TOP SECRET CURE FOR HEARING LOSS! LITTLE KNOWN SECRET INGREDIENT 100% GUARANTEED TO RESTORE YOUR HEARING

I’ve seen a few websites recently offering cures for hearing loss. Yes, cures. And, would you believe it, it’s so incredibly simple! Just send $29.99 and they’ll send you some tablets, a spray or some eardrops. It really is that easy.

I’m not going to link to the websites and I’m not going to name them (don’t much fancy being sued) but it’s pretty obvious that they are total horseshit. If your doctor and audiologist cannot cure your hearing loss then there’s no way a secret, magical formula from the internet is going to.

It’s tempting though, isn’t it? I even found myself wanting to believe one of the products could work for me. If you want something bad enough you are tempted to believe it’s worth a go. Don’t be fooled, if there was a cure for hearing loss then it wouldn’t be a secret formula on a handful of dodgy-looking websites, it would be a worldwide mega-seller, it would be big news.

If something looks too good to be true then it probably is. It’s frustrating to think that people might be getting hooked in by these sellers, people looking for a cheap, quick and easy option.

Steve is Retail Director at Ascent Hearing, he wears hearing aids himself and also suffers from tinnitus.

I have had tinnitus since the age of 33. Well to honest, I’ve had “fizzy” tinnitus since I was about seven. But I’ve had pulsing, thumping, throbbing, whooshing tinnitus since 33. It’s not a depressing thing to have as I’ve not had silence for such a long time. However, I have tried eating vast swathes of Marmite (for the vitamin B), chewing decongestants, hot saunas, eight pints of water a day… nothing.

But, every time I fly, it goes away. Only for a couple of days, but it goes – completely! I have absolutely no idea why this is but I thought I’d share it with you. Steve I believe you get tinnitus although I’m not sure what type. There are probably other people who watch this website who also suffer from pulsatile tinnitus. Does anyone have any similar experiences or comments? I can see that the Internet is rammed full of dodgy “Cures”. I can also see that everyone has their own little combination of things that help reduce it.

Does anyone else have a positive result when they fly?

Tinnitus retraining therapy (TRT) is a treatment that aims to reduce the perceived loudness and severity of tinnitus. Tinnitus isn’t a disease and TRT isn’t a cure as such, it is perhaps better described as a way to train someone not to hear the ringing in their ear any more or at least to be less aware and less irritated by it.

TRT uses a combination of counselling and sound therapy. Sound therapy is the creation of background sounds that, when listened to over time, train you to stop having negative associations with noise and then, hopefully, to stop you perceiving the tinnitus completely. You can get your own sound masking gadgets specifically for tinnitus sufferers, such as sound pillows and iPod apps – these are similar to the sound therapy in TRT in that they introduce background noise to mask the tinnitus but TRT has been thoroughly researched and tested with sounds used giving proven results, TRT uses the Jastreboff model.

The goal of TRT is to reduce a person’s perception of their tinnitus to such a point that they are no longer affected by it, this is known and habituation. Wikipedia notes that, “Repeated presentation of a stimulus will cause a decrease in reaction to the stimulus“, essentially, you get used to it and you no longer bother to notice it. So, if someone is experiencing tinnitus for a long time, why doesn’t habituation occur naturally? Apparently it does, many tinnitus cases will decrease and eventually disappear given time. Your brain eventually gets bored of the sounds by itself, but TRT helps to speed that up.

Confused about habituation? Think about this: when you enter a room for the first time you notice everything, you look at all the pictures on the wall, the furniture, the colour of the carpet, you drink the room in, your brain is working hard to absorb all the new information about the room. When you enter the room the second time the affect isn’t so extreme, it’s still new to you but you know where most of the furniture is already. As the weeks go on you know what to expect when you enter the room, you’ve noticed all the dirty marks on the wall and the crack in the TV cabinet. After a long time you are so used to things being where they are that you stop seeing them, of course they are not invisible but your brain treats them as background noise that isn’t important.

The Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID) have simple hearing checks that you can use to help you determine whether you have a hearing problem or not. They are not full hearing tests as you would get if you visited an audiologist – it’s more of a first step to help you judge whether you need to go and see an audiologist for a full assessment.

The have an online test, which you can try by clicking this link. The number for the telephone test is (UK) 0844 800 3838.

Both tests are speech in noise tests, which basically means that you will listen to people talking in different environments where this is some kind of background noise and you’ll be asked to identify what they said. The test takes about five minutes to complete.

There’s more info on the RNID site.

Lip-reading is an essential part of communication for the hard of hearing. But do people mind having their lips read and do you mind staring at someone’s mouth when they are talking?

I used to lip-read a lot and, according to a hearing specialist I saw many years ago, I’m very good at it. But I don’t look directly at people’s mouths any more, these days I tend to look people straight in the eye. Why? Because a few years ago I began to realise that many people get really uncomfortable with me watching their mouth when they are talking to me. Many times people have instinctively brought a hand up to their mouth or they start biting their lip or doing something else other than just talking.

It would be easier for me to read lips more often but I don’t want to make people unconformable when we are talking. I can certainly understand why they would feel uncomfortable and I don’t blame them for expecting me to be seeing them eye to eye. The easy answer is: “Just tell them you are hard of hearing” but it’s not always easy to just blurt that out.

There’s one guy I knew who completely covered his mouth when he’s talking and he made me realise that even though I may not look directly at people’s mouths much any more I still rely on the mouth movement in my peripheral vision. I could rarely understand a word that guy said!

Do you lip-read and are you happy to read everyone’s lips, even strangers? And have you ever noticed someone be unhappy with you doing it?

In a recent address to a hearing advisory council, Brenda Battat, chief executive of the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) stated that the HLAA is not opposed to online hearing aid sales.

She specifically mentioned hi HealthInnovations, a subsidiary of United Healthcare that started an online HA service in October 2011. The hi HealthInnovations website includes an online hearing test, after taking the test your results are used to determine whether you can be sold an aid through the site or whether you need to visit a bricks and mortar audiologist/dispenser office for a more in-depth assessment.

She goes on to mention that the Hearing Industries Association (HIA) have sent a letter to the FDA claiming that hi HealthInnovations is illegally distributing hearing aids and they have requested that the FDA initiate some kind of action against them. Pretty strong stuff. The HIA is a trade association of hearing aid manufacturers that includes all of the big players.

I’ve never bought a hearing aid online so I can’t vouch for their quality but services like hi HealthInnovations feels like the future of hearing aid dispensing to me. Studies and reports are being released every month that show that only a fraction of the people who could benefit from a hearing aid are wearing one, so surely making it easier and cheaper for people to try an HA is a good thing?

Here’s a quote from Brenda’s address that sums up my feelings perfectly:

We support opening up more options for consumers, more doors to enter the channel, and lower hurdles to encourage the millions of people who do nothing about their hearing loss.

Here is the PDF version of Brenda’s address.

The European Commission wants to limit maximum volume on all portable MP3 players sold in the EU, including iPods, to protect users’ hearing.

This follows a report last year warning that as many as 10 million Europeans are putting their hearing at risk when they listen to loud music on their MP3 players. According to the EU experts, the default maximum should be set at 85 decibels. Users would be able to override this setting to reach a top limit of 100 decibels.

DigitalEurope, the Brussels-based body representing the industry, agrees safety must be improved, but according to their spokesman Tony Graziano, “85 decibels would not be appropriate because noise coming from traffic, engines and so on would obliterate the sound. (…) The solution must lie in a balance between safety and enjoyment of the product by the consumer”. In January 2010, a two-month consultation of all EU standardization bodies will begin on these proposals, with a final agreement expected in the Spring.

Whilst I applaud this and think it’s a good start, it’s missing the point a bit. 85 decibels is still very loud and long-term listening at this level is going to do some lasting damage. The DigitalEurope spokesman is right: background noise is going to overpower the music and people will want to turn them up to drown it out, even returning their player up to the full 100 db output.

I’d like to see the following being proposed as well as the volume reduction:

mp3 players should only be sold with noise reducing earphones

Yes, it’s probably going be a bit more expensive but it’s going to save a lot of people from damaging their hearing. With noise-reduction earphones people are not going to need to ramp the volume up to drown out the noise.

You can get good in-the-ear noise reducing earphones as well as headphones so people can still wear their white ear-buds. There would be no loss of style as well as no loss of hearing.

Hearing loss can cause awkward situations, not just for the people with the hearing problem but for people communicating with them too.

For someone who has never had to talk to someone with a hearing loss before it can be difficult to know what to do. First of all they’ve got to realise that you have a hearing problem and then they’ve got to work out how to deal with that and they’re probably worried about making sure they don’t offend you by doing the wrong thing.

Over the years I’ve had people who have flat-out refused to repeat themselves, people who got angry when I repeatedly misheard, people who look away or cover their mouth when talking, people who shout something from distance and then walk off. But they’re pretty rare cases.

But what’s really refreshing is when someone just nails it and instinctively knows what to do. I was eating out at a busy restaurant a few weeks ago with a group of about 8 people. I could hear the people right next to me but not the others at the other end of the table. About half-way through the meal someone from the other end of the table asked me something, I had no idea they were even speaking to me but the guy next to me realised I hadn’t heard, leaned in and discreetly said, “Guy at the end is talking to you about football”. It’s usually only my close family who would step in like that, I was chuffed. Not only did he let me know I was being spoken to he also gave me a starter on the topic.

I realise though that a lot of the times when it doesn’t go so well as that and I don’t get help it’s mostly my fault as I don’t tell everyone about my hearing problem. If they don’t know then they probably think I’m just ignoring them or daydreaming or something. But I don’t want to introduce myself to everyone with, “Hi, I’m Steve, I don’t hear so well”. Where do you draw the line? I usually just let people know if it becomes a problem and I care enough about communicating with them to fix the problem.

How do you want people to react to your hearing loss? Do you want friends/family to nudge you and let you know you’ve missed something or do you keep it as hidden as possible? Do you tell everyone about your loss all the time? It’s a problem for all of us as hearing loss is invisible, the only immediate signal to someone is your hearing aids and they are getting smaller and smaller all the time – how, and when, do you let people know?

This is a mock-up from Designaffairs Studio. Can’t imagine ever wearing one of these – “Yes, sir, this hearing aid is state of the art, to wear it we simply need to stretch your ear lobe slowly over six months until it is dangling around your mouth”. Me: “uh… the behind the ear model will be fine, thanks”.

It’s great to see people pushing the design of hearing aids. It’s one more step towards the day when hearing aids are as cool and ubiquitous as glasses.

People don’t seem to know what to call the things in my ears.

I’m pretty open about the fact that I can’t hear much and that I wear hearing aids. Most people around me day-to-day know I wear them, some even know I write on here.

I quite often talk with people about hearing loss and aids – sometimes people ask where their Mum/Gran/whoever should go to buy some or what the best one to get is.

And yet people can’t seem to say hearing aids. It’s like they are going to insult me if they say those two words – instead people will make up some other name for them like your ear things or something like that.

But I can’t say that I blame them. When talking to someone about their disability you are on shaky ground and you don’t want to say the wrong thing. Guess I would be the same if I was talking to someone in a wheelchair. Even so, it’s strange that it’s the two words, hearing aids, that prove to always be the hard ones to say.