Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

The Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network (DHHCAN) has just released their new Consumer Action Guide on Air Travel.

This guide is based upon the recent update of the Air Carrier Access Act regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation in May 2009, during one of the most comprehensive overhauls since the Act was enacted in 1990.

The Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA) sets out requirements for disability access at airports and on airlines. These ACAA rules give protection from discrimination by:

• Prohibiting U.S. and foreign airlines from discriminating against passengers on the basis of disability
• Requiring airlines to make aircraft, other facilities, and services accessible
• Requiring airlines to take steps to accommodate passengers with a disability

“Today’s travelers need information from the minute they arrive at the departing airport until they leave the destination airport. It is crucial that they have prompt access to information once they self-identify that they are deaf, hard of hearing or deaf-blind,” says Barbara Raimondo, author of the DHHCAN Air Travel Action Guide 2009 and a mother of two deaf children.

The DHHCAN Action Guide on Air Travel is available online both as a summary and as a full document. This 7 page report is easy to read. The first page is a summary of the full text on pages 2 to 7.

One of the nice things about this Act is that it applies not only to all US airlines, but to any airlines flying to or from US soil.

Source: TDI News Release November 13, 2009

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Perhaps some of you might be interested in taking part in the below survey. Note: it is limited to children living in the USA. This survey comes from the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. The study is looking for parents of children who are hard of hearing or deaf. Here’s the blurb.

“My name is Nancy Hanauer and I’m a study recruiter with the University of Washington. Our university is conducting a Quality of Life Study for Children and Youth Who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing and we’re hoping you’d be willing to share information about the study with the families in your program. We’re looking for deaf and hard of hearing children and youth ages 5 to 18 and their parents for participation in the study (US residents only). Learn more about the study here.”

 by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

 Recently as I was surfing the web, I came across an audiological web site that blew my socks right off. This audiological practice provides an impressive array of services to hard of hearing people, but what really arrested my attention was that this particular audiology practice had an “Ototoxicity Monitoring Program,” something that I have been saying for years that audiologists need to implement, but until now I had never seen advertised on any audiologist’s website.

The thing that really got my attention was that they tested hearing right up to 20,000 Hz—the upper limit of human hearing. In contrast, conventional (normal) hearing testing is only done to 8,000 Hz. Thus, conventional hearing testing misses the early stages of hearing damage from drugs, which typically first occurs at the highest frequencies the person can hear.

By the time hearing loss has progressed down to 6,000 to 8,000 Hz where it can be detected by conventional audiological testing, it is much too late to do anything about preventing hearing loss. By that time, drugs have very likely permanently destroyed the person’s high-frequency hearing.

Upon seeing this website, I couldn’t let this pass, I just had to phone Dr. Lisa and find out more about her high-frequency hearing testing program and why she was doing it.

It turns out she used to work for a cancer clinic where she did high-frequency hearing testing to monitor the effects of the highly-ototoxic drugs given to cancer patients. Thus, she knows the importance of high-frequency hearing testing. Therefore, when she moved into private practice, she purchased an audiometer that could test the high frequencies and set up her own monitoring program.

Incidentally, for years, when I have talked to audiologists, they kept telling me that normal audiometers only test to 8,000 Hz. and that it requires special audiometers to test hearing to 20,000 Hz, and that such audiometers were not readily available. Well, I have news for them. Audiometers that test to 20,000 Hz are indeed readily available. The one Dr. Lisa uses is the Grason-Stadler GSI-61 audiometer. Hard of hearing reader, you might suggest to your own audiologist that they get one of these audiometers so they can monitor your high-frequency hearing.

Another unusual thing I noticed about her website that really pleased me was that she carries all sorts of assistive listening devices (ALDs). Few audiologists do this, so I needed to find out why she places such emphasis on ALDs. It turns out Dr. Lisa is hard of hearing herself, and well knows the value of such devices. In fact, her hearing got so bad that she now has a cochlear implant. So not only is she an audiologist, she is also one of us hard of hearing people at the same time.

Her Colorado Tinnitus and Hearing Center carries a wide selection of ALDs including “Amplified telephones; Cellular phone adaptors, Personal Infrared and FM Television amplifiers; Personal Pocket talkers; FM Systems for students; Sonic alarm clocks with bed vibrator; Door bell alerts and much more!”

If you live near Denver, Colorado you might want to stop by for your audiology needs. You can reach the Colorado Tinnitus and Hearing Center by phone at 303-534-0163, or visit their website at http://www.tinnitusandhearing.com/services2.asp.

 by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
 

From time to time, the issue arises as to what we (people with a hearing loss) call ourselves. Many of us refer to ourselves as “hard of hearing”. One person with a hearing loss commented: “It’s a stupid expression if you ask me. Hard-of-hearing makes no sense.”

Everyone is free to have their own opinions. However, I am also free to disagree with the above opinion. You see, in MY opinion, the expression “hard of hearing” is actually quite accurate. Here’s why.

Hearing (or more accurately understanding what we hear) is hard. If all we needed was more volume, we would be “soft of hearing,” and hearing aids and assistive devices would give us the extra volume we need. Then hearing would be effortless.

However, amplification isn’t enough. We still often can’t understand what people are saying in spite of the extra amplification. This is because we have less than perfect discrimination. Thus a lot of words are “fuzzy” and sound much the same to us. It takes a lot of effort to try to make sense of what people are saying under these conditions.

For example, we have to strain to hear. We have to go though a lot of mental gymnastics in order to figure out what they might have said. We have to concentrate on the person’s face to speechread. Then our brains have to put together what our eyes see, what our ears hear, what we know about the topic and what we know about the structure of the language. No matter how you slice it, all this is hard work. So yes, in a very real sense, we truly are hard of hearing. No wonder we are wiped out at the end of the day. All this hard work exhausts us.

So I am quite happy to use the term “hard of hearing” as it accurately portrays what I go though every day of my life.
 

 by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady wrote:

My hearing loss has been described as “an air gap in the bone.” Whatever do they mean by that?

What you really mean to ask is, “What is an air/bone gap?”

When your audiologist does the pure tone hearing testing (the series of beeps at different frequencies and intensities), the “air” refers to “air conduction” testing using earphones, and the “bone” refers to the “bone conduction” testing using a bone oscillator (vibrator) placed behind your ear on the mastoid bone.

If you have a sensorineural hearing loss (meaning inner ear loss) both the air conduction and the bone conduction results will be similar.

However, if you have a conductive loss (meaning a middle ear loss) then your bone conduction testing results will be better than the air conduction results on your audiogram. This difference between the two lines or your audiogram is called the “air/bone gap”. Thus, the gap is only on your audiogram; it is not a physical gap in some bones in your head.

You could also have both a conductive and a sensorineural hearing loss at the same time. They call this a mixed loss. In this case, you will also have an air/bone gap on your audiogram.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Here’s an easy way to separate the doctors who are truly trying to help you from the doctors that just run “patient mills.”

It’s based on the astute observation of J. Apley who, back in 1978, wrote:

Doctors who treat the symptom
tend to give a prescription.
Doctors who treat the patient
are more likely to offer guidance.

No matter what condition you have–whether its hearing loss, balance problems, tinnitus, or anything else, if you want to get better, you and your doctor need to root out the source of the problem, not just cover over the symptoms and whitewash it.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Did you ever wonder which would be the best hospital in which to be treated for various ear problems, or to have surgery to receive a cochlear implant?

Wonder no longer. The U.S. News and World Report has compiled a list of the top 51 ENT hospitals in the country.

In case you are interested, the number one hospital for “ears” in the USA is Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD. The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City, IA comes in second. In third place is the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, MA.

You can find out the details of why these and the rest of the top hospitals ranked the way they did by clicking on the U.S. News web site, then click on “Best Hospitals” in the box at the top left, then choose “Ears, Nose & Throat.” Even faster, just click here and you’ll be taken directly to this list.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Carolyn asked:

How in the world do I get a sensible hearing test when I have so much internal noise in my ears? My tinnitus sounds just like the “beeps” I’m supposed to be hearing

You have a valid concern. A number of people have asked me the same question. During pure tone testing, the fear is that your tinnitus will mask the faint pure-tone “beeps” especially when they are at the same frequency.

I have the same problem. Fortunately, there are a couple of solutions that work for me. They should work for you also.

Many audiometers now can produce 2 or 3 different “kinds” of tones. However, most people are only familiar with the standard single pure tone “beeps.” Before the test, ask your audiologist what other sounds her audiometer can produce besides these simple “beeps.”

The best one I’ve found is a warble sound. Warble tones are very distinctive. You won’t mix up warble tones with your tinnitus or other phantom sounds–at least I never have. I wish all audiometers had a warble tone option.

If the audiometer doesn’t have a warble tone, the next best solution is the double beep sound. Instead of a single “beep,” you hear a “beep-beep” and by listening for the break between the two beeps, you can more easily separate the audiometer’s sound from your tinnitus or other phantom sounds. This works for me too. However, the warble is still much easier to detect.

Ask for one of these options and you will feel more confident that the pure tone testing produced valid results in spite of your tinnitus.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man asked:

Is there any difference between how our left and right ears hear and process sounds? I understand the process is different on the left and right side. Can you explain this?

Having two properly-functioning ears greatly improves our listening enjoyment and gives us more balanced hearing, especially when listening to music, or in small group situations. This is because our brains process different information from each of our ears. If we only have one properly-functioning ear, our brains only give us part of the message.

Our brains consist of two halves or hemispheres. The left side of our brain is the logical or the technical side. It gives us discrete pieces of information. The right side of our brain is the aesthetic side. It gives us our appreciation of beauty and our ability to recognize images and patterns of sound.

God wired our brains so that the sounds our right ears hear go mainly to the left side of our brains. There our brains interpret what a person is saying. The sounds our left ears hear go mainly to the right side of our brains. There our brains interpret how the person speaking means it. The two sides of our brains have many interconnecting links so they rapidly “talk” back and forth to each other as they are processing this information.

To be sure, some of the sound impulses from each ear travel to that same side of our brains. However most of the signals cross over to the other side of our brains. This extra information helps us hear and understand better. Thus we need both our ears to completely understand all sounds, speech and music.

For example, take the words “I love you.” Three simple words with a myriad of shades of meanings. Our right ear (and our left brain) would hear and interpret the actual words and analyze the context. Our left ear (and our right brain) would determine how we understand this message–whether sincere, sarcastic or casual.

When listening to music, we “hear” the sounds of the individual instruments of the orchestra in our right ear and “listen” to the blended beauty of the music itself with our left ear.

Therefore, only having one ear detracts from our ability to hear, understand and appreciate sound.

If you are hard of hearing, this is another reason why you need to wear hearing aids in both ears.