In the early stages of hearing loss, does a person lose the ability to hear high or low frequencies first?

Hearing, like vision, diminishes as we grow older. When our hearing goes, we don't hear pleasant sounds such as birdsong, and, more seriously, we may not hear things that can harm us. Social relationships may suffer because conversations become tedious, and conflicts may result from misunderstandings of what is being said.

Aside from the obvious, there are some key differences between visual and hearing losses. The first is that much of the hearing loss we experience as we get older is not necessarily related to physical aging: It's due to damage done to our ears over many years by the noisy environments in which we live. A second basic difference is that hearing loss is not nearly as obvious as visual loss. We notice when things look fuzzy or when we can't see anything in our central field of vision. However, we can experience hearing loss without even knowing it, and most of us do.

Hearing loss takes three forms: overall hearing loss, frequency hearing loss and a combination of the two. The term overall hearing loss is often used to describe the situation in which a person needs louder volume in order to hear. This is the type of hearing loss that is more associated with long-term exposure to loud noise.

Frequency hearing loss is also called presbycusis. This loss is associated with actual physical aging. People with presbycusis cannot hear certain frequencies of sound. In general, it is the higher frequencies that are lost first as we age.

Most of the time we suffer losses in both areas as we age, which makes basic things such as everyday conversations troublesome and unpleasant. How do you know if you are experiencing hearing loss? If the hearing loss is significant, it's going to be pretty obvious. But if you are in the early stages, you may be affected, but you are probably not noticing it.

Here are some clues: Do people tell you that you are speaking too loudly or do they run for cover when you turn on the TV? Do you have trouble conversing with others in noisy surroundings? Do you often find yourself asking others to repeat things? Do you have more trouble understanding women's or children's voices? Do you find it helpful to watch people when they talk to you? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be on your way to developing a hearing problem, and a hearing test might be a good idea.

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The cochlea is like a cinnamon bun. If you completely unroll the bun, the low frequencies (from the inside of the bun) are on the left and the high frequencies (from the outside of the bun) are on the right. Since the high frequencies are more exposed on the outside and the low frequencies are more protected on the inside, the high frequencies are frequently the first to go, resulting in what is referred to as a "ski slope" loss. Noise and ototoxic drug exposure as well as viral infection are the most common source of this type of loss. Note that this applies to acquired hearing loss only, congenital hearing losses can be reverse slope (low is bad, high is good) or flat because they frequently have to do with hair cell and ganglion density in the cochlea and overall development of the ear in utero rather than destruction of something that previously functioned.

High first...I dont have an article to back it up but I have heard that is is high frequencies.