I found this article and it offers some hope to people like me who don’t understand speech very well. It was in NewsOK.com. http://newsok.com/new-treatments-help-seniors-live-longer/article/5357438 Here is the part about the new technology. For many seniors, hearing loss is a serious health difficulty. The cochlear nucleus hybrid implant system is considered a groundbreaking advancement that will change the way hearing loss is treated by expanding the scope of hearing technology, said Sandra Over, an Integris audiologist. The cochlear hybrid is a combination of the cochlear implant and a hearing aid. “It will enable us to help hearing-impaired individuals who are struggling significantly even with the best of hearing instruments and who previously didn’t qualify for a cochlear implant,” Over said. An entire population of patients “currently lives their day-to-day lives struggling to hear with and without hearing aids. Many of those patients get some benefit from low-frequency amplification, but struggle to hear sounds of nature, understand their grandchildren, and simply avoid noisy environments where speech can be difficult to understand,” Over said. “This new system gives these patients a new and highly effective treatment option.” The nucleus hybrid system includes the nucleus hybrid L24 implant and the cochlear nucleus 6 sound processor with cochlear hybrid hearing. “This system is designed to effectively restore access to high frequencies, resulting in a speech-understanding improvement two times greater than with a hearing aid alone,” Over said. Only cochlear can provide the option to stimulate low-frequency hearing and simultaneously restore access to the high frequencies through electric stimulation. “This is because hybrid hearing is built into every cochlear nucleus 6 sound processor and can be accessed by attaching the hybrid-hearing-acoustic component,” Over said
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I ran across this article and it is so good. Ask your friends who don’t have any hearing loss and who don’t understand yours, to listen to the recordings in this article. They will then have an understanding of what you go through. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/06/175945670/the-real-sounds-of-hearing-loss Yes. There is research going on about how to cure hearing loss.The Stanford School of Medicine has the Stanford Initiative To Cure Hearing Loss. In a blog post on their site on May 30, 2012, they discuss the Initiative. What I found interesting was a list of some of the research into curing and reversing hearing loss. Click on the names to see the research from the Cheng, Heller and Ricci labs. The articles are pretty technical but thank God there is research going on. I’ve always been amazed that research has created so much success helping people with visual problems ranging from poor vision to cataracts. There are all kinds of procedures and operations available. For hearing problems, however, we have hearing aids and cochlear implants and not much more. In a lot of cases, hearing aids help but can be painful to use. To me, there is nothing more frustrating than being with people and not understanding them. Hearing aids help me in quiet situations, but in a noisy environment, like a restaurant, they’re basically worthless. They have noise reduction built in but it just isn’t effective. After all, if you can’t hear a certain frequency, what good does throwing that frequency at you amplified? It’s like shining a brighter and brighter light at a person who is completely blind. They can’t see it and we can’t hear it. What we need is a way to stimulate the traumatized cells in the cochlea so they can function normally again. That research is under way at Stanford along with research on gene therapy, stem cell therapy and molecular therapy to cure hearing loss. I hope they find the cure and make life much better for so many people. Research at the UW Medical Center translates to improving care options for patients. This University of Washington program shows what is going on in Dr. Clifford Hume,s lab, where researchers are exploring a biological approach to hearing restoration by stimulating regeneration of hair cells in the inner ear. This is an interesting but long video. If you want some insight into the research to cure nerve damage hearing loss, you must watch this. The following is from the FAQ section of a British Company called All Ear Plugs. Sensitivity to noise is unique to the individual. However, there is a general rule that can be applied. A sound is considered safe to hear if it is 85dB or less, which is the equivalent of a telephone dial tone. Safe sounds include the whisper of a quiet library, the sound of a normal conversation and the noise of city traffic whilst in your car. However, harmful noises can include a train whistle at 500 feet, the sound of a tube train, a power mower, motorcycle and power saw at 3 feet. Hearing loss may occur with sustained exposure to sounds that are measured between 90-95dB. It is not only the level of noise, but also the duration of exposure that determines whether it is a threat to your hearing. There are two determining factors on how noise affects you.
According to the ear plugs specialists at All Ear Plugs, for every three decibels over 85dB the time you can be exposed to it without running the risk of temporary or permanent damage is halved. For a sound that is measured at 88dB continuously the permissible exposure time is four hours, but for a measured 91dB noise the time descends down to only two hours of continuous exposure. If you want a visual of how loudness affects your hearing, look at this great infographic from the All Ear Plugs website. I hope they don’t mind me sharing this with you, but I feel it is critical information. Support them. Wegmans Food Markets, out of Rochester, NY, with stores in six states, is beginning to install Induction Hearing Loops in pharmacies at some of their stores Induction Hearing Loops work with many modern hearing aids to bring clear sound to the hearing aid. Here’s how hearing loop systems work - a condenser microphone built into a service counter or checkout lane captures the sound of an employee speaking. A “smart” amplifier removes background noise and sends the clarified sound to an induction loop, which converts it into a wireless electromagnetic field. The T-coil in a hearing aid or cochlear implant acts like an antenna, picking up the signal and delivering the sound directly from the source to the ear. Congratulation, Wegmans, for helping hearing challenged people. |
AuthorJust a person who can hear most sounds but has a heck of a time understanding speech. Archives
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