instruction: hello doctor I am a man in my early twenties that started using hearing aids about a year ago I am very happy with this it has really changed my life just recently I started reading up a bit more and now I feel very confused and weird about it all the thing is I was told I had a mild mid frequency hearing loss when I actually look at my audiometry test it shows that as well but my hearing is barely within the range of being considered a hearing loss reading around I found out that most people with such a mild loss can mostly hear fine and do not need hearing aids when I read about what my hearing loss is supposed to be like I do not relate I relate way more to the explanations of what moderate hearing loss sounds and feel like and hearing aids help me a lot when I do not wear my hearing aids it sounds to me like listening to people talking through a door I rely a lot on lip reading if I cannot wear my hearing aids phone conversations were almost impossible before I got them I just cannot make my hearing loss make sense with my actual experience with hearing so I have been wondering what causes me to feel like I hear so bad when my hearing is just slightly below the normal range I should say that I have tinnitus as well sometimes quite a lot so that maybe factors into it too recently I began to wonder whether the reason I hear so much worse compared to other people with my level of hearing loss is that I have add and ptsd which makes it so hard to focus do you think this is a possibility or could it simply be that I handle my hearing loss worse than others I just do not understand why I experience hearing speech as so difficult and why I am so dependent on hearing aids when my hearing loss is technically very mild
output: hi let me tell you a statement which explains it perfectly the ear receives the sound but interpretation of sound happens at the brain so many a times with mild hearing loss speech perception is low moreover you have tinnitus too I hope you have fitted with digital programmable computerized programmable hearing aids if yes it amplifies exactly the same as required in each frequency no need to worry about it by the way avoid caffeinated drinks tea coffee alcohol and avoid noisy situations as much as possible puretone is used in the test in which you got the result mild mid frequency hearing loss pure tone audiometry but in day to day life you are not listening to pure tones right it is speech so pure tone audiometry and speech audiometry should be done and correlated if that would have been done then you must have a clear picture of your problem my honest suggestion is to use the hearing aids so as not to worsen the condition if you stop using it that may cause further deterioration