Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

From time to time scientists have raised the question of cell (mobile) phone safety and how it may affect our brains since the antennas of cell phones are transmitting electromagnetic energy into our heads.

In the past there have been concerns that cell phone usage may cause various kinds of brain cancers. Now new concerns are being raised concerning whether the electromagnetic radiation from cell phones might also affect our hearing. In fact, just such a paper was presented at the 2010 American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF) annual meeting and Oto Expo September 26-29 in Boston, MA. (1)

Researchers studied 125 people who were long-term (more than one year) cell phone users and 58 controls who had never used cell phones. The purpose of this study was to assess and compare potential changes in hearing function both in the inner ear, and in the central auditory pathways in the brain due to chronic exposure to electromagnetic waves from using cell phones.

Everyone in the study underwent a battery of audiological tests including “pure tone audiometry (250-12 kHz), tympanometry, distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE), auditory brain responses (ABR), and middle latency responses (MLRs).”

The results of this study showed that people that had regularly used cell (mobile) phones for more than 3 years were at “a significantly higher risk of having DPOAEs absent as compared with controls. They were found to have higher speech frequency thresholds and lower MLR wave and Na and Pa amplitudes.” (1) In plain English, this means that cell phone users had more hearing loss than non-cell phone users. Interestingly enough, the hearing loss was the same in both ears, not just the ear to which the phone was normally held.

They concluded that long-term and intensive mobile phone use may “damage the cochlea and the auditory cortex”.

What does this mean to you? Just this—land-line (corded) phones are obviously safer—both to your health and to your hearing than cell phones.

If you are going to use a cell phone, keeping it as far away from your head as is reasonably possible would be a wise move. In other words, as much as possible, rather than holding the cell phone up to your ear, do texting, use the speaker-phone function, use a bluetooth headset or use an amplified neckloop or T-links. Using any of these methods/devices will keep your phone at some distance from your head. As a result, your phone will not be unnecessarily zapping your brain with excessive electromagnetic radiation and thus possibly causing you even more hearing loss.

If you have to hold your cell phone up to your head, keep your calls short. However, to be as safe as possible, whenever you are around a corded landline phone, use it in preference to your cell phone. (Although this study didn’t look at cordless landline phones, since they also produce electromagnetic radiation right at your head level, you might be wise to limit your use of these phones too—until long-term studies prove whether they are safe or not.)

(1) Panda, Naresh, et al. 2010. Auditory Changes in Mobile Users Is Evidence Forthcoming? Article presented at the 2010 AAO-HNSF Annual Meeting; September 26-29, 2010; Boston, Massachusetts.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D. with Dana Mulvany

A lady explained:

My cell phone contract is nearing its end, and I am looking at other carriers—trying to find a better phone for me. I’ve had several cell phones over the years, but have never had one that I was comfortable with except when making calls myself. Which is the best cell phone for hard of hearing people?

My friend, Dana Mulvany, herself hard of hearing, and like me, an expert in hearing assistive technology including phones explains:

There are actually quite a few issues you may want to consider when purchasing a cell phone. Some of these include:

• The audio quality of voice transmissions. It is important to assess how well your voice comes across on the phone in addition to how well you can hear on the phone. Unfortunately, some phones do a poor job transmitting all the frequencies people need in order to hear speech as well as possible. This is particularly important if the person you are talking with is also hard of hearing.
• The volume of the phone. Is the maximum volume enough so that you can hear people well?
• The M and T rating. Ideally, you want a phone that is rated M4/T4. This gives your hearing aids the greatest immunity from interference from the phone in both voice and t-coil modes.
• The availability of a 2.5 mm jack (for accessories such as a neckloop or T-links).
• Whether you are effectively alerted to the phone ringing. Is the ring tone audible to you. Is the vibration strong enough?
• Whether you can be alerted effectively to call waiting, text messages, etc.
• Whether or not Web CapTel will work on the phone
• Whether the phone will support Mobile CapTel (both voice and Web CapTel at the same time).
• Compatibility of the phone’s Bluetooth feature with hearing aid compatible accessories such as bluetooth neckloops.
• Access to text messaging.
• Ease of use of texting.
• Access to email.
• Access to web sites.
• The cost of voice and data plans.
• Video capabilities (in the future) for people who use sign language or lip reading.
• The availability of mobile TV with captioning (in the future).

No phones come with all the above features. You need to decide which features are important to you and get the phone that best meets your needs..

Is there one perfect phone for us? I’m afraid not at this time!

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady asked:

What is the best cell phone for a person with a hearing problem?

That question is impossible to answer because there are so many variables. Many of these variables are subjective—so only you can answer them. It is like asking people, “What is the best tasting food?” You will get all sorts of answers—some might say filet mignon, or angel-food cake or spinach or eggplant—and they would all be right—for that person.

Other variables are more objective—and depend on how you plan to couple the phone output to your ears. Thus, the answer to your question is “It depends…”

It depends on your likes and dislikes.

It depends on whether you wear hearing aids, or want to use the phone with your bare ears.

It depends on the degree of you hearing loss.

It depends on the shape of your hearing loss curve.

It depends on your word recognition (discrimination) scores.

It depends whether you are a techno-geek and like lots of “goodies”, or want a plain simple cell phone.

It depends on whether you need texting capabilities, or just normal phone service.

It depends on whether you are going to be using the phone in noise, or just in quiet places.

It depends on your own personal subjective feelings of what sounds good to you. Phones vary in the quality of their sound.

It depends on what features you need in a cell phone and those you would like to have.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea.

Personally, here are the key things I look for in a cell phone.

1. Loud volume (although no phone has the volume I need).

2. Bluetooth connection.

3. Headset jack—hopefully standard 2.5 mm jack.

4. M4/T4 rating.

Items 2 and 3 are necessary if you want to connect your phone to your hearing aids.

Item 4 is necessary so the phone doesn’t cause interference in your hearing aids.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Last month a man wrote:

I am somewhat hard of hearing. I can never hear my cell phone when it rings, even when it is in my pocket. Do you have a remote little light that would blink when my phone rings?

I had written in part:

Sorry, I’m not aware of a portable blinking light device for cell phones.

Fortunately, one of our subscribers knew the answer. There are indeed such devices—not remote lights, but lights that fit on the phone itself.

Lynn explained:

I thought it would be nice to share information about a portable light that flashes for cell phones. These are available at many mall kiosks that sell cell phone gadgets. It is a light of any design that fits in place of the antenna on the cell phone. Mine was red/white and blue. In the mountains one night, my husband thought a police car was stopping us and pulled over. Twice it happened with no policeman in sight! (I forgot to tell him I bought this “alerting device” for my cell phone and in the dark car it really lit up!)

It did help when I just wanted to see the light without the loud ring/vibration on a table, or did not have pants pockets. It was easy to see inside my purse too….a really bright strobe light the size of your cell phone antenna.

I did a bit of research and found that there are in fact two kinds of lighted accessories you can get for your cell phone.

As Lynn explained above, there are light-up antennas for some cell phones. Also, there are lighted batteries for other cell phones. These lighted batteries come with a transparent battery cover so you can see the light flashing through it.

Unfortunately, these accessories seem to be fast going out of style and are harder to come by. I checked with two mall cell-phone accessory kiosks and both said they used to carry them but not any more.

You can still find them on-line, but they only work for a limited number of phones (probably older ones). If you are interested, do a Google search for “light up antenna for cell phone” for the antenna kind, and “light up battery for cell phone” for the battery kind. Then check the search results for your phone model and service. It seems the antenna light-up accessories don’t work with CDMA networks for example.

If you strike out there, all is not lost. As Wendy informed me, some phones have flashing strobe lights built in. She explained, When “the LG8100 rings a little strobe light flashes, so even if I don’t hear it, I can see it flashing! It’s great for me!”

So if you want a phone that flashes to alert you, there are at least three possibilities that may work for you if they don’t all go the way of the Dodo bird.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady explained:

My mother-in-law is hard of hearing and only has a cell phone now. She doesn’t hear it ring all of the time and I am trying to find something that will amplify the ring on the phone, or something that will notify her that it is ringing. Do you know where I may find something like this?

If she is carrying the cell phone around with her—then set it on vibrate mode and have her wear it close to her body somewhere so she can feel the vibration.

Also, if she has the right cell phone and service provider, she may be able to add flashing lights to her cell phone to get her attention. (See the article “Flashing Lights for Cell Phones Revisited“.)

If she basically leaves her cell phone on the counter or coffee table, or bed table, or wherever at home then having the cell phone on vibrate won’t help. However, I have just the device she needs in that case—the Super Loud Cell Phone Ring Alerter. It does three things—flashes a strobe, makes the ring much louder and at night with the optional vibrator to put under her mattress, it will shake her awake.

In her case, probably a good solution would be for her to have two Ring Alerters. Put one on her bed table in the bedroom hooked up with the bed vibrator. Place the other one where she spends most of her time. Have it sitting in plain sight so she can see the strobe light when it flashes as well as hear the loud ringer.

It is easy to use this Ring Alerter—just pull out the elastic at the back—put the cell phone between the elastic and the back of the Ring Alerter and let the elastic hold it in place there. That’s all there is to it. To answer the phone, you just pull the cell phone out of the elastic and answer it normally.

This ring alerter also works for landline phones too. You plug it into the wall phone jack and plug the phone into the Ring Alerter. Whenever the phone rings, it will alert you just the same as if it were a cell phone. In fact, I think it will work with both phones at the same time.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady explained:

If someone has an automatic t-coil on their hearing aid, they will have problems hearing on their cell phones if they want to do so in t-coil mode. They will need a magnet glued to the phone’s earpiece in order to activate the automatic t-coil.

I don’t have a t-coil switch on my digital hearing aid. As a result, for a year, trying to hear on my cell phone was horrible. I couldn’t put a magnet next to the earpiece to kick in the t-coil because it was a flip-phone and it wouldn’t close otherwise.

I just brought a new cell phone—not a flip phone this time. I glued a magnet next to the earpiece and the t-coil kicked in properly. I can hear great now!

You have just exposed one of my chief complaints concerning automatic t-coils—they need a manual override when using them with devices that do not provide a strong enough magnetic field to activate them. This includes devices such as cell phones, neckloops and room loops.

It’s a shame that after paying the big bucks for your hearing aid, you still have to fool around to make the automatic t-coil work with your cell phone. Your work around is great—you just have to find a small magnet that’s powerful enough to activate your automatic t-coils and then glue it to the right place on your phone so it will activate when you hold the phone up to your ear (hearing aid). That’s a pain.

I don’t like, or recommend, automatic t-coils unless they have a manual override. With a manual override, you don’t have to fool around with a magnet. You just manually put your hearing aids into t-coil mode. Then they will work with your cell phones and neckloops and room loops too.

With your automatic t-coils, you can’t hear via your t-coils when using loop systems unless you stick magnets to your hearing aids to activate their automatic t-coils. That’s another pain. (Also, you need to have those magnets with you at all times so you have them when you need them.) Furthermore, you can’t glue the magnets to your hearing aids because you have to remove the magnets when you are finished with the looped device so your hearing aids will return to microphone mode again. Otherwise, you won’t hear a thing until you do. What a pain!

It’s so much better to insist on a manual t-coil, or an automatic t-coil with a manual override. Then you never have to fool around with magnets on your phone or your hearing aids. As you can tell, I’m solidly for “pain-free” listening.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man wrote:

I am somewhat hard of hearing. I can never hear my cell phone when it rings , even when it is my pocket. Do you have a remote little light that would blink when my phone rings?

Sorry, I’m not aware of a portable blinking light device for cell phones. However, there are some things you can do. First, most hard of hearing people have a high-frequency loss—which means they don’t hear the higher-frequency cell phone ring tones very well. Therefore, to make it easier to hear your cell phone ringing, download (or choose) the lowest frequency ring tone that is available for your phone. You might be surprised how much better you can hear a lower-frequency ring tone.

Second, why don’t you leave your cell phone on vibrate so you can feel it ring, even if you can’t hear it?

Third, if you regularly put your cell phone down—for example, on your desk, or on your bed table at night, I do have a nifty gizmo for you. This device flashes a light, produces a loud audible alert, and, if you are in bed, shakes your bed to get your attention whenever your cell phone rings. You can see this cool cell-phone ring alerter here.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

What will they think up next? Did you ever want to change the settings on your hearing aids, but felt embarrassed, and didn’t want to be obvious about it? That is where a remote control comes in handy. I loved to be able to do this with the remote that came with my old Widex Quattros. I could change programs, adjust the volume, or turn on or off the T- coils or microphones, even if the remote was in my pocket. No one had a clue that I was doing that.

Now Starkey Labs, the makers of Starkey hearing aids has come up with these features, but with a new twist. Their new “S” Series hearing aids have a cool feature built in called T² technology.

With T² technology, your cell phone can double as a remote control. T² technology allows you to use your cell phone (or any touch-tone phone for that matter) to conveniently switch memory settings, adjust the volume, or mute your “S” Series hearing aids.

To learn more, click on Starkey “S” Series hearing aids, then click on “View Features” to learn a bit about the T² technology and other features of these new hearing aids.

If controlling your hearing aids via remote control is something you always wanted, and you are “married” to your cell phone, maybe the new Starkey “S” series is something you might want to investigate.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady wrote:

I thought if anyone had an idea for this problem it would be you. My husband who is hard of hearing receives calls during the night from work on his cell phone which does not ring loud enough to wake him up. Any ideas on any alert systems that work for cell phone? He uses a Sonic Alert alarm clock that will work with receivers, but everything I have seen only works with corded phones.

I think you are right—up until now, all alerting systems worked with landline phones and not with cell phones. However, there is more than one way to skin the cat, so to speak.

I can think of four ways to accomplish this.

1. You could take on the task of listening for the cell phone ringing and poke him to wake him up (assuming you can hear the phone ringing yourself). I don’t recommend this as a regular “duty”, but it could work in a pinch. It is not a good idea to have a spouse act as the “ears” for the hard of hearing partner. This can build resentment in the hearing spouse and doesn’t teach the hard of hearing person to be responsible for his own hearing loss, nor how to use effective hearing loss coping strategies and assistive devices.

2. If he has call forwarding on his cell phone—before he goes to bed, he could set it to call forward to your landline phone and then hook the landline phone into his alerting system if he has such a system.

For example, with Silent Call’s Lamplighter, you could plug in your landline phone. Then he would be woken up when either phone rings since any cell phone calls would be automatically forwarded to the landline phone.

One thing I like about the Lamplighter is that you can plug your bed table lamp into it as well. When the phone rings, the bed table light will blink on and off in addition to the bed shaker vibrating the fillings out of your teeth! Having a flashing light is a good idea for when you are already up, but are still in the bedroom and thus wouldn’t feel the bed shaking,

3. He could use a sound module transmitter such as those used for baby’s crying. Put the phone right beside the sound module transmitter and when the cell phone rings, the sound of the phone ringing should set it off. The sound module would then transmit an alerting signal to the base station, which in turn would set off the alarm, flashing lights and bed shaker—enough to waken the dead one way or another.

To do this, you could use the Silent Call Lamplighter system I mentioned above, for example. All you’d need in addition to the Lamplighter is the Sound Monitor module. You can see these Silent Call system products here.

4. I’ve saved the surprise for last. Serene Innovations just released the exact gizmo your husband is looking for. It’s the RF-110 Super Loud Cell/Phone Ring Alerter. The blurb says, “You’ll never miss a telephone call again, day or night! This ringer has both audible and visual alerts that are activated when there is an incoming phone call on your landline telephone or your cell phone.” If that is not enough, you can plug in an optional bed shaker for nighttime alerts. Includes AC adapter.

Get the RF-110 Super Loud Cell/Phone Ring Alerter here. You can get the optional bed shaker to plug in to this unit from there as well.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Until now, captioned telephone service has been restricted to landline phones (CapTel), or to phones (landline or cell) used in conjunction with a computer (WebCapTel). Now, if you have Apple’s iPhone (cell phone) with 3G service, you can have CapTel captioned conversations where ever you are by just using your cell phone.

If you don’t have Apple’s iPhone with 3G service, you can use any cell phone for the speaking part, but you’ll need another web device in order to read the captions. This could be any portable computer with web access, one of the following smartphones—Apple iPhone, Motorola Q9C, HTC Mogul or the Treo800w or a mobile device that uses Windows Mobile 6 or Apple Mobile Safari.

Once this service becomes widely available on most cell phones, hard of hearing people will be able to “hear” on their cell phones, just like people with normal hearing. But for now, the Apple iPhone with 3G service is a viable option, and points the way to what will hopefully become commonplace in the future.

You can read about it in the CapTel News from Ultratec—Fall 2008 edition.