More young people suffering from early onset hearing loss, expert says

AUSTIN, Texas - According to research by the World Health Organization (WHO), more than a billion young adults could be at risk of hearing loss. 

Whether you are at work, on a long plane ride, or at the gym, many of us are guilty of plugging in a pair of headphones and pumping up the volume. 

WHO believes prolonged and excessive exposure to loud music and recreational sounds may be causing this troubling trend. 

Geovany Gamez, an audiologist from the Hills Hearing Center in Lakeway, joined FOX 7 Austin's Rebecca Thomas to discuss.

Rebecca Thomas: Geovany, are you seeing an increase in younger clients needing your services? And if so, what are they complaining about?

Geovany Gamez: We have seen an increase in younger ones searching audiology services and typically this will be with concerns of ringing in their ears, tinnitus or even a wax impact station in their ear.

Rebecca Thomas: Talking about hearing loss. Once you lose your hearing, is it curable or have you lost a certain part of your ability to hear for good?

Geovany Gamez: Well, there are two types of hearing loss. We see there is a conductive hearing loss, an essential neuro hearing loss. The conductive part of the hearing loss we can address and bring some of that hearing back. The sensorineural hearing loss is one of the ones that we do need treatment for. And so we have treatments such as hearing aids and noise treatment to be able to help bring those sounds back.

Rebecca Thomas: Netflix interesting says that the number of people using subtitles has more than doubled since 2017. What do you think a trend like that says about the state of early onset hearing loss?

Geovany Gamez: I think it's fair to say that most of our grandparents didn't have many of these services in their time. And so nowadays the use of headphones, seeing foreign movies on Netflix and such that have accents will affect our ability to understand what's being said. So sometimes we might be guilty of saying, Well, I can turn it up but not understand what I'm hearing. And so we attribute that to the ability to understand speech.

Rebecca Thomas: So, you know, when you have these headphones in, the earbuds, what have you, you know, a lot of people crank it up. How loud is too loud? When does it become unsafe?

Geovany Gamez: Well, thankfully, today we have a lot of very nice cues we can use. Some of us wear devices such as Apple watches that might help us remind ourselves, Hey, maybe I need to turn it down a little. The long term exposure to loud noises is really what causes hearing loss. And so we want to be careful with that. We don't want to keep our sounds too loud. We want to be careful with how much sound we're introducing in our ear.

Rebecca Thomas: All right. Let's talk about hearing loss and the warning signs. How often should people get their hearing checked?

Geovany Gamez: We recommend you check your hearing at least once a year, especially if you're in the age group of 50 and older. You have a 25% likelihood to have a hearing loss. And so it is important to reach out to a medical professional to seek this type of treatment and seeing whether you have a hearing loss. Now, some of the signs you might have are feeling like people mumble or feeling like those around you are not speaking as clear as you would want them to. Restaurants here in Austin. A lot of folks will come in and say, well, I can't hear in restaurants. If that's the case for you, you want to go and have your hearing checked.