If you have a hearing problem, it may be something wrong in your ear’s ability to conduct sound or your brain’s ability to process signals or both depending on your specific symptoms.

Your ability to process sound is influenced by a number of variables such as general health, age, brain function, and genetics. You might be dealing with one of the following types of hearing loss if you have the annoying experience of hearing people speak but not being able to comprehend what they are saying.

Conductive Hearing Loss

You may be suffering from conductive hearing loss if you have to continuously swallow and tug on your ears while saying with growing annoyance “There’s something in my ear”. The ear’s ability to conduct sound to the brain is diminished by issues to the middle and outer ear such as wax buildup, ear infections, eardrum damage, and buildup of fluid. You may 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

In contrast to conductive hearing loss, which impacts the middle and outer ear, Sensorineural hearing loss impacts the inner ear. Sounds to the brain can be blocked if the auditory nerve or the hair like nerves are damaged. Voices might sound slurred or unclean to you, and sounds can come across as either too high or too low. If you can’t distinguish voices from background noise or have a hard time hearing women and children’s voices in particular, then you might be suffering from high-frequency hearing loss.