Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

As a general rule, employers today obviously still think of hard of hearing and deaf employees as “deaf and dumb” and thus pass over us when handing out promotions.

Here are the results of a recent Deaf Professionals Network survey. Approximately 141 people took part in this survey. 52% of of those responding knew that they had been passed over for promotions. Of these, 45% knew that they had been passed over for promotion more than once!

A mere 15% said that they were judged solely on their merits, whether they got the promotion or not, while 8% said they actually got the promotion they wanted. (If employers were being fair to us, this combined 23% figure should have been 100%!) Only 11% were not sure, but thought they were passed over, while the final 14% had no idea whether they were unfairly passed over or not.

Thus it appears that if these figures are representative of the hard of hearing and deaf work force, 3 out of every 4 employers are still unfairly discriminating against us based solely on our lack of hearing without considering our many talents, skills and abilities. This needs to change!

The good news is that 1 out of 4 employers are treating us fairly. That is all we ask.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A study by the Better Hearing Institute reveals the shocking fact that working Americans who ignore their hearing losses are losing more than $100 billion in lost earnings each year.

The average income lost ranges from $1,000 per year for those with uncorrected mild hearing losses to a whopping $12,000 annually for those with uncorrected profound hearing losses.

The good news is that on the average, this income loss can be cut in half by simply getting and wearing hearing aids.

Some more good news. Getting and wearing hearing aids as soon as you realize you are losing some of your hearing helps reduce your chances of losing more income in the future.

This should be a powerful incentive for the 3 out of 4 Americans that do not bother to wear hearing aids to help correct their hearing losses. Forget about vanity. Wearing hearing aids may be necessary for your very economic survival! This is one thing you can do to help yourself–so do it now–or don’t complain how hearing loss is holding you back from getting the promotions you think you deserve.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Hearing loss in the USA tops 32,000,000 people this year according to the MarkeTrak VII report. And this figure is conservative because it only considers people that live in “households”. It does not count the millions of residents in nursing homes, retirement homes, mental hospitals, prisons, college dormitories and military installations.

In addition, it does not consider the millions of hard of hearing people that do not identify themselves as having a hearing loss. Thus, the true figure could easily be twice this number.

Not only is this 32 million figure alarming, it is growing by the hundreds of thousands each year. By 2050, the number of self-professed hard of hearing people living in “households” in the USA is projected to reach 52.9 million according to the above survey. That’s a lot of hard of hearing people!

Here are the projections for the future.

2010 33.4 (millions of hard of hearing people)
2015 35.8
2020 38.4
2025 41.0
2030 43.7
2035 46.4
2040 48.8
2045 50.9
2050 52.9

(For the complete article see the Hearing Review, July, 2005.)

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A woman asked:

I have had the experience of my hearing aids cutting off the sound with some loud noises and when I yawn. What’s the problem?

There are actually two different things happening here. Some hearing aids cut off in response to loud sounds in order to protect your ears from these sounds. This is called “peak clipping” and is old technology. This is not good as it means that you may not hear the very sounds (e.g. fire alarms) that are meant to save your life!

You need to get your audiologist to reprogram your hearing aids so they don’t clip loud sounds, but instead, automatically turn down the volume to a comfortable level. My hearing aids never cut out in response to loud sounds–they just quickly turn the volume down in a small fraction of a second. This is the proper way for hearing aids to handle loud sounds.

Now, in regards to yawning, this is not your hearing aids fault! What happens is that when you yawn, your middle ears automatically cut down the sound level. This is very noticeable when you have a more severe hearing loss–so much so that you think your hearing aids cut out all sound. It wasn’t your hearing aids, it was the accoustic reflex in your middle ears kicking in and reducing the volume! So don’t blame your hearing aids for this one.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Here is some shocking information about Benzodiazepine dependence (addiction). You would do well to heed it before you ever begin taking one of these drugs from hell.

The biggest drug-addiction problem in the world doesn’t involve heroin, cocaine or marijuana. In fact, it doesn’t involve an illegal drug at all. The world’s biggest drug-addiction problem is posed by a group of drugs, the Benzodiazepines, which are widely prescribed by doctors and taken by countless millions of perfectly ordinary people around the world.

Drug-addiction experts claim that getting people off the Benzodiazepines is more difficult than getting addicts off heroin. The only genuine long-term solution is to be aware of these drugs and to avoid them like the plague.

It is more difficult to withdraw people from Benzodiazepines than it is from heroin. It just seems that the dependency is so ingrained and the withdrawal symptoms you get are so intolerable that people have a great deal of problem coming off. The other aspect is that with heroin, usually the withdrawal is over within a week or so. With Benzodiazepines, a proportion of patients go on to long term withdrawal and they have very unpleasant symptoms for month after month, and can go on for two years or more. Some of the tranquilizer groups document people who still have symptoms ten years after stopping.

The above quotes were taken from the home page of the benzo.org.uk, a web site dedicated to Benzodiazepine addiction, withdrawal and recovery.

If you are contemplating taking one of the Benzodiazepines or wish to get off them if you are already taking them, read the excellent manual by Dr. Heather Ashton, one of the foremost authorities in the world on how to break free from these drugs.

You can read her excellent manual “Benzodiazepines: How They Work and How To Withdraw” that is freely available from this web site. It’s easy to read and packed with the information you need to help you.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man asked:

What could be causing a rumbling, banging sort of sound in both my ears? It’s like hearing traffic from a distance, and a greater awareness of noise made by air conditioning systems?

I feel this super sensitivity is from hyperacusis. I don’t think it is tinnitus. I have had tinnitus for the past five years. My tinnitus was caused by stress and an episode of panic. It remained after that, and is a ringing sound, and occasionally a crackling sound.

I also have bilateral sensorineural hearing loss in the high frequencies.

My hyperacusis comes on periodically and goes away after a few months. More specifically, I have the following symptoms and find them very disturbing.

1. Awareness of heavy traffic (buses, trucks, vehicles) sounds heard from a long distance as rumbling, not noticed by others.

2. Awareness of the bass sounds from a music system, again from a long distance. I hear this as a throbbing, pulsating sound, again hardly noticed by others.

3. Awareness of the working of air conditioning systems with sound coming from the vents. I hear this as a low-level rumbling, throbbing sound, not at all noticed by other people in office.

This super sensitivity and acute hearing seems to indicate hyperacusis. Do you agree?

No. Hyperacusis is where you hear normal, everyday sounds as much too loud–a person talking is too loud. Cutlery clanking is too loud. The phone ringing is too loud, etc., etc. You are not hearing these normal sounds as too loud. Thus you do not have hyperacusis.

However, I do know what you are experiencing based on your very interesting set of symptoms.

You are not hearing real traffic sounds from a distance; not hearing real music; and not hearing real air conditioning sounds. You are really “hearing” phantom sounds, but phantom sounds that are so real to you that you cannot distinguish them from the real thing. This is why the people around you with normal hearing can’t hear them. In short, these sounds are all in your head.

What you are describing is not tinnitus, not hyperacusis, nor even hyperacute hearing. Rather, you are hearing some of the many sounds associated with Musical Ear Syndrome (MES).

People with MES almost always already have tinnitus and hearing loss such as you do. Furthermore, anxiety and/or stress is also commonly associated with MES.

Musical Ear Syndrome is fairly common, but seldom talked about. Just as you are doing, people try to find some other logical reason for “hearing” such sounds because they do not want to be thought crazy–which you’re not, by the way.

Your MES is more limited to lower-frequency rumbling sounds. Some people only hear beautiful music, but whatever sounds you hear, they are all just phantom sounds.

You don’t specifically say so, but I think you also sometimes can feel these sounds vibrating the floor/ground with their rumbling. Is that right?

You are not alone in what you are hearing (and feeling). You might be surprised to know that I “hear” the same things you do from time to time. So do many other people. For example, one sound I hear is a rumbling sound like a big truck idling outside the house. Another is hearing the furnace rumbling in the plenum under the floor. The strange thing is that these sounds are so real that I can actually “feel” them shaking the house.

The truth is, when I go to look, there is no truck anywhere around my house, nor is the furnace even running! When this happens, I am experiencing totally phantom sensations, just as you are.

Musical Ear syndrome is nothing to be worried about. You are definitely not going crazy because you hear these sounds, so you can put your mind at rest in this regard. These sounds are just symptoms of damage to your auditory system as evidenced by your hearing loss and tinnitus. Thus, when they occur, just ignore them–even though they seem so real.

You would do well to read my article entitled “Musical Ear Syndrome“. In addition, you can learn much more about MES in my book, “Phantom Voices, Ethereal Music & Other Spooky Sounds“. This book has brought peace of mind to many people with MES.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A mother wrote:

My daughter, 28 months old, has bilateral sensorineural hearing loss ranging from 25 to 40 decibels. She failed her newborn hearing screening at 2 days old and later received an ABR to confirm her hearing loss.

She received Gentamicin following her birth for 2 days–receiving 4 doses in total because her doctors were concerned she might be septic. She was not septic and has no health problems. She received this drug as a ‘precautionary measure’ according to neonatologists.

Her ENT’s and audiologists have all down played the importance of Gentamicin as a possible cause of her hearing loss. They stated this was the standard drug given in NICU with very few problems especially for such a short duration.

However, from the first moment they gave her Gentamicin, a family doctor felt the neonatologists were being extremely over aggressive. He truly believes this drug played an important role in my daughter’s hearing loss.

I don’t understand why this drug is ‘standard care procedure’ (again told this by many pediatricians) in the NICU. My daughter’s hearing was not tested prior to receiving this drug. I don’t see how they could possibly know how many children this drug is affecting since they do not test their hearing prior to receiving this drug. Why can’t they test their hearing prior to receiving Gentamicin? I think it only takes around 5 minutes to perform this test.

Furthermore, when my daughter was approximately 3 months old she began receiving physical therapy due to developmental delays in the areas associated with balance and vestibular functioning. Could she have had these vestibular problems due to ototoxic drugs?

I hear you! You raise some excellent points.

Gentamicin belongs to a class of drugs called Aminoglycoside antibiotics. All of the Aminoglycosides are very ototoxic. Ototoxic just means that such drugs damage ears.

Never forget it. Gentamicin is a dangerous drug as far as our ears are concerned. Thus, it should not be used indiscriminately for “precautionary measures.” This is like playing Russian roulette with your ears! Each year hundreds of thousands of people lose their hearing and/or have serious balance problems for the rest of their lives as a result of taking Gentamicin. (The equivalent figure is in the millions when you take the Aminoglycosides as a whole.) It seems to me that Gentamicin should never be given unless there is a very good reason–such as a life-threatening condition.

An interesting thing about Gentamicin is that it typically attacks the balance (vestibular) system even more than it does the hearing system. Thus, it is more common to have balance problems than hearing problems from taking Gentamicin.

As you have confirmed, your daughter has both hearing and balance problems. This is a very strong indication that this drug was responsible for her ear damage.

Since you now know your daughter’s ears are sensitive to ototoxic drugs, she needs to be very careful in the future whenever she takes drugs so that she doesn’t needlessly lose more hearing and/or balance.

For more information on ototoxic drugs in general read our various articles on ototoxic drugs.

For complete information and individual listings on the known ototoxic drugs and chemicals, see Ototoxic Drugs Exposed.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

On June 4, 2006, the New York Times ran an article entitled: “Inner Ear May Take Beating From High-Impact Aerobics” It pointed out that the last thing on the minds of people jumping and bouncing to music is that they could be damaging their inner ears. Let me explain what can happen.

There are two separate causes of inner-ear damage. The first is that generally music is played at ear-damaging levels. Often the first symptom to appear is tinnitus or ringing in your ears. If you do not heed this warning, later you may notice that your ears begin to feel plugged or blocked, and if you get your hearing tested, you’ll discover to your shock and dismay, you now have a significant hearing loss. This may not happen all at once, but the longer you expose your ears to loud sounds, the quicker it will happen.

The obvious solution to prevent damage to the hearing part of your inner ears is to turn the music down to a level of 80 decibels or less. Failing this, wear ear plugs with a rating of 20 dB or more when you do your aerobics.

The second cause of inner ear damage is in the vestibular or balance part of your inner ears. Damage here can result in dizziness, vertigo, feelings of imbalance and motion sickness.

What happens is that with all the high-impact aerobics, the jarring of your head causes the “rocks in your head” (technically known as otoconia) to be jarred out of their normal place (the utricle in your inner ears) and bounce around in your semi-circular canals. Whenever one of these “rocks” touches the tiny hairs (cilia) there, it causes the cilia to generate a spurious balance signal that is sent to your brain. When you brain receives both good and bad balance signals it gets confused. That confusion results in the vertigo and other imbalance problems.

Activities that can cause such imbalance problems include high-impact aerobics that involve a lot of bouncing up and down with both feet off the ground at the same time, high-mileage running or when playing sports where a lot of jumping in involved such as in volleyball.

To minimize the chances of your developing balance problems, you can do three things. First, limit the time you spend on high-impact aerobics. You don’t have to stop these activities completely. Moderation is the key here.

Second, consider switching from high-impact aerobics to less jarring activities such as step exercises or low-impact aerobics where one foot is always on the ground.

Third, wear good shoes that are specially designed to absorb much of the shock of the above activities.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Here is a novel idea that may help you get to sleep (and stay asleep) if your tinnitus typically keeps you awake at night.

Researchers at John Carroll University discovered five years ago that the blue component in white light prevents the pineal gland from producing melatonin (the sleep hormone). When there is lots of melatonin in your bloodstream, you naturally fall asleep easily and sleep sounder.

This melatonin production happens naturally each day after sunset. However, since we live in houses with artificial light, this natural “sleeping pill” produced by our bodies is blocked.

However, if you block out all blue light for a couple of hours before you go to bed, your pineal gland thinks it is time for sleep and begins loading your blood with melatonin. Thus, when you “hit the sack” you’ll hopefully fall asleep quickly. This can prove to be a blessing if your tinnitus makes it hard for you to fall asleep and stay asleep.

The simplest way to start this melatonin production before you go to bed is to get special wrap-around yellow glasses that will block all blue light from reaching your eyes. Such glasses, which fit over your existing glasses, are available in large, medium or small sizes for $37.50 from http://www.sleepglasses.com/products.asp?PageIndex=2.

SleepGlasses have a number of other products on their web site, but these glasses seem to be the simplest to use, and can be worn anywhere. Besides they never “burn out” like the yellow light bulbs will.

Although these glasses will work for most people, they will not work for everyone. A few people’s bodies do not produce melatonin. If you are one of these, then blocking blue light obviously won’t help. But for the rest of you who have bothersome tinnitus, and have trouble falling asleep, this is something you might want to investigate.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

I was shocked to discover that “acoustic t-coils” are not t-coils at all–but are a deceptive practice to make you think you are getting real t-coils when you’re not.

T-coils, sometimes referred to as telecoils, t-switch or audiocoils, are tiny coils of wire in your hearing aids that pick up inductive (magnetic) signals from devices such as telephones (hence their name), neckloops, ear links (Music Links, T-Links), silhouettes, room loops, etc.

To use a t-coil, if you have an analog hearing aid, you physically move a switch from the “M” (microphone) position to the “T” telecoil position. If you have a digital aid, you typically just switch to the program (memory) that is programmed to make your t-coils active. If you have one of the fancy new autocoils, you just hold the phone up to your ear and the magnetic field in the phone switches your hearing aid into t-coil mode automatically. (At least that’s how it’s supposed to work.)

Note: if you have autocoils, you cannot use neckloops, room loops, etc., because the magnetic field is not strong enough to engage the magnetic switch. Thus I recommend you never purchase hearing aids with autocoils unless they come with a manual override switch so you can physically switch them into t-coil mode for listening on room loops, etc.

These above devices are all real t-coils. Now comes the deceptive part. At least one manufacturer has resorted to calling their latest invention an “acoustic t-coil.” Acoustic t-coils are not t-coils at all. In actual fact, they are just one memory in the hearing aid that is specially optimized to work best on the phone using your hearing aid’s microphone. (If you were really thinking, that word “acoustic” should have sent up a red warning flag, since real t-coils are inductive, not acoustic.)

What’s the problem. First, these acoustic t-coils don’t work as well on the phone as real t-coils do, according to one person who has tried both. Second, acoustic t-coils don’t work at all with room loops, neckloops, etc. since there is no actual coil to pick up the induced signal.

Therefore, if you are buying hearing aids, make sure you get real t-coils (and make sure they work on a neckloop (or equivalent) before you leave the audiologist’s office.

If you don’t, you may be shocked to discover that when you finally try to use a room loop (like one man discovered yesterday), your fancy hearing aids with acoustic t-coils can’t hear a thing. To add insult to injury, the manufacturer assured him that his hearing aids cannot be retrofitted with real t-coils. Since he did not discover this deception until 6 months after he purchased his hearing aids, he can’t return them for a refund. So beware of such deceptive practices. You’ve been warned!