According to the RNID, one in seven people in the United Kingdom have a degree of hearing loss. It is easy to assume that it really only affects the older generation and those born deaf.

But the truth is there are many causes of hearing loss and they can affect anyone - from the very young to the very old.

Ironically, those affected by it are usually the last to notice! For example, one lady's young daughter was having a routine hearing test at school and the lady volunteered to have a hearing test herself to show her daugher, who was a bit nervous about having the headphones on, that there was nothing to be afraid of.

As a result of that test she discovered she had a hearing loss, which from the pattern of the audiogram (i.e. the results of the test), showed that she'd be born with it! But she'd never noticed.

There is an important lesson here...

Although technically the mother had a hearing loss, it hadn't affected her life. Because it hadn't affected her life, she'd never needed to do anything about it. So it wasn't important that she had a hearing loss, it was whether or not it was actually affecting her quality of life.

At Broom Reid & Harris we take a similar approach...

So how can you tell whether you or someone you know has a hearing loss? And if they have, whether or not it's affecting their quality of life? We'll look at that next.

Next subject: How Hearing Loss Affects Someone