The strange part of hearing loss is that we don’t have a tendency to start appreciating our favorite sounds until after we’ve lost the ability to clearly hear them. We don’t pause to contemplate, for example, how much we enjoy a good conversation with a friend until we have to continually ask them to repeat […]
The hearing healthcare marketplace has two barriers that prevent people from acquiring better hearing: The inability to notice hearing loss in the first place (owing to its gradual onset), and The temptation to find a quick, easy, and inexpensive fix. Regretfully, countless people who have overcome the first barrier have been lured into the supposedly […]
Blausen.com staff. “Blausen gallery 2014”. That there is a right way to clean your ears proposes that there is a wrong way, and in fact, there is a very wrong way. The wrong way is common, and it breaks the first rule of cleaning your ears: don’t insert foreign objects into your ear canal. That […]
It’s popular to think of hearing loss as an inescapable problem associated with aging, or, more recently, as a consequence of the younger generation’s regular use of iPods. But the numbers reveal that the bigger problem may be exposure to loud noise at work. In the US, 22 million workers are subjected to potentially unsafe […]
Nearly 45 million Americans suffer from tinnitus, which is the perception of sound where no external sound source is present. This phantom sound is commonly identified as a ringing sound, but can also manifest as a buzzing, hissing, whistling, swooshing, or clicking. The first thing to know about tinnitus is that it’s a symptom, not […]
The World Health Organization estimates that 1.1 billion people are at an increased risk for noise-induced hearing loss, induced by exposure to excess sound levels from personal audio devices and very loud settings such as clubs, bars, concerts, and sporting events. An estimated 26 million Americans currently suffer from the condition. If noise-induced hearing loss […]
If we seriously want to understand hearing loss, we have to understand both the physical side, which makes hearing increasingly difficult, and the psychological side, which includes the lesser-known emotional reactions to the loss of hearing. Jointly, the two sides of hearing loss can wreak havoc on a person’s total well being, as the physical […]
Most people are surprised to discover how young the discipline of audiology actually is, and just how recently its founding father founded the profession. To put this in perspective, if you wished to find the founding father of biology, as an example, you’d have to go back in time by 2,300 years and read the […]
It takes the average person with hearing loss 5 to 7 years before pursuing a qualified professional diagnosis, irrespective of the fact that the warning signs of hearing loss are transparent to other people. But are those with hearing loss merely too stubborn to get help? No, actually, and for a few different reasons. Maybe […]
If the unfamiliar creates anxiety, then a visit to the hearing specialist is particularly stressful. While most of us have experience with the family physician and the hometown dentist, the visit to the hearing specialist might be a first. It sure would be useful to have someone describe the process up front, wouldn’t it? Well, […]
