Testing, testing

This is a layman’s guide to hearing tests and audiograms. If you've never had your hearing tested before, I’d highly recommend it. It’s kind of fun. Here's what to expect.

When you arrive for your appointment, the audiologist sits you down in a little booth and sticks a pair of headphones on you. They then play a series of tones of varying pitch - all you have to do is press a button whenever you hear a sound. The idea is that they repeat each tone until you can no longer hear it.

Once the test's over you get your audiogram, which is a graph showing how loud each tone needs to be before you can hear it - otherwise known as your threshold for that frequency.

Here's my most recent one from Boots:

The horizontal axis shows a number of frequencies - from very low sounds on the left to very high sounds on the right - and the vertical axis shows the volume in decibels of the softest sound you can hear. Nonsensically, the right ear (with the red markings) appears on the left and the left ear (with the blue markings) appears on the right.

If you have normal hearing, the points on the graph should all be between 0db and 20db, meaning that you can hear all but the very softest sounds.

Anything between 20db and 40db is considered mild hearing loss, meaning you might struggle to hear people talk when there's lots of background noise, or maybe you don't notice the ticking clock that's stopping your partner from sleeping. At this point you may believe that everyone has simultaneously started mumbling.

Between 40db and 70db is considered moderate loss. At this point lots of normal everyday sounds start disappearing, and speech gets difficult to understand unless conditions are absolutely perfect or you're conversing with Brian Blessed.

At the other end of the spectrum, 70-90db is considered severe, meaning that even loud sounds are harder to hear without hearing aids. And finally, anything over 90db is classed as profound. The profoundly hard of hearing can't even hear some sounds others would consider really loud, such as gigs, planes and fire alarms.

Currently I have moderate hearing loss. A couple of frequencies just about nudge into mild, and the worst dips are teetering on the brink of severe.

Helpfully, Boots also include what's known affectionately as the 'speech banana' (the bit with a black outline in the image above), which shows where all the sounds used in speech sit on the audio spectrum. Any marks that fall outside that area indicate bits of speech I struggle to hear at normal conversational levels.

So if I'm not wearing hearing aids you need to help me out!

The most important thing you can do is speak clearly and face me - if I can read your lips I’ve got a much better chance of understanding what you’re saying. So if you’re rooting around in a bag or looking out of the window while you’re talking, chances are I can’t hear you.

This leads to my second request - please don’t cover your mouth! You’d be surprised how many people idly put their hand over their mouth while they’re talking, almost like they’re embarrassed to be contributing or something. I’m not going to delve into the psychology of this, but if you’re worried I’m looking at your Austin Powers teeth, rest assured I’m just trying to understand what you’re saying.

And finally, if I ask you to repeat something, it’s often worth rephrasing it, especially if it’s early on in the conversation and I don’t have a grip on the context. Once I know what we’re talking about, I can usually fill in the blanks when I miss a word or two.