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Call Us (631) 378-0061 According to data from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), out of every one thousand children in the U.S., 2 to 3 are born deaf or with impaired hearing. Childhood hearing loss may be brought on by developmental irregularities in the ear, by a middle ear infection known as otitis media, by physical injury or loud noises, or by diseases such as meningitis, measles, or chickenpox. Early childhood hearing screenings can reveal whether your child has hearing loss. The sooner the impairment is identified, the more likely the child will follow a normal developmental track.
As a parent, there are many signs of hearing problems that you should be watchful for. When your child is still a baby, such signs include a failure to be startled by loud noises, a failure to turn the head to face you when you call his or her name, being able to hear some sounds and not others, and not turning toward the source of a sound after the age of 6 months.
Children with otitis media may also pull or rub at their ears, become listless or inattentive, have fevers, complain of ear pain, often do not understand instructions, and may ask for the TV to be played louder. Other warning signs are if your child uses the words “huh?” or “what?” many times a day, has difficulty locating the source of sounds, or watches people’s faces carefully as they are speaking. As children get older, even mild hearing loss may cause delays in speech and language development and can lead to learning problems once the child starts school. It may also create emotional or behavioral problems.
These problems are why many states have programs that guarantee early hearing testing in children. The tests are painless, and can be performed even on babies. The sooner any issues are identified, the sooner they can be addressed. That’s why it is “never too soon to get a first hearing test”. We would be happy to arrange for a hearing screening for your child or children, and if any hearing problems are found, we have the expertise and resources to help solve them.
Warning Signs That Your Child May Have Hearing Loss
An Introduction to Hearing in Crowded Rooms
Our patients frequently ask us why they seem to have significantly greater difficulty hearing in busy spaces as compared to other conditions. Person-to-person conversations and even small group conversations don’t cause them any trouble. But in a crowd, such as a noisy party or in large public gatherings, suddenly it becomes difficult to understand what the person speaking to them is saying, or to distinguish the speaker’s voice from the background sounds. The same people that have difficulty with crowds, will often also express that they find it challenging to hear and distinguish certain consonants especially H, F, and S.
If this situation sounds familiar to you, it may be an indication that you have suffered some degree of high-frequency hearing loss. Sound comes in different frequencies, and human speech – especially the consonants mentioned above – tends to fall into the range that scientists define as “high-frequency,” between 3000 and 8000 Hertz. In crowds, there is a mix of frequencies, ranging from the low frequencies of background music or people walking or dancing to the higher frequencies of human speech. Those suffering from high-frequency hearing loss tend to perceive the low-frequency sounds (which in this case qualify as noise) as sounding louder than the high-frequency sounds they are trying to focus on – the voices of people speaking to them.
High-frequency hearing loss is common, afflicting at least 18% of the population. One of the possible causes for this condition is aging, but high-frequency hearing loss has in recent years been increasing in teenagers and younger adults as well, possibly as a result of being exposed to overly loud music, and suffering noise-induced hearing loss. There are other potential causes, including genetic factors, diabetes, exposure to toxic drugs such as chemotherapy agents, and other diseases.
If you have indeed suffered some high-frequency hearing loss, it can be treated. We can prescribe hearing aids that have been adjusted to reduce the volume of low-frequency sounds and boost the volume of the higher frequencies, so that you can hear better in crowds.
Before we get too far into treatment options, it is critical that you have a proper diagnosis. To find out if high-frequency hearing loss is the root cause behind your difficulty hearing in crowds, call and make a first appointment. Our specialists can perform tests to determine whether your problem hearing in crowds is really related to hearing loss, or whether it might arise from other causes.
Why is My Ability to Hear Getting Steadily Worse?
This is one of the questions we are asked most often. There are many reasons why you could have experienced some hearing loss, but the most important thing to know is that if you have, you are not alone – 22 million Americans have some degree of impaired hearing, and 10 million of them qualify as having hearing loss, as defined by having difficulty hearing normal conversations.
There are many possible causes of hearing loss, but the most common is age-related hearing loss, or presbycusis, which is caused by simply getting older. Over time, the nerves and hair cells of the inner ear become damaged and begin to degenerate, making it more difficult to hear high-pitched sounds such as the sounds of women’s or children’s voices, or to be able to distinguish between consonants like S, T, K, P, and F.
The second most frequent cause of hearing loss is known as acoustic trauma or noise-induced hearing loss (NIMH), and happens when you have been exposed repeatedly to loud noises. Unlike age-related hearing NIHL can be experienced by anyone. This hearing loss can occur from over exposure to loud music or machinery like motorcycles or mowers. These are both examples of what is called sensorineural hearing loss, and although these conditions can rarely be reversed or eliminated, they can easily be treated using hearing aids to amplify and filter the sounds you hear.
Conductive hearing loss is different, and is characterized by a blockage in the ear canal that prevents sound from reaching the eardrum; the most common cause of this is the most easily treated and reversed, a buildup of ear wax. Conductive hearing loss can also be the result of fluid in the middle ear, or by an abnormal bone formation in the ear called otosclerosis. This causes the inner ear to be less effective at transmitting and receiving sounds.
Hearing loss can also occur as a result of exposure to certain medications, such as antibiotics and some drugs used to treat cancer, and as a result of infections of the middle ear or ear canal. Disease can also create hearing loss: Meniere’s disease, diabetes, heart disease, acoustic neuroma (non cancerous tumors on the bones of the middle ear), and stroke can all create conditions in the ear where hearing is damaged.
The best advice we can give you if you suspect you are losing your hearing is to make an appointment to have your hearing tested, so that we may advise you as to possible causes of the condition, and how best to treat it. Don’t suffer with hearing loss that gets worse over time; improve your quality of life by consulting a professional today.
How Professional and Amateur Musicians Can Decrease the Odds of Future Hearing Loss
What do Phil Collins, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Ludwig van Beethoven have in common, besides all being musicians? They all suffered permanent hearing loss, directly as a result of playing their music.
I often work with musicians who have experienced hearing damage as a result of their longtime love of playing music. Exposure to loud music causes noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL), which can produce a temporary ringing in the ears (tinnitus); if you continue to expose yourself to the loud music, the condition can become permanent.
The hearing loss can happen to any musician, whether they play in a rock band, in a symphony orchestra, in a chamber music group, or just play at home when rehearsing. Hearing loss can occur when exposed to any sound over 85 decibels (dB) in volume for prolonged lengths of time. An electric guitar played onstage generates 120dB, but a violin can produce 103dB, and thus cause almost as much hearing loss. In fact, audiologists researching hearing loss in musicians have found that overexposure to sound while rehearsing adds up to more hours than they spend on stage performing.
Fortunately, there is something you can do to protect your hearing – invest in a pair of earplugs; not the cheap foam earplugs you find in drugstores, but high-quality musicians earplugs. Such earplugs were invented over 20 years ago by a company called Etymotic Research, and their design is still used by most of the manufacturers of specialized earplugs for musicians. What makes them better than the cheap foam earplugs is that they allow you to hear music and speech accurately, at all frequencies, just at lowered volumes.
You can find universal-fit musicians earplugs in most stores that sell musical instruments, starting at about $15 a pair. But for the musicians I see – whether they play professionally or just for fun – I recommend custom-molded musicians earplugs with Etymotic filters, because of the greater protection they provide. Comfortable even with extended wear for long periods of time, custom-molded earplugs block undesirable sound allowing the music to come through undistorted and without damaging hearing. They are also more expensive than the universal-fit earplugs, but when you consider that hearing damage is irreversible, the investment is more than worth it.
Can Your Hearing Have an Effect on Your Ability to Process Touch?
Those born deaf will process the feeling of touch in a different manner than those born with normal levels of hearing. Findings reveal an early loss in senses can affect an individual’s brain development. It tacks on to the increasing list of new information confirming the impact of any influences from the outside world and experiences that help mold the brain as it develops.
Researcher shows that those born without hearing use their auditory cortex for processing feelings of touch and their visual stimuli far more than those of the hearing population do. Since the developing cortex of those with significant hearing problems is unexposed to any sound stimuli, it ends up adapting and taking on additional tasks for processing information.
Research shows exactly how the brain can rewire itself in the most dramatic of ways. It is of extreme interest to those currently studying the multisensory processing throughout the brain. Previous research shows that those born without hearing are more adept at processing motion and their peripheral vision. Those born with a hearing impairment may end up processing vision in different areas of the brain, especially when it comes to the auditory areas surrounding the primary cortex. No one has been able to tackle whether touch and vision are processed in a different manner when the individual was born without hearing. Due to the experimental settings, it can be extremely hard to produce the type of stimuli needed to find the answer to this question.
Dr. Karns and all of her colleagues developed one of the most unique apparatuses around that enables the user to wear them much like headphones as the patient was put into an MRI scanner. A flexible piece of tubing was connected into a compressor within a separate room, which then delivered small puffs of air directly above the individual’s right eyebrow and below their right eye on the cheek. Brief flashes of light were sent through an optic cable that was mounted beneath the air nozzle. The functional MRI helped measure the reaction of the stimuli at the base of the auditory cortex within the person’s temporal lobe, in addition to other areas of the brain.
Researchers were able to take advantage of the already diagnosed perceptual illusion in those who can hear, which is known as the double flash induced by auditory responses. This allows a singular flash of light along with at least two auditory events to be perceived as if here were multiple light flashes. In the experiment, researchers used the double air puffs as a stimulus for replacing that of the auditory stimulus; however, they kept the one flash of light instead of adding in multiples. The individual’s were also subjected to that of tactile stimuli as well as that of light stimuli on separate occasions and times without the stimuli in an attempt to establish a base for brain activities.
Hearing individuals that were given more than one puff of air and a single flash of light reported only seeing one flash. When the ones without hearing were exposed to identical circumstances, they reported seeing multiple flashes of light. As the scientists looked at the brain activity of those without their hearing, they noticed the activity was far greater within the cortex. However, not all of the brains responded in the same manner or to the same extent. Individuals who are deaf accompanied by the highest degree of activity also had the highest level of response in terms of illusion.
This study proves to be helpful to those without hearing on numerous levels. If vision and touch are interacting more within the deaf population, touch might be useful for the deaf population in learning how to read or compute math problems. It also proves beneficial in helping clinicians improve upon an individual’s hearing quality after getting a cochlear implant, especially among those who received an implant after the age of three. Since these children have been without auditory input since they were born, many will struggle with speech and comprehension due to the way in which their auditory cortex is taking on the other senses. All of these changes can make it more difficult for the cortex to recover the auditory functions after their implants. Knowing how to measure the cortex and how much of it is being ran by the other sensory processors will help provide the necessary input into the types of programs needed for retraining the brain and devoting the necessary capacities to processing auditory signals.
7 Signs You May Have Hearing Loss
In most cases, hearing loss doesn’t happen all at once. In fact, hearing loss can occur so gradually that you may not even notice a change in your hearing until the loss is severe.
If you’re concerned about your own hearing or that of a loved one, consider these common signs of hearing loss:
1. Others complain that the TV or radio is too loud or others seem to be enjoying the TV at a volume too low for you to hear.
2. You pretend to follow conversations that you don’t really hear. Often, out of embarrassment, people with hearing loss act as though they understand a conversation, but their participation is limited or seems out of rhythm with others.
3. You have a particularly hard time hearing women and children speak. This may indicate a problem hearing higher frequencies.
4. You become frequently annoyed because people don’t speak clearly.
5. You often ask people to repeat themselves.
6. Background noises like those in a busy restaurant make it too difficult for you to conduct a conversation with your companion.
7. The volume on your phone is set on high but you still can’t hear the person you’re talking to.
If you or someone you know is experiencing signs of hearing loss, contact an audiologist for a hearing test. Today’s hearing aids are discrete and there are many options available for treating hearing loss. With the help of a hearing specialist you can improve your life and communication with those you love.