Holidays and Hearing Loss: how to help your loved ones

I guess we are officially smack in the middle of the holiday season, right? This is a great time to encourage your loved ones to take control of their hearing problems.

Hearing loss is one of the most common health conditions that people ignore, and yet it is one of the more simple to help.  Affecting more than 31.5 million Americans, I am certain someone you love is affected.  Left untreated, hearing loss can lead to depression and feelings of isolation - feelings that are often more prevalent this time of year as it is.

"The holiday season is meant to be a time of thanks, celebration, and joy," says Sergei Kochkin, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Better Hearing Institute. "But for many people, it is a time of year when unaddressed hearing loss can cause them to feel particularly isolated and depressed. Even when surrounded by loved ones, a family member's impaired ability to hear and actively participate in conversation cuts them off. Oftentimes, they are left with a sense of sadness, inadequacy, and emotional isolation. This is especially true when the hearing loss is either unrecognized or is being 'hidden' by the family member with hearing loss."

Keep a close look on loved ones who you have suspected might have some hearing loss in the past. Help keep them included in your holiday conversations, but also encourage them to start taking the steps toward better hearing.

"When a family member experiences unaddressed hearing loss, it silently erodes the loved one's quality of life—undermining family relationships, interfering with short-term memory, and creeping into virtually every aspect of daily living," says Kochkin. "The good news is there are solutions to help loved ones with hearing loss regain the gift of sound so they don't need to draw back in silence. Hearing loss can be easily diagnosed, and there are modern-day solutions that can help people hear better."

Information for Patients with Dizziness

IF you have a balance disorder as a result of an ear problem you should know:

The ears work together to create balance. The ears send a balance signal to the brain, and the brain compares the two signals. Normally these signals are the same. Vertigo is triggered when the balance signals are unequal, such as when one ear sends a strong signal and the other is a weak one.

Sedating medications do not help the healing process. Medications like Antivert (Meclizine), Valium (diazepam), and some antihistamines suppress the vestibular and central nervous systems. This delays the healing process because the medication reduces the neural response as the brain tries to balance the two signals, and delaying rehabilitation makes balance problems worse.

The ears need to learn to work together. Some patients do not want to move because they are afraid of creating vertigo, but this is a mistake. The brain needs to relearn how to coordinate the balance signals from both ears. The more often the brain deals with the signals from the ear, the quicker the dizziness problem will be resolved.  When the brain learns how to coordinate the signals from both ears, balance results.

Balance exercises help. Vestibular rehabilitation is a series of instructions and exercises to help your brain adjust to a weak ear signal. Remember, professional ice skaters and ballerinas learn to spin rapidly without getting dizzy. Rehabilitation classes help patients adapt to the signal imbalance coming from the ears.

You do not have a life-threatening disease. Dizziness, vomiting, and nausea are not fun, but they are not dangerous and your condition is not life-threatening. You can learn to suppress and control vertigo so they disappear altogether.

WHAT is in my child's ear?

Top 12 things removed from kids' ears - by Lexi Walters

found on babyzone.com. Find the full article HERE.

Little kids have little ears—but are enormously curious. And the results of their "What if I ..." experiments often land them in the ER. The top docs at Children's Hospital Yale-New Haven know these tendencies well: There's even a collection on display in their waiting room of common items removed from kids' ears.

Here is their list of top repeat extractions:
1. Cotton Swabs
2. Buttons
3. Pen parts
4. Earrings
5. Springs
6. Moths, flies and other flying insects
7. Beetles and bugs
8. Seeds
9. Pits (think: cherry)
10. Peanuts
11. Button batteries (think: HEARING AID BATTERIES!)
12. Erasers

Keys to Good Listening for People with Hearing Loss

• Don't bluff! Pretending reinforces the myth that hard of hearing people understand "when they want to."
• Analyse the problem. What is making it hard to hear? Then go to work on the problem. Don't assume that it's all your fault when you have trouble hearing.
• Take charge of your environment. If the environment is causing listening problems, make some changes. For example, turn off background music or move your chair closer to what you want to hear.
• Case the place! When you first enter a room, look for the best place to hear and see.
• Prepare ahead. Think about who will be at an event and what the topics of conversation might be. This weill help you listen and lip-read more effectively.
• Use assistive technology. Sometimes hearing aids need to be supplemented with other equipment.
• Get closer. Don't even try to hear someone in another room. Say, "Wait a minute, I hear you talking but I can't understand from here." Then go to where the talker is.
• Speak up. Say what you need when you cannot hear. Others would like to help but don't know what to do. Then, remind them when they forget and thank them when they remember.
• Tell the talker what to do differently. If the talker is talking too fast, you can say, for example, "because of my hearing loss, I'm having trouble hearing you. Can you speak more slowly, please?"
• Wear you hearing aids routinely. Don't make the mistake of wearing them only when you go out where listening is difficult.
• Learn what helps in noise. Try reducing you hearing aid volume a very small amount or try a different program if you hearing aid has multiple memories.
• Ask what the topic is. In order to make sense out of the bits and pieces you do hear, you need to know what people are talking about.
• Clarify specifically. Let your communication partner know what you heard and what you did not hear. For example, if you did not hear the words "next week" in the sentence, "We'll need to get this out by next week," you can say, "We'll need to get this out WHEN?"
• Verify frequently. This is especially true for times and places. Verify you heard correctly by saying, for example, "did you say the meeting is at eight o'clock on Friday?"
• Sometimes it is best to wait! In some situations, attempts at communicating will only lead to frustration. If so, tell your communication partner what is going on. For example, you can say, "its' too dark in here for me to lip-read and I cannot understand you Let's wait until the lights come on."

North America's Largest Induction Loop

Hearing Loop Systems recently announced a contract to loop Michigan State University's Breslin Center, all 14,759 seats. The stadium is the arena for one of America's top college basketball programs, as well as many other major events and concerts.

What is a Hearing (or Induction) Loop System?

Induction loops are used for transmission and reception of communication signals.  Commonly, induction loops are used to provide assistance to hearing aid users.  They are a loop of cable around a designated area, usually a room or a building, which generates a magnetic field picked up by a hearing aid. Many hearing aids are equipped with what is called a telecoil, or t-coil.  When the user of hearing aids activates his/her telecoil in a place that has been "looped," the audio signal is transmitted directly into the user's hearing aids, giving them a direct connection to the sound.  

(The telecoil was originally named so, as it was first used to give hearing aid users a better way to use the telephone. The telecoil enabled hearing aid users to hear the phone conversation more clearly without also picking up background noise around them. From this, the natural development was to generate audio magnetic fields which the telecoil could receive.)

Hear Better...Anywhere

Can't comprehend a mumbler's words at a crowded party? Lean in with your right ear. It sends messages to your left brain, which is better at following rapid speech rhythms than your right brain (per UCLA researchers).

Trying to pick out the lyrics of a new song?  Use your left ear - the right brain is better at processing musical tones.

-From Prevention Magazine