Hearing Health Starts with Awareness Written by Erin Walsh, Senior Audiologist.
Did you know that one in six Australians are deaf or hearing impaired or have a chronic ear disorder? Hearing Awareness Week, which was held during the first week of March, provided an opportunity for the almost 3.5 million Australians who experience some form of hearing loss to share their experiences and to express their needs to the greater community. The stigma associated with seeking advice regarding a hearing loss and hearing solutions is diminishing. This is partially due to increased awareness of hearing loss and its prevalence. This positive change in public attitude may have been spurred along by the growing number of celebrities with hearing loss who wear their hearing aids proudly such as Osher Günsberg, Halle Berry and Whoopi Goldberg to name a few.
Early identification of a hearing loss is beneficial to live your best life. Identifying a hearing loss as early as possible means that you can access hearing solutions, and improve your communication abilities as soon as possible. Denying, hiding, or ignoring hearing loss or communication difficulties can be harmful. Part of our job here at Can:Do Hearing is to change this conversation by empowering our clients with the confidence to address these challenges and to take the first step to improving their quality of life. We know that individuals with untreated hearing loss are at a greater risk of depression and isolation. Arguably more concerning, they are at a greater risk of cognitive decline and dementia. The key mission of Hearing Awareness Week is to improve the inclusion of Australians affected by hearing loss into society. No two people share the same experience and we celebrate the diversity of people’s challenges and perspectives. Increased hearing awareness leads to increased sensitivity to the experiences, needs, and aspirations of people with hearing loss. The mission is to spread the knowledge of what the daily lives of the affected Australians are like to foster their inclusion into areas of society. Often that first point of call is reaching out for advice, but for those who have already made that step, Hearing Awareness Week also acts as a reminder to regularly manage your hearing health; and remember, we are always here when you need us.
Hearing Through Bone Conduction Written by Jane Campbell, Audiologist.
Normally we hear sounds when a sound wave travels through the ear canal, hitting the ear drum which wobbles when struck by a sound wave. This movement in turn causes the middle ear bones, called the ossicles, to vibrate. The last of these ossicles is attached to your cochlea which is full of fluid and tiny little hair cells. As the last ossicle vibrates against the cochlea it causes a wave in the fluid, and the hair cells that sit on the bottom of the cochlea – like seaweed on the bottom of the ocean – move in a wave-like motion. It is this movement that is picked up by your nerves and brain and heard as a sound. Bone conduction, however, is the method of hearing by transferring sound through the skull to your cochlea. We assess bone conduction thresholds when we do a standard hearing test. People who have chronic ear infections, disruption of the ossicular chain or malformations of the outer ear and ear canal may be able to hear better using bone conduction compared to when hearing sounds normally through their ears. For these people, using a bone conduction hearing aid or implant may enable them to have better hearing compared to using a standard hearing aid. Even people without hearing loss can benefit from bone conduction hearing, with many bone conduction headphones coming on the market.
Both bone conduction hearing aids and bone conduction headphones sit on the mastoid bone of your skull, behind your ear, rather than in your ear, and transfer sounds via vibrations to your cochlea. The benefit of a bone conduction hearing device is that it keeps your ears free, this can be beneficial to cyclists or runners who can use bone conduction headphones to listen to their music, while still being aware of the traffic around them. Similarly, a bone conduction hearing aid sits on the mastoid bone and not on the ear, helping to keep ears well aerated and free of infections. Humans aren’t the only species that can use bone conduction to hear, too. Animals such as dolphins use bone conduction through their jaw bones to hear!
