, and while the cost of a hearing aid is not covered by OHIP in Ontario, for example, the provincial Ministry of Health will cover up to 75 per cent of the cost of a hearing aid, once every three years, under it assistive devices program.
Aging baby boomers "don’t want to admit they’re hard of hearing anymore than anyone else does, but the reality is that hearing loss will affect all of us."
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