DETROIT — “I went to a play at the Gem Theatre last week and I didn’t hear a thing,” says one woman.

“I know my son gets tired of me asking him to repeat himself,” another says.

“I hate when they say, ‘Never mind. It’s no big deal,’” says Judy Taub, 71, of West Bloomfield, Mich. “They don’t want to take the time to repeat; we feel left out.”

These are among the concerns of the 20 or so men and women who meet monthly at a Royal Oak, Mich., church, where they find comfort in talking about what it’s like to be hard of hearing.

As they speak, a microphone connected to a computer puts words on a screen so everyone can read what they’re saying.

Welcome to a meeting of the Royal Oak chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of Michigan. The degree of members’ hearing loss varies — from mild to severe to complete, as do their reasons for being hearing impaired, including birth defects, disease, loud noises and, the most common cause of hearing loss, aging.

They’re not alone. Some 36 million people in the U.S., about 1 in 10, have some degree of hearing loss, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

A growing problem

There’s evidence that hearing loss is becoming more widespread. America’s population is aging and, as most people age, hearing diminishes. About 40 percent of people older than 65 have some degree of hearing loss.

Some studies show hearing loss is becoming more prevalent among the young. One in 5 teens has slight to mild hearing loss. The prevalence of hearing loss among ages 12 to 19 increased 30 percent — from 14.9 percent in 1988-94 to 19.5 percent in 2005-06, according to a study, published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“Everyone assumes iPods and other personal listening devices are the cause, but there is not enough data yet, so we don’t know for certain,” says the lead author of the study, Dr. Josef Shargorodsky, a University of Michigan Medical School graduate, now a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Circumstantial evidence is enough reason to be concerned, says Dr. Paul Kileny, director of the University of Michigan’s Audiology and Electrophysiology Department.

“This last decade or so has seen a significant increase in the use of personal audio devices that are much lighter, more comfortable, and have longer battery lives, so they allow hours and hours of listening at high levels of intensity that can promote hearing loss,” Kileny says.

Prevention

But some audiologists doubt that hearing is any worse now than in the past. “Most kids are listening at moderate levels and for reasonably safe amounts of time,” says Dr. Brad Stach, director of audiology with the Henry Ford Health System. “Now, those kids who are driving with stereos so loud you can feel it, they’re doomed.”

But he believes that just as older people are generally healthier than in the past, so too is their hearing.

He and others agree, however, that everyone needs to do what they can to protect their hearing because once it’s gone, it doesn’t come back. Untreated hearing loss can lead to a myriad of other problems, including depression, social isolation and academic deficiencies, and it can cost billions annually in lost productivity.

Doctors say the two best ways to protect your hearing are to reduce exposure to loud noises and, if you can not avoid exposure, wear protective devices, such as ear muffs, when doing activities such as mowing the grass or hunting.

Dealing with alienation

And even though hearing aids and implants help, those with hearing loss say it’s sometimes like living outside the normal world.

They’re more likely to miss announcements of gate changes at airports and train stations.

A dinner table conversation can be totally lost because it’s more difficult to follow a conversation when several people are talking.

Some people stop going to movies or the theater because it’s too difficult to follow.

Some hearing impaired people fake it and keep it to themselves for fear people will think less of them.

Groups like the Royal Oak organization help them develop the confidence to speak up for themselves.

A gunshot at a circus blasted the hearing out of JJ Peyton’s right ear when she was 3 years old. At 17, she began losing the hearing in her left ear, she thinks from a family car accident.

But her hearing didn’t get really bad until college. At Michigan State University, she sat where she could see as well as hear her instructors, and eventually asked instructors to use a microphone that projected sound into a clip in her ear.

Still, when she began working after college she was reluctant to tell people she was hard of hearing. She’d been working for almost four years before she told her employers she had hearing difficulties.

“I wasn’t comfortable telling people in the workplace about my hearing loss for fear I wouldn’t get promoted or wouldn’t get prime assignments,” said Peyton, 36, of Farmington Hills, Mich.

By the time she started working for SapientNitro in Birmingham as an advertising executive in 2002, she was comfortable speaking up and found no negative responses to her hearing difficulty.

She credits the support of the Hearing Loss Association of Michigan with giving her the courage and confidence to tell people about her hearing loss and to ask for assistance when she needs it.

“I’ve found that if I’m confident in telling people, they’re comfortable,” she says. “I still prefer not to be on conference calls and there are a lot of conference calls in my line of work. But I’ve learned to recap to make sure I understand or to follow up in an email. One good thing is that it’s made me a really good listener.”

See a doctor

You should consider seeing a doctor if you:

• Have trouble hearing over the telephone.

• Find it hard to follow conversations when two or more people are talking.

• Often ask people to repeat what they are saying.

• Need to turn up the TV volume so loud that others complain.

• Have a problem hearing because of background noise.

• Think that others seem to mumble.

• Can’t understand when women and children speak to you.

Source: National Institutes of Health

8 ways to guard your hearing

• Keep the volume of personal listening devices at moderate levels. If you can’t hear someone talking in a normal conversational voice standing at a normal distance from you, it’s too loud.

• Limit the amount of time you’re listening to devices or have them in your ear. Take regular breaks. Don’t listen endlessly.

• Wear ear protection when performing tasks or activities that expose you to loud noises, such as mowing the lawn, hunting or operating loud machinery.

• As soon as you notice that you are not hearing as well as you used to or others express concern that you don’t seem to be hearing as well, make an appointment with a doctor. The sooner you get assistance, if needed, the better. The cause also may be related to a medical condition that can be corrected.

• Parents should insist that pediatricians make hearing checks a part of well baby and well child visits. The fact that an infant passed a hearing screening test as a newborn does not necessarily mean that hearing loss cannot happen later in life.

• As a norm, check with your physician regarding the potential of the medications you have been prescribed to contribute to hearing loss. If that is the case, your physician may be able to prescribe a different combination of medications that may have a lower potential to cause hearing loss.

• While it is true that hearing loss is more common after age 65 than at younger ages, report progressive hearing loss to your physician, especially if you notice that one ear is worse than the other.

• Tinnitus or ringing in the ears can be a manifestation of hearing loss, so it is more common in people with hearing loss than those without. Report new onset tinnitus to your physician, especially if it is only in one ear, because it can be associated with certain medical problems that may need timely attention.

Sources: Paul R. Kileny, professor and director of Audiology in the Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery Department at the University of Michigan Health System and Medical School, Dr. Dennis Drescher, professor and director of Molecular Research in the Department of Otolaryngology at Wayne State University, and Dr. Brad Stach, Henry Ford Health System.