Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A warning recently circulated around some of the Cochlear Implant (CI) lists that read:

Attention Cochlear Implant users—you should never use the flashlight that never needs batteries, just shake it. Also, it never needs bulbs, is waterproof and floats in water. Single/double super coils create the charge with every shake. The problem is that there is a magnet in it that can erase the maps from a cochlear implant or corrupt computer hard drives. Please pass the word, better to be safe than sorry.

So often the “warnings” that you receive via email are just not true. Someone “thinks” something could happen and warns everyone else—all without a shred of evidence that there is any real problem. This is what has happened in this case. (In addition, there are the many malicious emails whose only purpose is to deliberately scare you silly, but this isn’t one of them.)

So what is the truth about these batteryless flashlights? Are they really capable of wiping out the programs in CIs and corrupting hard drives? I decided to find out.

You see, I have one of these very flashlights sitting on my desk where it has been for a number of months without causing any harm to my computer. I decided to try and see if it could deliberately wipe out data on a floppy disk. I put some files on a floppy disc, then held the disk as close to the magnet in the flashlight as possible for a minute and then tested it in my computer. Still good. Then I held it against the flashlight and shook the flashlight for a couple of minutes and tried it again. Still good.

Note: since the magnet is in the center of the flashlight handle, the closest it can come to any disc or CI is just over half an inch. Also, note that the CI has a magnet of its own to hold it on your head, and this magnet has not been implicated in wiping out CI programs.

Based on my brief tests, I can see no problem with using this flashlight for casual use, even if you have a CI. Now if you taped the processor to the flashlight as close as you can get to the magnet and left it there for a couple of months, who knows what might happen–but is anyone ever going to do that in real life?

As for the hard drives on your computer, you couldn’t get the flashlight as close to them as I did to the floppy and no harm came to the floppy. Thus, I think this flashlight is perfectly safe in normal use.

Notice that according to this article, this flashlight never has actually wiped out CI programs. The author was just warning it could happen. And that might be true—that it could happen, although from my testing, the chances are very remote—you’d have to deliberately try to make it happen, and even then, there are no guarantees you could ever make it happen.

This “warning” is similar to the warning a doctor gave to a hard of hearing customer of mine (and patient of his) who had a heart pacemaker. He told this person that he couldn’t use a PockeTalker to help him hear better as it could interfere with his pacemaker and kill him, but didn’t say anything about carrying a small radio, iPod or DVD player that use basically the same electronics and thus would be just as “dangerous.”

I’ll bet the doctor didn’t even know what a PockeTalker was. Besides, there are no known occurrences of this ever happening. This pseudo-professional warning was just harming the patient who needed an assistive listening device (ALD) in order to hear better. Therefore, just because some of the stuff floating around the Internet seems to come from an authoritative source doesn’t make it true. Take these warnings with a grain of salt until you see them proven to be true.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man explained:

I am about to replace my dial up Internet connection with a broadband one and wireless connectivity would seem preferable to wired via USB or Ethernet for many reasons.

However I have been wondering whether the wireless signal could in any way interfere with my wife’s digital aids. She has enough problems with them anyway, and additional interference would not be welcomed!

Hopefully my concern is unjustified, but if not, I would be very grateful for your comments.

First, I want to commend you for being so concerned about your wife’s hearing. Not all husbands are so understanding.

Now for the good news—I don’t think your wife will have any problems with wireless routers. My digital hearing aids don’t pick up a thing from my wireless routers. I think it would be highly unlikely for any hearing aids to pick up interference from wireless routers.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady asked:

I was just diagnosed with bi-lateral LVAS [large vestibular aqueduct syndrome] AND Meniere’s disease, moderate- profound loss. Does the fact that I have both, increase my chances for further hearing loss? Can I expect my hearing to deteriorate further? I know no one can say for certain, I’d just like to know some odds or statistics.

As far as I know, these two conditions do not affect each other. Therefore, look at each of these conditions independently. People who have a hearing loss from LVAS typically have some kind of trauma that results in more hearing loss each time it occurs. Some people with LVAS never seem to have any hearing loss, or are only susceptible to pretty major trauma, so they lose some hearing at one point and then it stays at that level for a long time.

With Meniere’s disease, typically you lose more hearing with every attack you have. Then, after the attack, your hearing returns somewhat, but not to its previous level. So think of your hearing loss typically as going down two steps, then back up one step—then down two steps and back up one with each succeeding attack.

This isn’t written in stone, but the people that I know with Meniere’s typically have this kind of loss, and eventually they lose most of their hearing in the affected ear.

The good news is that Meniere’s typically affects only one ear—but about 20% of the people with Meniere’s have it in both ears or it switches to the other ear later.

You can learn more about LVAS here.

Learn more about Meniere’s Disease and what you can do to help yourself.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

More often than I care to remember, I receive correspondence from people whose ears have been seriously and permanently damaged from blindly taking the ototoxic drugs prescribed by their doctors. Doctors are not infallible and do make mistakes. Furthermore, there are good doctors and bad doctors as the following story attests.

A lady wrote:

My sister suffered permanent vestibular damage from taking Gentamicin eye drops prescribed off-label for use in the ear (as a preventative for infection!). My sister, an RN, questioned the doctor repeatedly at the time he prescribed the Gentamicin, especially about the wisdom of using ophthalmic drops in the ear, and he replied reassuringly that “all those membranes are the same.”

She told him about the large hole in her eardrum. In fact, she gave him a complete and comprehensive history (a result of her training as a nurse). She had had an ear tube put in her eardrum which had somehow fallen into the middle ear. The repeated attempts to retrieve the tube had caused a large irregular tear in the eardrum, which is why her doctor had then inserted the largest Richard’s T-tube. That ill-fitting tube then caused a small blood blister, which is why the on-call doctor over the phone prescribed the Gentamicin (as a preventive measure) without even seeing her. But there was no infection, thus no need for antibiotics.

I’m sure he just didn’t know any better, although certainly the Gentamicin was a tragic mistake on his part. Just proves the amount of ignorance out there.

As a result of taking the Gentamicin, my sister now has vestibular damage, nystagmus, and oscillopsia. She experiences all the gamut of symptoms you mention–the vertigo, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and the ataxic gait. She even experiences motor function shut-down, and a loss of consciousness when in an environment that becomes too challenging for her brain—to much visual stimuli.

Furthermore, the fear of the unknown is overwhelming when doctors are unable to explain what is occurring, and are even denying the obvious—both the problems and their cause.

I cannot begin to thank you enough for your article (Protect Your Balance System—or Else, 2003). We only recently came across it. If only we had had your article several years ago to explain what was happening at the time.

What I find even more appalling is the arrogance which we have witnessed first-hand. We even went to the President of the [name of state omitted] Ear, Nose and Throat Foundation for testing and help, and he simply denied that Gentamicin could have caused her vestibular damage, even bragging about having testified against a woman in a Gentamicin lawsuit.

I finally gave him a stack of articles and research papers we had found ourselves and suggested he embark upon a quest for the truth by reading them. It’s certainly a shame that his ego and pride prevented him from an honest assessment. In his position, he had the platform from which to educate countless doctors and, in turn prevent the disabling of untold numbers of patients.

Bless you for your helpful information. If you are ever in [city name omitted] for a speaking engagement, we would love to meet you and thank you in person.

This tragic story illustrates yet once again that each of us needs to practice “due diligence” before taking any drugs if we want to prevent grief to ourselves from the unwanted side effects of such drugs.

People could prevent such episodes (as related above) from ever happening if they would read the available information before they take any drug. The problem is that people won’t read such stuff ahead of time because it never crosses their minds that it could happen to them.

If you would like more information on the ototoxicity of Gentamicin and the 763 other drugs known to damage ears, see Ototoxic Drugs Exposed.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

The parents of a hard of hearing boy wrote:

We had a weird experience this last weekend and wanted to see if anyone else has had something similar happen to them or their child. Our son (age 10) has a mild to moderate hearing loss in his left ear, and a moderate to severe hearing loss in his right ear. He wears 2 hearing aids.

He has always complained that certain loud sounds are physically painful in his ears, particularly high pitched ones. It usually comes up in the context of one of his younger sisters shouting or screaming near him, especially when they do it in the car (a practice we discourage but can’t always prevent). He has complained about it, but it is not the kind of thing that happens often, nor has it prevented him from doing anything he wanted to do, until now.

We took him to see a football game last weekend, an occasion where 110,000 people all get together and scream as loud as they can at the same time. We lasted about ten minutes and finally had to leave the game because he was so miserable. What’s going on with his ears?

This experience of your son’s hearing distress is not weird at all. Actually it is very common in people with sensorineural hearing losses such as your son has.

What is happening is that he is suffering from recruitment. With recruitment, as the sound level increases certain frequencies of normal sounds all of a sudden become much too loud and hurt.

Note that the physical volume of this sound typically isn’t damaging to a person’s ears (apart from the roar at the football game)—so it will not cause more hearing loss, but it does cause pain, and in some people, tinnitus. Both of these sensations are generated in the brain, so think of it as the brain’s psychological response to a real stimulus.

There are three things you can do if you have severe recruitment.

One (and I do this all the time since I have severe recruitment is to yank your hearing aids out when recruiting sounds occur (or just turn them off). In my case, I find that almost no sounds recruit if I am not wearing my hearing aids. Therefore, in noisy situations, I just leave my hearing aids in my pocket. Then I can enjoy whatever activity is going on. Your son may want to try this and see if it works for him also.

Two is to get his hearing aids adjusted properly so they won’t recruit. The problem is that few audiologists really understand recruitment so don’t adjust hearing aids properly for it. Just to prove a point, in all my 55 years of wearing hearing aids, I’ve never had an audiologist test me properly for recruitment except the last one—and this was at my specific request.

The proper way to test for recruitment is to use the audiometer and test each individual test frequency. To do this, the audiologist keeps turning the volume up for that tone until you wince or jump, your eyes blink or you otherwise react to the sound. After the audiologist does this for all test frequencies, then you will know exactly which frequencies cause recruitment.

The next step is to properly adjust his hearing aids. The audiologist needs to set the compression on the bands that cover those recruiting frequencies such that the sound can never come close to, or exceed, the recruiting volumes. When this is done, he won’t have much of a problem with recruitment anymore. (Note that a few people have such severe recruitment that it is beyond the hearing aid’s capability to control it.)

Three, avoid sounds that you know will recruit. This doesn’t just have to be the 100,000 screaming fans in the stands. For example, just setting a glass on the table will hurt me because it sounds so loud with hearing aids on. To a person with normal hearing it is just a quiet “thunk” or “clink.” To me it has always been a very sharp painful sound when I am wearing my hearing aids. Without them on, I hardly hear it either. With my new hearing aids adjusted specifically to control recruitment, I can finally almost stand this sound! (In my case, if I have the hearing aids properly adjusted to control my recruitment, then it degrades speech so much I don’t understand much of what I am hearing—so I tread the fine line between understanding speech and recruitment.)

If your hard of hearing child complains of sounds being too loud (and you know they are not), take his complaint seriously. Your child has recruitment and these sounds are painful to him.

If you want to understand more about recruitment click here to read this article.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man asked:

Because I have a lot of grass to mow I spend 2 to 4 hours per week on a riding mower. My question is how best to protect what is left of my hearing. I believe my best options are high quality ear muffs or noise canceling ear muffs. (I no longer use foam plugs in the ear canal because they tend to push wax deep into the ear and form a plug that is difficult to remove.) Is there any research on this subject to guide me?

In order to protect your hearing, all you need to do is bring down the loud sounds to 80 dB or less.When wearing ear muffs with a 30 dB rating, you could be in noise as loud as 110 dB. Lawn mowers and tractors produce sounds in the neighborhood of 100 dB (more or less depending on the model).

Therefore, good ear muffs with a protection rating of about 30 dB would be more than adequate. They would bring sounds down to about 70 dB which is not damaging to your ears at all.

Incidentally, my ear muffs work so well for me that I can’t even hear my motor running. (I use a walk behind mower.)