Why do we lose our hearing with age?
Inside Health
BBC
4.4 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John is registered blind, and relies on his hearing to get around in his everyday life. But as he has got older, he’s started to notice his hearing deteriorate. He wants to know – is there anything available in between the initial solution of wax removal, and the final destination of hearing aids? He emailed Inside Health to ask James Gallagher to investigate.
James speaks to Nish Mehta, an Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon at Royal National ENT Hospital, to find out how we hear, and learn about the different causes of hearing loss. He then visits UCL Ear Institute to undergo a hearing test with audiologist Dr Hannah Cooper, and see the potential future of hearing tests with Professor Maria Chait, an auditory cognitive neuroscientist.
But hearing in day to day life is not as simple as in a science laboratory. James meets Kevin Munro, Professor of Audiology at the University of Manchester, in a noisy café to discuss hearing aid technologies and learn about their latest advancements.
Presenter: James Gallagher Producer: Hannah Fisher Editor: Holly Squire and Colin Paterson
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Greg Jenna and good news, Your Dead to Me is back for a new series. Here we go. Yes, we'll explore Emperor Nero's notorious reign with Professor Marybeard and Patton Oswald. I would not want my daughter having the remote control, not alone an empire. We'll dissect the decadent life of Philippe Duke-Dor-Leon with Tom Allen. I've often tried to pretend I'm an aristocrat and being very |
| 0:21.7 | quickly knocked down. And there'll be so much more with comedians like Olga Koch, Mike Mosniak and Ria |
| 0:26.5 | I'm excited. You're dead to me, the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Listen first on BBC |
| 0:32.1 | Sounds. Welcome to the Inside Health podcast, I'm James Gallagher. Episodes are released weekly |
| 0:37.4 | wherever you get your podcasts, |
| 0:39.3 | but if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episodes a whole week earlier than anywhere else. |
| 0:45.3 | First on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:47.3 | Hello there, I hope you can hear me loudly and clearly as I'm walking down a busy street. |
| 0:53.3 | There's plenty of traffic as I'm on |
| 0:56.4 | my way to my first interview. Now we're going to be talking about hearing loss because it affects |
| 1:01.7 | 18 million people in the UK. That is a huge number of people and yet it's something that |
| 1:08.3 | all of us kind of ignore a little bit. Even when we know |
| 1:12.4 | that we can benefit from hearing aids, we often delay getting treatment for years. So |
| 1:17.9 | we're going to tackle some of these issues today and it's all been inspired by a question |
| 1:21.9 | from listener John. Here's what he had to say. Hello, I'm John. I am a musician and a sound engineer and I also test websites part-time for their accessibility |
| 1:33.3 | because I'm totally blind. |
| 1:34.3 | And John, you got in touch with Inside Health? |
| 1:37.3 | Yes, I did. |
| 1:38.3 | I emailed you a little while ago. |
| 1:40.3 | I have been thinking for many years that hearing tests don't have the complexity of the sort of tests you get for sight. |
| 1:50.0 | And my hearing is absolutely essential, probably because I'm a musician and a sound engineer, but also for my own navigation day to day, |
| 1:59.0 | and generally keeping me alive really. |
... |
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