4. It can happen gradually – so gradually you might not even recognize it until someone points it out to you.
5. Mild hearing loss makes hearing soft sounds difficult and hearing clearly in the presence of background noise can be much more difficult than it was in the past.
6. The fact that people with mild hearing loss can do pretty well in most situations makes them much less likely to do something about it.
7. When any of the five senses is altered – whether it’s due to illness, injury or just due to the gold ‘ole “accumulation of birthdays,” the brain reorganizes and adjusts to the alteration
8. In the case of hearing loss – even mild hearing loss, researchers* found that the brain’s size was actually smaller in the hearing areas
9. This smaller brain size suggests deterioration in the hearing center, which has been linked to difficulty understanding complex speech like what you would find in a noisy environment.