A new national study has found that hearing loss is on the rise among American teenagers.
The study, conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, found that “the prevalence of hearing loss among a sample of U.S. Adolescents aged 12 to 19 years was greater in 2005-2006 compared with 1988 to 1994.”
The study found that the rate of hearing loss increased from 14.9% from the first study to 19.5% in the most recent study and that it was more commonly unilateral and involved the high frequencies.
The study did not determine the cause for the increase, but exposure to noise often occurs first in the high frequencies. Hearing loss, over time, can gradually become worse the more someone’s hearing is damaged.
People of all ages can protect your hearing by limiting your exposure to loud noise or by wearing ear plugs in noisy places. Hearing professionals recommend if you suspect you have hearing loss to get a hearing test.
Siemens ePen remote control was given the “red dot” product design award for 2010.
The ePen resembles a fountain pen that can be put in a pocket, but it functions as a hearing aid remote control to allow users to discretly adjust their volume and program changes to their hearing instruments. It works with with Siemens Life, Pure and Motion hearing instruments.
The red dot award is given to products that have exceptional design quality. The “red dot” product design award is the second design prize Siemens Audiology has received for its ePen. The company was also given the iF product design award for 2010. This international award is given to products that feature unusual success in combining functionality, userfriendliness and esthetics, in addition to meeting all the innovation criteria.
You are sure to have heard a similar advertisement on television: “For only $19.99 you can hear sounds from across the room.”
Most of these products are known as personal sound amplification products. Don’t be confused. Often these hearing instruments are not hearing aids.
As we age and begin to suffer hearing loss, most of the time we will begin to lose our hearing just in certain frequencies. That’s why those age 65 plus will complain that they can hear, but they just can’t understand what is being said. They are missing parts of words or phrases, not the entire thing.
Today’s digital technology is able to amplify just the sounds or frequencies that we need help with. When using a modern digital hearing aid, the sounds that can be heard normally without a hearing aid are not amplified. Personal Sound Amplification Products actually amplify everything, even if you don’t need it to be louder.
Personal sound amplification products can actually cause more hearing loss. When we are exposed to loud noises it can damage our hearing. Therefore when these devices amplify sounds we don’t need to be louder it could cause damage.
To be fit with a digital hearing aid, patients must first take a hearing test. A hearing test determines exactly what frequencies you are missing. The results from the hearing test are then used to program a hearing aid for your hearing loss.
If you suspect you have a hearing loss, see a hearing professional for a hearing test.
They are smaller, more precise and even water resistant.
In the past perspiration, humidity and even dirt have caused damage to hearing aids. Some hearing aids now come with a new protective layer to keep dirt, moisture and humidity out of the instrument to help it last longer.
ReSound, Interton and Beltone (all Great Nordic companies) have released hearing aids this year that are protected with a polymer layer known as nano coating that is one thousand times thinner than a human hair. The coating forms a protective barrier on every part of the hearing aid. If perspiration or humidity come into contact with the instrument, beads form and the debris simply rolls off.
In fact, moisture whether from water perspiration or humidity is one of the leading reasons hearing aids need to be repaired.
ReSound’s Live and Dot 2 hearing instruments now come with nano coating. Interton’s Scope and on some of Beltone’s products are also available with nano coating. The coating is not available on custom products. Customers with existing hearing aids that do not have nano coating can not simply add it. The protective layer is added in the manufacturing process.
Medical professionals have known for sometime that some medications have a risk of causing hearing loss. Hearing can sometimes be restored when the patient stops taking the medication. Other times the hearing loss is permanent.
The list of medications that can harm your hearing appears to be growing, at least according to one study by a University of Alabama at Birmingham professor.
Findings published in the May 18 Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery found that there could be a link between hearing loss and Viagra, a PDE-5i drug that treats erectile dysfunction.
“ PDE-5i medications work in erectile dysfunction patients by their ability to increase blood flow to certain tissues in the body,” study author Gerald McGwin, Ph.D and professor of epidemiology in the UAB School of Public Health, said in a university press release. “It has been hypothesized that they may have a similar effect on similar tissues in the ear, where an increase of blood flow could potentially cause damage leading to hearing loss.”
He examined data of a group of 11,525 men over the age of 40 included in a survey conducted by the a federal agency for healthcare Research and Quality. Men using PDE-5i drugs were twice more likely to have a hearing loss than those who had not used PDE-5i drugs.
More men in the study used Viagra than those who used Cialis or Levitra. As a result, findings are inconclusive regarding Cialis and Levitra.
For more information, visit www.main.uab.edu
