The strange part of hearing loss is that we don’t seem to start appreciating our favorite sounds until after we’ve lost the capability to clearly hear them. We don’t pause to contemplate, for example, how much we enjoy a good conversation with a close friend until we have to persistently ask them to repeat themselves. […]
Blausen.com staff. “Blausen gallery 2014”. That there is a right way to clean your ears proposes that there is a wrong way, and undoubtedly, there is a very wrong way. The wrong way is prevalent, and it breaks the first rule of cleaning your ears: don’t insert foreign objects into your ear canal. That includes […]
It’s popular to think of hearing loss as an inescapable problem associated with aging, or, more recently, as a consequence of the younger generation’s constant use of iPods. But the numbers illustrate that the larger problem may be exposure to loud noise at work. In the US, 22 million workers are exposed to potentially unsafe […]
More often than not, people are unaware that they have hearing loss. It develops so gradually that it’s frequently undetectable, and moreover, most family physicians do not regularly test for hearing loss at the annual physical exam. Bearing in mind these two facts, it’s no wonder that most people first find out they have hearing […]
About 45 million Americans suffer from tinnitus, which is the perception of sound where no external sound source exists. This phantom sound is normally identified as a ringing sound, but can also materialize as a buzzing, hissing, whistling, swooshing, or clicking. First it is important to understand about tinnitus is that it’s a symptom, not […]
Zinc-air-battery-types by Marc Andressen is licensed under Attribution CC 2.0 You could make a strong case that the most crucial part of your hearing aid is the battery: without it, nothing else works, and if it fails, your hearing fails with it. In this short guide, we’ll reveal everything you need to know about hearing […]
The World Health Organization reports that 1.1 billion individuals are at risk for noise-induced hearing loss, generated by exposure to substantial sound levels from personal audio devices and very loud settings such as nightclubs, bars, concerts, and sporting events. An estimated 26 million Americans currently suffer from the condition. If noise-induced hearing loss occurs from […]
If we really want to understand hearing loss, we need to understand both the physical side, which makes hearing progressively difficult, and the psychological side, which includes the lesser-known emotional reactions to the loss of hearing. In conjunction, the two sides of hearing loss can wreak havoc on a person’s total well being, as the […]
Most people are surprised to learn how young the field of audiology really is, and just how recently its founding father established the profession. To put this in perspective, if you wanted to find the founding father of biology, for example, you’d have to go back in time by 2,300 years and read the The […]
Sometimes, it seems like we enjoy to deceive ourselves. Wikipedia has an entry titled “List of common misconceptions” that consists of hundreds of widely-held but false beliefs. Yes, I know it’s Wikipedia, but take a look at the bottom of the page and you’ll see approximately 385 credible sources cited. As an example, did you […]