Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady wrote:

I am wondering if the dual Music Links and my hearing aids set to t-coil mode will work with a computer. Can I plug the Music Links into the earphone jack on a computer?

You bet. The Music Links work great in any stereo earphone jack—including the one on your computer. You can check out the Music Links here.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady explained:

A problem I have with cell phones is that I have no privacy. I have to have the volume up so loud that people around me (even two offices away) can hear my conversations even with the speaker off. Is there something that can help me?

I have good news for you. Switch your hearing aids to t-coil mode and use the T-Links. Then you’ll have totally private conversations. No one will be able to hear the other person on your phone—even if they put their ear right up to it! How’s that for privacy? Since the T-Links plugs into the headset jack, it cuts out sound from going to either the receiver or speaker, thus no one will be able to hear you, and you’ll hear beautiful clear sound in both ears via your t-coils. You can see the T-links here.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A hard of hearing wife wrote:

I loved your ‘Dear Family’ letter on dealing with my hearing loss. I cried after I read it because it hit the nail right on the head! My husband is terrible (regarding my hearing loss) and I’m hoping this will help! I’m getting up the courage to give it to him this week.

Note: anyone can access this “Dear Family” letter through the short article Effective Communication in the Family. It explains some easy communication tips so that you can more easily converse with your loved ones.

I encouraged this lady to give this letter to her husband. A few days later she wrote:

I just wanted to tell you that I gave the ‘Dear Family’ letter to my husband last night. (It was easier than I thought.) He even apologized and told me that hearing is just something he’s taken for granted and always forgets that I can’t hear. Let’s hope things will improve now.

I hope things will improve for you too. However, I must caution you it won’t come all at once. You will have to keep on reminding him again and again that you can’t hear, and refer him to the “Dear Family” letter and the specific points he is breaking.

This is because even if he really wants to meet your needs, he often will forget because communication habits are so deeply ingrained. It will take a lot of effort on his part to form new communication habits. However, with your help he can learn the proper ways of effectively talking with you.

This same lady also lamented:

My hearing loss began about ten years ago. I can’t imagine what I’m going to go through if I go completely deaf. I think when a person is diagnosed with a hearing loss, they should also prescribe counseling for them and their families, besides just fitting them with hearing aids! It would save us from a lot of torment and depression. I’ve been laughed at, made fun of, ignored at gatherings, and yelled at because I couldn’t understand what someone was saying.

What you are saying is absolutely true. Hard of hearing people, and their families, do indeed need counseling—but they seldom get it. Part of the blame lies with the audiologists for not taking the time to do the necessary counseling, but part of the blame lies with hard of hearing people and their families who do not think they need such training, so won’t come to sessions put on by their audiologists. I’ve talked to some audiologists who are discouraged because they prepare information for these sessions, and then their clients don’t show up.

This lady concluded with the observation:

As your hearing ability continues to drop, people assume your IQ drops with it.

Unfortunately, what you say is too often true. Therefore, we have to show people that it is not true—that we have just lost our hearing, not our brains. The way we do this is to be proactive and tell people we have a hearing loss, then explain what we need them to do so we can hear and understand them.

This way they will know it is our ears and not our IQ that has gone south. However, if we bluff (pretend to hear and understand when we don’t), can you blame people for thinking the elevator stopped one floor short of the penthouse?

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man asked:

How important is sodium in controlling tinnitus? Seems like if I eat out and ingest some larger amounts, my tinnitus goes off the rails.

Sodium is indeed a known trigger of tinnitus—so maybe that is what causes it in your case as you already suspect. “Hidden” sodium could also be the source of your tinnitus. For example, MSG added to food by the chef also makes tinnitus worse. (MSG contains sodium—the “S” in the acronym MSG.)

On the other hand, how do you know it is sodium, and not some other “stuff” in the restaurant food? Some people find that wine, vinegar, cheese, caffeine, or certain spices also affect their tinnitus.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady wrote:

I was prescribed Fluoxetine (Prozac) for fibromyalgia. I took it for 7 days before contacting my Rheumatologist about the tinnitus and other disturbing side- effects. He seemed surprised that this medication would cause tinnitus, but said to stop taking it. Forty-eight hours later the tinnitus stopped and I was elated.

Then I made a really bad decision. I thought that perhaps I could take the medication every other day to help with the fibromyalgia and not get the side effects. I took one more capsule and within about 8 hours the tinnitus was back.

I still have the tinnitus even though I have been off the medication for 11 days. It is a loud, high-pitched whistling sound that is constant 24 hours a day every day.

What is the likelihood that this is permanent? And are there any steps I can take to increase the chance that it will go away?

What you have experienced illustrates the “fickleness” of many of the ototoxic drugs. You don’t know what is going to happen next.

Fluoxetine (Prozac, Sarafem) is quite ototoxic. Your doctor should have known this. It is listed in the PDR (and the CPS for those of you living in Canada) as causing tinnitus (as well as hearing loss, hyperacusis, ataxia, dizziness, nystagmus, vertigo and ear pain), so your doctor could have looked it up if he had wanted to. This shows how little doctors really care about the ototoxic side effects of the drugs they prescribe. Ear problems seem typically to fly under most doctors’ radar.

When you stopped taking the Fluoxetine the first time, how were you to know that, if you took it again, the tinnitus would be much more persistent?

Instead of taking the full dose every second day, a better choice might have been to take half the dose every day. Sometimes tinnitus is dose related, so a reduced dose might not trigger it whereas a full dose could, but there are no guarantees of course.

Whether it is now permanent is anyone’s guess. I’d like to say that it will go away in time—but I have no guarantee that it will.

Obviously, you are very sensitive to this drug—so it would seem wise to stay away from Fluoxetine permanently. If I were you, I’d stay away from any drug that is known to cause tinnitus until you get a handle on how you can control your tinnitus.

In order to give yourself the best chance of having your tinnitus fade away, besides not taking any drugs that are known to cause tinnitus, you need to learn to ignore your tinnitus. If you focus on your tinnitus, and get upset with it, your limbic system will flag the tinnitus sound as “important” and consequently it will seem even louder and more intrusive. Therefore, treat your tinnitus as meaningless sound, and let it fade into the background if you can. This is called becoming habituated to your tinnitus.

Incidentally, I’ve had several people tell me they lost hearing after taking Fluoxetine for several months or years, so it is not a good drug for our ears—no matter how you slice it.

To be safe, you need to check out the ototoxic side effects of any drugs before you take them. One way to do this is to check out any drugs you take in Ototoxic Drugs Exposed. This book contains information on the ototoxicity of 763 drugs known to damage ears.