Might My Hearing Aid Amplify High Decibel Noises and Potentially Damage My Hearing Ability Further?

May 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Patients in the process of being fitted for a hearing aid to help them hear faint sounds often ask what the hearing aid is going to do with sounds that are still too loud for them. The response to this logical question is quite reassuring.

The basic answer is that present day hearing aids won’t increase sounds that are already excessively loud and make them even louder, thus potentially damaging the user’s hearing even more, provided that they’re properly fitted and adjusted. The key phrase in bold type is the reason why you need to seek the help of a hearing aid specialist.

A longer answer to the same question requires an explanation of hearing aids themselves, and the way that they work. Digital hearing aids receive sounds through their microphones and turn them into binary information that can then be processed by the hearing aid’s microchip before it is sent to the earphones. Your individual needs can be met with these digital hearing aids by programming and adjusting the maximum volume and the quality of sounds. An example might be that we program your hearing aid to amplify high-frequency sounds and reduce the volume of lower-frequency sounds if you suffer from primarily high-frequency hearing loss. On the other hand, if you suffer from low-frequency hearing loss, the hearing aid settings would be reversed.

In addition, modern digital hearing aids are able to filter the sound to make it more understandable. This can make it easier for you to hear voices in the foreground because the hearing aid can detect and amplify those voices while suppressing the noises in the background. If volume levels change – for example if music starts at a low volume but then becomes too loud – the hearing aid can dynamically compensate for it. Directional microphones also allow the hearing aid wearer to hear faint sounds coming from the direction they are facing, while suppressing noisier sounds coming from behind or to either side.

One thing that hearing aids do not do with regard to loud sounds is protect your ears from them the way that ear plugs would. Loud sounds like chainsaws or overly amplified rock concerts, will therefore still be able to cause noise-induced hearing loss. However, the most common sounds you encounter should be handled by your properly fitted and programmed hearing aids.

Filed Under: Choosing a Hearing Aid Tagged With: , ,

Categories of Hearing Impairments: Introduction to the Main Types

May 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Hearing loss can take a variety of forms and arise from many different causes, and to understand them you need to understand the way we hear. We receive sounds via the outer ear, which is not only the portion of the ear on the outside of our heads, but also the ear canal and the eardrum. In the middle ear three tiny bones called ossicles transfer sounds to the inner ear by transforming them into vibrations.The inner ear consists of a snail-shaped organ called the cochlea, two semicircular canals which help us keep our balance, and a set of acoustic nerves which connect to the brain. All these parts are extremely sophisticated and delicate, and a problem in any section can result in hearing loss. Four different classifications constitute what we mean when we refer to “hearing loss.”

The first class is conductive hearing loss, which is due to an obstruction that prevents sounds from being properly transmitted through the outer or middle ear. This type of hearing loss can frequently be solved with medication or a surgical procedure; if surgery isn’t an option, conductive hearing loss can be treated with hearing aids.

The second classification is sensorineural hearing loss, which is caused by damage in the inner ear – to the cochlea, to the hair cells lining the inner ear, or to the acoustic nerves themselves. Sensorineural hearing loss can usually not be treated using medication or surgery, but its effects can be minimized using hearing aids to allow the person to hear more normally.

The third classification is mixed hearing loss, which is a combination of conductive and sensorineural hearing loss, and which can often be treated using the same combinations of surgery, medication, and hearing aids.

Damage to the inner ear or auditory nerves preventing a message from being understood by our brain that entered the ear normally, is called central hearing loss.

Each of these four main classifications contain several sub-categories, such as the degree of hearing loss, which can be mid-level, moderate, severe, or profound. Additional sub-categories include whether the hearing loss occurs in one ear or both ears (unilateral vs. bilateral), whether it occurs at the same degree in both ears (symmetrical vs. asymmetrical), and whether the hearing loss happened before or after the person learned to speak (pre-lingual vs post-lingual). Additional sub-categories of hearing loss includes whether it is progressive vs. sudden, whether the hearing loss is fluctuating vs. stable, and whether the hearing loss was present at birth (congenital) or developed later in life (acquired). Whatever the cause of your hearing loss, our specialists will help you diagnose the cause and help you treat it properly and effectively.

Filed Under: Hearing Loss Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

How Long Do My Hearing Aid Batteries Last?

May 8, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Even though the battery life for hearing aids might seem an easy question to answer, it actually depends on a variety of factors. Just how long a battery will last is dependent upon who manufactured it, and can even vary across models from the exact same manufacturer. The way you use your hearing aid will also impact battery life; the more hours each day it is turned on, the more rapidly you will use up batteries.

In addition, there are differences in battery life between battery manufacturers, and the same manufacturer may offer different lines of batteries, some that are supposed to last for a longer period of time than others. Battery type is another main factor in longevity. For example, zinc-air batteries will begin to lose power the second you remove the adhesive tab on the bottom and will continue to lose charge even if the hearing aid is powered off while other types will only discharge when they’re in a hearing aid that is turned on.

Because the cost of batteries adds up, if you’re looking for a new hearing aid, you should do some research to find out which types and models of hearing aids have the best battery life, because that may influence your choice. The same research recommendation is true if you have an existing hearing aid and are trying to find the batteries with the best performance for it; you can uncover a great deal from consumer ratings and comparative reports.

To make things somewhat easier for you, hearing aid batteries are available in four common sizes, each of which is marked with a specific color code, which is consistent no matter who the manufacturer is. Take a look at the approximated battery life below to get a general idea of how long hearing aid batteries of each size should last:

  • Size 10 – Yellow – 80 hours
  • Size 13 – Orange – 240 hours
  • Size 312 – Brown – 175 hours
  • Size 675 – Blue – 300 hours

Don’t forget to turn your hearing aid off when you are not using it for the longest battery life. To ensure the longest shelf life for hearing aid batteries you’ve purchased but haven’t used yet, store them indoors, at room temperature, and in their original, unopened packaging.

Filed Under: Caring for Your Hearing Aid Tagged With: , , ,

Are You Experiencing Difficulty Hearing the High-Pitched Voices of Women?

April 26, 2013 By Leave a Comment

If you can hear male voices more easily than female or children’s voices, it might suggest that you have suffered some high-frequency hearing loss. Women’s and children’s voices have a higher frequency than men’s voices – 165 to 255 Hertz, in contrast to 85 to 180 Hertz for men. In addition, women’s and children’s voices generally have a lower amplitude (that is, they are softer or less loud), so you might hear them at a different volume than men’s voices. By making an appointment with one of our hearing specialists you can find out for sure what the nature of the problem is, and how to best treat it.

If it turns out to be high-frequency hearing loss, you’re not alone; this is the most common form of hearing loss. High-frequency hearing loss can have many causes: genetics, aging, noise-induced hearing loss (exposure to loud sounds), certain diseases, and certain drugs. But due to advances made in hearing aid technology, high-frequency hearing loss can be effectively treated.

Digital hearing aids are programmable to offer different levels of sound amplification and different frequencies. For people with high-frequency hearing loss, the digital hearing aid raises the volume of high-frequency (high-pitched) sounds more than it raises the volume of the lower-frequency (low-pitched) sounds. Open-fit hearing aids provide another treatment option, because their design leaves the ear canal open so that low- and mid-frequency sounds enter the ear normally, and only the high-frequency sounds are amplified by the aid. A third possibility for severe cases of high-frequency hearing loss is the placement of a cochlear implant. Because they require minor surgery, cochlear implants are a more serious and more expensive option, but they can provide a solution in extreme cases involving industrial deafness or nerve deafness.

But the first step to finding a solution to your hearing problem is to have an examination, and allow our specialists to determine what the nature of it actually is. In some cases, for example, high-frequency hearing loss has been caused by nothing more than a buildup of ear wax, which can be cleared up without the need for any type of hearing aid. So the best “first step” in dealing with your hearing problem is to make an appointment and allow us to determine the real nature of the problem.

Filed Under: Hearing Loss Tagged With: , , , ,

An Introduction to Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT)

April 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Tinnitus is widespread in the United States with an estimated 50 million sufferers over age 50. Tinnitus sufferers hear constant sounds in their heads that others don’t hear such as buzzing, clicking, ringing, humming or whistling. Tinnitus is commonly referred to by its slang name – ringing-in-the-ears. Sometimes, the tinnitus is a minor nuisance, while in severe cases it is horribly debilitating. Constant tinnitus often leads to other ailments such as anxiety, sleeping disorders, fatigue, and depression.

Although there are technological treatments for tinnitus, such as hearing aids that mask and suppress the buzzing or ringing sounds, there is also a form of counseling known as Tinnitus Retraining Therapy. Using a combination of mechanisms, TRT “retrains” tinnitus sufferers and gives them the ability to reduce their perceptions of the noises they hear, so they no longer react to the sounds negatively, and thus eventually cease being bothered by them.

Discovered in the 1980s by neuroscientist Pawel Jastreboff, TRT challenges the assumptions of many audiologists that tinnitus is a physical disorder due to ear damage that cannot be fixed. While damage to the ears – for example, exposure to loud noises for long periods of time – is often a cause of tinnitus, Jastreboff drew upon his training in neuroscience to propose an alternative behavioral neuro-physical model that explained the condition. This allowed him to disregard previous notions that the condition couldn’t be fixed, and focus his attention on developing behavioral modification techniques that could, indeed, fix it.

At the core of Tinnitus Retraining Therapy is the proposition that tinnitus is not a disease in and of itself. Instead, Jastreboff believes that tinnitus is a manifestation of hyperacusis which is defined as an over-sensitivity to certain frequency ranges of sounds. A person with severe hyperacusis has difficulty tolerating everyday sounds. Jastreboff reasons that the true problem for tinnitus sufferers is the over-reaction and hyper-sensitivity to the ringing or buzzing sounds, not the sounds themselves. During TRT counseling sessions – performed only by those who have been trained in the technique – a precise and individual combination of teaching and sound therapy are used to enable tinnitus sufferers to use their own cognitive functions to shut down their over reactions to the disturbing sounds, and focus more on the desirable sounds they want to hear.

Over the years, TRT counselors have had success with helping people to overcome their conditioned negative responses to the sounds they hear, and thus eliminate the distress they feel at hearing them.

Filed Under: Tinnitus Tagged With: ,

Advantages and Disadvantages of Wearing One Hearing Aid or Two

April 12, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Given the price of excellent quality hearing aids, many people logically wonder whether they need two hearing aids, or if they could manage with one. In the majority of cases, the many benefits of wearing two hearing aids exceed that additional expense, but there are particular situations where this is not the best advice.

To start with, if your hearing is completely normal in one ear, you plainly don’t need a second hearing aid for that ear. Also, if you have completely lost your hearing in one ear, and are experiencing total deafness in it, wearing a hearing aid in that ear is not going to be effective. If you are prone to recurring ear infections, wearing hearing aids can potentially make the situation worse, so wearing a single aid might be an advantage. There are also hearing loss conditions in which the sounds of speech heard in one ear are completely garbled, and in that case wearing a hearing aid in that ear is merely going to amplify the garbled sounds, which makes it harder for your brain to understand speech heard through your other ear.

Except for these cases, the arguments for wearing two hearing aids are pretty persuasive, and are validated by surveys of consumer preferences and customer satisfaction – most hearing aid users vastly prefer the binaural sound provided by two hearing aids. You will hear a more realistic sound panorama while wearing two hearing aids, and you will also be more able to pinpoint the location of the sounds that you hear. Understanding speech has been proven to be much easier when wearing two hearing aids than when wearing one, especially when the listening environment is noisy.

If you have hearing loss in both ears, wearing two hearing aids will enable you to keep stimulating both ears, whereas wearing only one can allow the other ear to deteriorate further from lack of use. For tinnitus sufferers, two hearing aids are almost always the wisest choice because the hearing aid is used to mask the ringing or buzzing sounds associated with tinnitus. Without the second hearing aid, these sounds continue in the other ear. Finally, many studies have shown that wearing two hearing aids is less tiring than wearing only one.

All told, the case for wearing two hearing aids is more persuasive than the case for wearing only one. If you’re still unsure, make an appointment so you can make your own assessment while wearing one hearing aid, or two. Then decide for yourself which provides you with the better hearing experience. We think you’ll decide that two is better than one.

Filed Under: Choosing a Hearing Aid Tagged With: , ,

A Hearing Aid User’s Guide to Selecting Cell Phones

April 5, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Hearing aids and cellular phones have not always gotten along as well as they do now. The intricate electronics in both products often triggered static, dropped words or squealing interference noises. Thankfully, improvements in technology and new government regulations have made the question “Will this phone work with my hearing aid?” easier to answer. The regulations mandated new labeling requirements and ratings that help you to easily find a cell phone that works well with your hearing aid.

The first thing you need to understand is that hearing aids operate in two different modes – microphone or “M” mode, and telecoil or “T” mode. In M mode, the hearing aid uses the internal microphone to detect sounds and amplify them. In T mode, the hearing aid uses telecoil technology instead. The hearing aid is able to pick up the electromagnetic signals from inside the phone directly. Roughly 60 percent of all cell phones sold in the United States have a telecoil (T) mode.

The rating system for these two modes of hearing aid operation uses a scale that ranges from the lowest sensitivity (1) to the highest sensitivity (4). To be sold in the United States as hearing aid compatible (HAC), a mobile phone or cordless handset must have a rating of at least M3 or T3.

In addition, many hearing aids (and cochlear implants) have a similar M and T rating to measure their sensitivity and their resistance to radio frequency interference. To determine the compatibility between your hearing aid and a mobile phone you are considering, just add the M and T ratings together; add the M rating of the hearing aid to the M rating of the phone and add the T rating of the hearing aid to the T rating of the phone. A combined rating of 6 or more is considered excellent, a hearing aid/phone combination that would provide highly usable, interference-free performance. A sum of 5 is considered normal and should work fine for typical cell phone users. A combined rating of 4 is considered usable for brief calls, but may not be suitable for extended phone use.

This combined rating system makes it easy to shop for a mobile phone online, because it easily allows you to determine how compatible it will be with your hearing aid. A better approach, of course, would be to go to a store that allows you to “try before you buy,” and actually use the phone you want while wearing your hearing aid, in both M and T modes.

Filed Under: Hearing Aid Tagged With: , , ,

What are the Symptoms of Hearing Loss?

March 30, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Hearing loss has many forms – it may develop gradually (for example, due to aging) or suddenly (as the result of an injury or trauma). The experience of hearing loss may range from mild instances of not hearing conversations properly to severe periods of being unable to hear at all, and can be either permanent or temporary. Also, a person might experience a loss of hearing in a single ear or both ears.

There are also a number of symptoms linked to hearing loss, one of the most common of which is a growing inability to hear or understand conversations. People’s voices may seem to be at too low a volume or sound muffled (as if they were speaking through a wall from another room). You may be able to hear folks talking, but not be able to distinguish specific words, particularly when more than one person is speaking or the conversations are taking place in settings with a lot of background noise.

Some other indications that you may have some hearing loss include having to turn up the volume on your TV or radio much higher than you did in the past, being unable to distinguish certain high-pitched sounds (such as ‘s’ or ‘th’) from one another, and having greater difficulty hearing men’s voices than women’s voices. Other forms of hearing loss may be indicated if you have a constant ringing in the ears, feel pain, tenderness or itching in the ears, and if you have instances of dizziness or vertigo.

One of the difficulties with hearing loss is that it may arise so gradually that people may not even realize it. This can sometimes lead to actions or behaviors intended to hide their hearing loss from others. For instance, people trying to conceal hearing loss may ask others to repeat themselves frequently, are likely to avoid conversations and social gatherings, fake having heard things they really didn’t, and over time may develop feelings of depression and isolation.

If any of these symptoms sound familiar to you, it is time to schedule an appointment with one of our hearing specialists. We can help by starting with a hearing test to see if you do have hearing loss, and if you have, we can help determine what to do about it.

Filed Under: Hearing Loss Tagged With: , , ,

Brief Digital versus Analog Hearing Aids Comparison Guide

March 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment

To understand the difference between analog and digital hearing aids, you need to first appreciate the history of analog vs digital, and the alternative ways that they amplify and process sounds. Analog hearing aids came out first, and were the standard in most hearing aids for many years. Then with the arrival of digital signal processing (DSP) technology, digital hearing aids also began to appear. At the moment, the majority (90%) of the hearing aids sold in the US are digital, although analog hearing aids continue to be offered because they are often lower priced, and also because some people prefer them.

The way that analog hearing aids operate is that they take sound waves from the microphone in the form of electricity and then amplify them, delivering louder versions of the sound waves to the speakers in your ears “as is.” Digital hearing aids take the sound waves from the microphone and transform them to digital binary code, the “bits and bytes” and “zeros and ones” that all digital devices understand. This digital data can then be altered in many sophisticated ways by the micro-chip within the hearing aid, before being converted back into regular analog signals and delivered to the speakers.

It is important to remember that both analog and digital hearing aids serve the same purpose – they take sounds and boost them so you can hear them more easily. Both analog and digital hearing aids can be programmable, which means that they contain microchips that can be customized to adjust sound quality to suit the user, and to develop various settings for different listening environments. The programmable hearing aids can, for instance, have one setting for listening in quiet rooms, another for listening in loud restaurants, and still another for listening in large stadiums.

But beyond programmability, the digital hearing aids often offer more controls to the user, and offer more features because of their capacity to manipulate the sounds in digital form. For example, digital hearing aids may offer numerous channels and memories, permitting them to save more location-specific profiles. They can also use advanced algorithms to identify and reduce background noise, to eliminate feedback and whistling, or to selectively detect the sound of human voices and “follow” them using directional microphones.

Price-wise, most analog hearing aids are still less expensive than digital hearing aids, but some reduced-feature digital hearing aids are now in a similar general price range. Some users notice a difference in the sound quality generated by analog vs digital hearing aids, but that is largely a matter of preference, not a matter of whether analog or digital is “better.”

Filed Under: Choosing a Hearing Aid Tagged With: , , ,

The Basics of Central Auditory Processing Disorder

March 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Central Auditory Processing Disorder, or CAPD, is a hearing disorder in which the trouble lies not with the ears, but with the brain. The person with Central Auditory Processing Disorder hears sounds correctly but something adversely affects the way their brain recognizes and interprets the sounds, especially the sounds associated with speech. The disorder is thus characterized by a lack of coordination between the ears and the brain.

Central Auditory Processing Disorder is a condition that afflicts an estimated 2% to 5% of children of school age, and as many as 50% of children who have been diagnosed as having a learning disability. Children with Central Auditory Processing Disorder often fail to recognize subtle differences between the sounds of different words, even though the words are clear and loud enough for them to hear. The problem is worsened with background noise and in some cases of Central Auditory Processing Disorder the child can hear well in quite environments and only has difficulty in noisy environments.

Central Auditory Processing Disorder is often difficult to detect, because when children’s hearing is tested in a quiet room, they can clearly hear the pure tones they hear through the testing equipment, and they similarly have no apparent problems hearing and interpreting speech in non-noisy environments. As a result, their audiogram results may appear normal, but they may nevertheless have difficulties distinguishing similar words, locating where sounds are coming from, recognizing repetitive patterns in high and low sounds, or hearing more than one person’s voice at a time.

Central Auditory Processing Disorder often affects children in other aspects of life because they are having trouble understanding the people speaking around them. For example, they may become easily distracted by sudden noises, have difficulty following directions, develop reading, spelling, and language difficulties, become disorganized and forgetful, or have trouble following conversations. When given standard hearing tests, these children appear to have normal hearing, so these symptoms are often confused with or mistaken for signs of other problems such as depression or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). In reality, CAPD can be present alone or combined with these other disorders, presenting a difficult diagnostic challenge.

Early detection of CAPD is critical, because to ensure the child’s proper social and educational development, the sooner the problems are diagnosed, the sooner they can be treated. So if you have noticed in your children any of the possible signs of CAPD listed above, it is important to have their hearing tested by experienced professionals.

Filed Under: Anatomy and Physiology Tagged With: , , ,
«Older Posts

Social Widgets powered by AB-WebLog.com.