It starts gradually. The guitars in your favourite song no longer seem to sound loud enough, so you crank up the volume. You struggle to hear dialogue on the TV. Trying to work out what your friends are saying in a crowded pub becomes an ordeal.

Hearing loss is often not a dramatic event, but something that gather inexorably over time. Some experts believe it’s some very modern behavior – such as our increasing use of earphones to listen to music and movies – that may help prematurely age our hearing. And it’s an issue that may be affecting younger adults much more than before.

Why should I be concerned about my hearing?

“It’s amazing how many parts of your life can have loud noise that you don’t think about or realise until too late,” says clinical audiologist Jill Gruenwald of Vanderbilt University's Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. “We’re around a lot of recreational noise anymore, personal listeners, concerts, bars, movie theatres are loud. There’s lots of noise out there that we can be exposed to on a daily basis.”