[CDBacklash]

This is something thats always interested me and I never find a answer to it. You lose hearing as you age or as you damage your ears... Once this has occured is it harder or easier to lose more hearing or is it still the same?
If you have impacted your overall hearing sensitivity or top/bottom ends are rolled off on your hearing (if this occurs?) then are you just as likely to suffer hearing damage at volume x as person with "perfect" hearing?

 

[scompton]

My opinion is that, if you're not careful, hearing loss can accelerate once you've started getting moderate loss. The reason is that you tend to turn the volume up to compensate and that just causes more damage.

My wife is severely hard of hearing and has been since birth. She tends to set volumes very loud. Our telephones have amplifiers on them that enable me to hear both sides of the conversation from 10 feet away.

 

[CDBacklash]

I was born deaf and took up piano and have since had surgery that restored my hearing (hooray), though at reduced levels to other people (and slightly offbalanced). Just wondering for my sake, and also if each ear will degrade differently.
When listening for large amounts of time (i.e. > 12 hours where almost any volume is conisdered unsafe) i find that only the left ear will experience even any slight discomfort (never any tinnitus) which could be due to the sound or the cheap ear buds I am currently not enjoying. I hear slightly better (louder) from the left so im wondering if this will cause them to even out (which I am willing to gamble because i find the imbalance quite annoying), but dont want to cause my right ear to degrade as much ro at all if possible.

On that matter, has your wifes hearing gotten significantly worse recently? Theres got to be a reason why the top frequencies go first (meaning that lower frequencies must be harder to lose) and so this is where a lot of the curiosity comes from.
Cheers.

 

[scompton]

My wife has CP so was born deaf. And since it's nerve damage there's not much that can be done. Her hearing has deteriorated over the last few years, but I think it's more age related than anything else. Her audiograph looks normal up to around 400-500 Hz where it drops to -90dB. To damage her hearing more would require extremely loud noise, more than what you get from turning the volume up on a TV.

She tends to avoid noisy environments because she never learned to ignore sound and loud background noise stresses her out faster than other people. She also relies on lip reading and even the best lip readers can only pick up 30% so she needs to be able to hear voices to help the lip reading. A lot of background noise keeps her from being able to do this.

I was just thinking about her turning things up to hear it and thinking that people who have mild hearing loss might tend to do the same thing unconsciously. And that could probably accelerate mild high end hearing loss.

It's really just something I thought about in response to your OP, but it makes sense to me.

 

[CDBacklash]

Hm, your wife has a very interesting story

.
I can lip read because I was deaf for probably 4 years or so... I'm not sure where you got 30%. If they are people I know, or I understand their accent perfectly I can lipread probably 80% of what they are saying, but i have much less success on people who have different accents or just move their lips differently. If your wife suffers a -90dBFS (where FS = natural hearing level) above 500 it must really be quite difficult for her, because 500 is pushing upper bass/lower mids.
In any case I am most glad to have my hearing back. Sound is a beautiful thing. Be sure to give my regards to your wife for her wonderful story

She must be a very strong woman