Hearing loss after 50: the health check busy owners never book

Most business owners over 50 are diligent about the things they can see. The accounts are filed on time, the van is serviced, the boiler has its annual check. Yet one of the most useful health checks available — free, quick and painless — is the one hardly anyone books: a hearing test.

That is not because hearing does not matter to us. It is because hearing loss is unusually good at hiding. It rarely arrives with a bang. It creeps in over years, and the person living with it is very often the last to know.

How common is it?

More common than most people assume. According to RNID, the national charity for people who are deaf or have hearing loss, more than 18 million people in the UK — around one in three of us — are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus. Over half of people aged 55 and over have some degree of hearing loss, and that rises to almost 80% of people over 70.

RNID also estimates that around 8 million people could benefit from hearing aids, but only around 3 million use them. And it can take people up to ten years to get their hearing checked after problems first appear.

Put simply, if you are in your fifties or sixties and have never had your hearing tested, the odds that something has already changed are higher than you might think.

Why it creeps up on you

Age-related hearing loss usually affects the higher frequencies first. Those are the sounds that carry the crisp consonants of speech — the difference between “fifteen” and “fifty”, or “sit” and “fit”. Vowels, which are lower and louder, stay audible for longer. So you still hear that someone is talking; you just catch slightly less of what they actually said.

The brain is remarkably good at filling the gaps. It guesses from context, from lip movements, from what it expects to hear. That works well in a quiet room with one person. It works far less well in a busy restaurant, on a crackly phone line or around a boardroom table where three people talk at once.

Because the change is so gradual, it is usually other people who notice first. A spouse remarks that the television is louder than it used to be. A colleague repeats a figure twice. A grandchild gives up and says “never mind”. Each moment is small enough to explain away — they mumble, the line was poor, the room was noisy — until the pattern becomes hard to ignore.

What the research now says about hearing and the brain

There is a more serious reason to pay attention. In 2024 the Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention and care — a major international review of the evidence — identified 14 modifiable risk factors that together may account for nearly half of dementia cases worldwide. Hearing loss was one of the largest of them, alongside high LDL cholesterol, each linked to around 7% of cases.

The Commission also reported that the evidence that treating hearing loss may reduce the risk of dementia is now stronger than before. It recommended that hearing aids be made accessible to people who need them, and that exposure to harmful noise be reduced.

It is important to be careful about what this does and does not mean. It does not mean hearing loss causes dementia, or that a hearing aid is a guaranteed shield. It means that untreated hearing loss is a recognised risk factor, and that addressing it is one of the more practical things within our control. That alone is a good reason to find out where you stand.

The effect on working life

For anyone who still runs a business, sits on a board or manages property, hearing is a working tool. Many of the important moments in a week happen through conversation: negotiating with a supplier, taking instructions from a tenant, following a lender’s terms on a call, picking up the hesitation in a manager’s voice.

When hearing slips, a few things tend to happen:

• Meetings become tiring. Concentrating hard to follow speech is exhausting, and many people describe feeling drained after a day of discussions without quite knowing why.
• Phone calls get avoided. Without lip movements to help, calls are often the first thing to become difficult. People start preferring email, or asking someone else to make the call.
• Details get missed. A misheard number, date or name can be awkward socially. In business it can matter rather more.
• Confidence quietly drops. Rather than ask for repetition again, people nod along, contribute less, or skip the networking dinner altogether.

None of this is dramatic on any single day. Over months and years, though, it can change how someone shows up at work and at home — and it is often mistaken for tiredness, distraction or simply getting older.

An illustration

Take a Sussex couple — we will call them David and Helen, purely as an illustration. David, 62, runs a small engineering firm and owns a handful of rental flats. For a couple of years Helen has noticed him turning the television up and asking her to repeat things at dinner. David puts it down to her speaking quietly.

At work, he has started letting his operations manager take supplier calls, telling himself it is good delegation. At a busy family lunch he follows less of the conversation than he used to, and he finds himself heading home earlier than everyone else.

Eventually Helen suggests they both try the free online hearing check one evening. It takes a few minutes. Helen’s result is fine; David’s suggests he may have some hearing loss and recommends a full test. He books a free appointment with a high-street audiologist, who finds a mild loss in the higher frequencies and talks him through the options, including asking his GP about an NHS referral.

The point of the story is not the hearing aid. It is the delay. Nothing about David’s situation was unusual — and the only thing that moved it on was someone deciding to check rather than guess.

The traps

• Waiting for it to get “bad enough”. RNID notes that hearing aids tend to be most effective when they are fitted early, while the brain is still used to processing a full range of sound.
• Blaming everyone else. Mumbling, poor acoustics and bad phone lines are real. But if it is happening more often, it is worth ruling yourself out.
• Assuming it is just age. Some causes of hearing difficulty, such as a build-up of earwax or an infection, are treatable. A sudden change in hearing should always be checked promptly by a GP or NHS 111.
• Worrying about appearances. Modern hearing aids are small and discreet, and many connect directly to a mobile phone. Straining to follow a conversation is usually far more noticeable than a hearing aid.

What to do

This is not medical advice, and anyone with concerns should speak to their GP or an audiologist. But the practical first steps are simple and mostly free.

1. Take the RNID online hearing check

RNID offers a free online hearing check that takes about three minutes. You will need headphones and a quiet room. It will indicate whether your hearing appears to be in the typical range or whether a full test is worth booking.

2. Book a full hearing test

Many high-street opticians and hearing care providers offer free hearing tests in store, with no obligation to buy anything. A full test takes longer and gives a much clearer picture than any online check.

3. Speak to your GP

The NHS provides free hearing tests and, if you need them, hearing aids. A GP can refer you to an NHS hearing specialist for an assessment. In some areas adults can refer themselves directly to local audiology services, so it is worth checking what is available near you.

4. Protect the hearing you have

• Use ear protection around loud machinery and power tools, on building sites and at loud events.
• Keep the volume on headphones moderate, and give your ears a break.
• Do not use cotton buds inside your ears; speak to a pharmacist or GP about earwax.
• Recheck your hearing periodically, especially if anyone close to you mentions a change.

A small check worth making

Hearing is one of those things we tend to notice only once it has already slipped. The encouraging part is how easy it is to find out where you stand: three minutes online, a free appointment, a conversation with your GP. For people who spend their working lives listening carefully — to clients, tenants, staff and family — it may be one of the most worthwhile appointments of the year.

The same principle runs through everything we do at The Legacy Wills Company: it is far easier to deal with things calmly and early than to wait until they become urgent. If you would like to talk through your own Will and estate plans, book a Discovery Call — 30 minutes for £30, credited against your fees if you go on to instruct us.