The Silent Threat

The ear is more delicate than you think. Once the hair cells inside are damaged, they don't regenerate. Hearing loss is also linked to dementia risk.

- Sumiko Tan

And just like that, my house became quieter.

Last week, my mother was fitted with a pair of hearing aids.

Normally, when I take a shower in the bathroom next to her bedroom, I can hear her TV blasting away. But that evening, I could barely hear a thing.

Curious, I went in to check.

"Are you okay? Can you hear the TV?"

"Yes," she said. "It's quite loud."

Her answer made me pause and wonder: Is my own hearing slipping? Her TV was now softer than what I'm used to myself.

At 90, my mother's hearing has served her well, and it's only in the last two or three years that we noticed changes.

It began subtly. She started saying "huh?" more often and we would have to repeat ourselves. Then the volume of her TV started to creep up. "Too loud," I would complain, turning it down.

At family gatherings, she seemed increasingly disengaged, often ignoring questions directed at her.

"I can hear," she once told us, "but I don't know what people are saying or why they are laughing."

Concerned, we finally took her to an ear and throat specialist in July. The diagnosis: age-related hearing loss, medically known as presbycusis. This condition can't be reversed but hearing aids can help manage it.

That's when I learnt that hearing loss isn't just about volume. It is also about speech clarity. Hearing aids don't just make sounds louder, they also make them clearer.

Different sounds have varying loudness and frequency characteristics, explains Ms Leem Pei Shan, a senior principal audiologist at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH).

For example, vowels like "o" and "a" are generally louder and lower in frequency, whereas consonants such as "f," "s" and "th" are softer and higher-pitched.