If you have a hearing issue, it could be something wrong in your ear’s ability to conduct sound or your brain’s ability to process signals or both depending on your precise symptoms.
Your ability to process sound is determined by several variables such as overall health, age, brain function, and genetics. If you have the frustrating experience of hearing a person’s voice but not processing or understanding what that person is saying you may be experiencing one or more of the following types of loss of hearing.
Conductive Hearing Loss
You could be suffering from conductive hearing loss if you have to continuously swallow and tug on your ears while saying with increasing annoyance “There’s something in my ear”. The ear’s ability to conduct sound to the brain is diminished by issues to the outer and middle ear such as wax buildup, ear infections, eardrum damage, and buildup of fluid. You might still be capable of hearing some people with louder voices while only partially hearing people with lower voices depending on the severity of your hearing loss.
Sensorineural Hearing Loss
Where conductive hearing loss can be brought about by outer- and middle-ear issues, Sensorineural hearing loss impacts the inner ear. Injury to the inner ear’s hair-like cells or the auditory nerve itself can stop sound signals from going to the brain. Voices might sound slurred or unclean to you, and sounds can come across as either too high or too low. You’re experiencing high frequency hearing loss, if you have a hard time hearing women and children’s voices or cannot separate voices from the background noise.