Seniors 2019

SATURDAY, JULY 27, 2019

2 Saturday, July 27, 2019

THE WINCHESTER STAR

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“Age is an issue of mind over matter... if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

-Mark Twain

THE WINCHESTER STAR

Saturday, July 27, 2019 3

4 Saturday, July 27, 2019

SENIORS

THE WINCHESTER STAR

Irvin Shendow with his Cessna 310 R airplane at the Winchester Regional Airport. Photo by JEFF TAYLOR/THE WINCHESTER STAR..

HIS ADVICE FOR STAYING YOUNG?

“HAVE A PURPOSE.”

Name: Irvin Shendow Age: 81 It’s in the mindset “I don’t even really think about it, to be honest with you,” Irvin Shendow said of aging. Shendow, 81, of Winchester, said you shouldn’t say you’re getting old. Instead, just say that you’re getting older — which is a good thing. “It’s like any age when you get older, unless you have a health issue, I don’t believe you should go ahead and think you’re old. I’m not sure what old is.”

No retirement Shendow, whose family has owned Bell’s Fine Clothing in Old Town Winchester since 1931, still puts in a full day of work five days a week.

“Some people would think I’m nuts,” he laughed. “I’m not knocking the fact that someone wants to retire, what works for you works great. I just don’t know what I would do with all those hours.”

Don’t look backward “I don’t feel any different than when I was in my 20s or 30s. I’m glad I am where I am. It was fun being 25, 35, and doing some of these things.

But I’ve been there, I’ve done some of these things, why do you want to go back? Just go forward,” he said.

He credits staying young to having a daily purpose, like work. The retail industry not only keeps him on his feet, but keeps his mind active. “If you are in retail your mind is going to be active. Anything that challenges you, you’ve got to have a challenge.”

JEFF TAYLOR/THE WINCHESTER STAR Winchester resident Irvin Shendow does a pre-flight check on his Cessna 310 R airplane at the Winchester Regional Airport.

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THE WINCHESTER STAR

Saturday, July 27, 2019 5

DID YOU KNOW?

Diet and exercise Eating well and exercising is a lifetime habit we should all try to practice. “It’s difficult, you like to eat, and as you get older your metabolism is such that you don’t burn calories quite as quick. So you have to exercise and watch what you eat,” said Shendow. “I bike, not as much as I’d like to do, a couple years ago I would bike 100 miles a week. I keep telling myself I’m going to get back into it,” he said. Working on your feet for several hours every day doesn’t hurt either. Shendow said he likes being outdoors as much as he can, and spends time gardening and cutting his grass.

It’s in the attitude “Now it’s not because I’m in the clothing business that I think this – but if you dress like you’re with it, you know, it helps with your attitude,” he said.

Flying high Shendow has flown a plane for almost 60 years, starting in 1961 when he went to pilot training with the Air National Guard. He still flies his plane, a Cessna 310 R, once a week. He flies to New York City on business, the islands in the winter, and other vacation spots like California or Hilton Head, S.C. He says there are many pilots in their 80s and older still flying. “Every year once you get past 80, a lot of insurance companies mandate that you have your flight review every year, instead of every other year, which is good.” Additionally, pilots must take an aviation physical every year.

Advice to all Have a purpose, enjoy every day, and stay active in your community.

ISOLATION A CONCERN FOR SENIORS’ FAMILIES Feelings of loneliness and isolation are common among the senior population. This is due, in part, to the large percentage of seniors who end up living alone later in life.

U.S. Census Bureau information from 2010 indicated around 28 percent of people ages 65 and older lived alone at the time the data was collected. As people get older, their likelihood of living alone only increases, as many have fewer family members or friends around to provide company and care. Despite the large numbers of Baby Boomers living throughout North America, senior isolation is still a concern.

According to the senior housing resource A Place for Mom, the following situations can result from senior isolation.

· Studies from the National Center on Elder Abuse show a connection between social isolation and higher rates of elder abuse. · Feelings of loneliness can be linked to poor cognitive performance. · Loneliness is associated with more depressive symptoms among seniors. · A 2010 study published in Psychology and Aging indicated a direct relationship between loneliness in older adults and increases in systolic blood pressure over a four-year period.

Visiting with seniors and promoting social connections can help them avoid feelings of isolation.

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SENIORS

THE WINCHESTER STAR

By JUDITH GRAHAM Special To The Washington Post

A common myth about aging is that older adults are burdened by illness and feel lousy much of the time. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Most seniors report feeling distinctly positive about their health.

Consider data from the 2017 National Health Interview Survey (the most recent available), administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When asked to rate their overall health, 82 percent of adults ages 65 to 74 described it as excellent (18 percent), very good (32 percent) or good (32 percent) — on the positive side of the ledger. By contrast, 18 percent of this age group had a negative perspective, describing their health as fair (14 percent) or poor (4 percent).

This trend toward positivity is also evident among adults age 75 and older: 73 percent of this group said their health was excellent (12 percent), very good (28 percent) or good (33 percent), while only 27 percent gave a fair (20 percent) or poor (7 percent) evaluation.

How could this be true when the majority of older adults — about 60 percent — have two or more chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, heart disease or kidney disease, and higher rates of physical impairment than other age groups?

The answer lies in how older adults think about their health.

For many, good health means more than the lack of illness or disability. The components of health they tend to value more are vitality, emotional well-being, positive social relationships, re-

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THE WINCHESTER STAR maining active and satisfaction with life, while poor physical functioning plays a less important role.

“Being healthy means being able to continue doing what I like: going to the theater, organizing programs, enjoying the arts, walking,” said Lorelei Goldman, 80, of Evanston, Ill., who has had ovarian and breast cancer. She also describes her health as “good.”

“I have all my faculties and good, longtime friendships,” Goldman said.

“I used to be a bad sleeper, but now I’m sleeping much better. Almost every day, there are moments of clarity and joy. I’m involved in a lot of activities that are sustaining.”

Even when older adults are coping with medical conditions and impairments, they can usually think of people their age who are worse off — those who have died or gone to nursing homes, said Ellen Idler, a professor of sociology at Emory University in Atlanta and a leading researcher in the field of “self-rated health.” By comparison, seniors still able to live on their own may feel “I’m doing pretty well.”

At some point, merely surviving can be interpreted as a sign of good health.

“People hit their 80s and 90s, look around and feel pretty good about just being alive,” Idler said.

That isn’t true for younger adults, who measure their health against an ideal “there shouldn’t be anything wrong with me” standard. But expecta-

Saturday, July 27, 2019 7

ical changes, they tend to adjust their outlook. “I may be handicapped, but I can still walk,” one 86-year-old woman told Swiss researchers after being hospitalized from a fall and forced to use a stick to get around. She considered herself fortunate and rated her health posi-

“

Being healthy means being able to continue doing what I like: going to the theater, organizing programs, enjoying arts, walking.

Lorelei Goldman, 80 tions for what constitutes good health change as people move into later life.

“Older people expect some deterioration in health and aren’t thrown off course in the same way when it occurs,” said Jason Schnittker, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied self-rated health.

Resilience is also at play. As older adults adapt to illness and other phys-

tively. “As long as you can get to church, as long as you can walk, you can say all’s well,” a man in his 80s declared after becoming severely disabled because of a slipped disk in his spine and an embolism. He, too, felt good about his health.

Lest you think older adults’ bias toward positivity is a sign of denial or a lack of objectivity, a large body of research shows it’s highly meaningful.

“Self-rated health is very strongly predictive of longevity” as well as other outcomes such as cognitive health and use of health-care services, Schnittker said.

Idler and Yael Benyamini, a professor at Tel Aviv University’s Bob Shapell School of Social Work, were among the first scholars to highlight the association between self-rated health and mortality in a much-cited 1997 study that examined research reports from around the world. The link was consistent even when adjustments were made for respondents’ medical conditions, medication use, health-care utilization, socioeconomic status and other factors.

In a phone conversation, Benyamini offered two explanations for this finding, which has been widely replicated.

People may be acutely attuned to subtle changes in their bodies, like increased pain or fatigue, that end up being significant but may be hard for doctors to detect. Also, people may factor in how multiple medical conditions interact and affect them — something that medical tests don’t pick up.

“Say you have diabetes, angina and

See Health, Page 9

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8 Saturday, July 27, 2019

THE WINCHESTER STAR Winchester resident Rosie Schiavone runs in front of Handley High.

She usually rises at 4:30 a.m. to get in a morning run. Photo by JEFF TAYLOR/THE WINCHESTER STAR.

Name: Rosie Schiavone Age: 67

How she does it “It’s just harder to stay physically fit as you get older, I find,” said Rosie Schiavone of Winchester. “I have to vary my routines, and I used to just strictly run. Now I do lots of things to stay in shape.” Besides running three to four days a week, Schiavone runs in the water two to three days a week, and uses a Pilates reformer at Pilates Connection in Winchester. Also important? She stretches 15 to 20 minutes before and after exercising. “That’s something I didn’t do when I was younger, and I probably should have.” She and her husband also bike for fun on trails in Harpers Ferry or Sheperdstown, W.Va. “I try to do at least an hour or two of physical fitness a day. I take one day a week off, but still do 20 to 30 minutes of stretching on that day off.”

Get started Schiavone wasn’t always a runner. After her fourth child was born, she started running at age 32. “I was teaching aerobics and we had to pass Dr. Cooper’s physical fitness

test twice a year, and with that you either had to run an eight-minute mile or walk a 12-minute mile, and I started doing the 12-minute mile and I thought, forget this,” she said, and took up the eight-minute run.

She’s been running ever since.

Adjust when needed “In the past five years, I’ve really had to change my regimen because of my age, my back issues,” said Schiavone. She used to run marathons, qualifying for the Boston Marathon three times, which she said was the highlight of her running career. Now, she runs only half-marathons and 10Ks. Fitness for the family Schiavone said fitness is a family affair. All six of her children are active in sports or activities like kayaking or canoeing, running, hiking (one son hiked the entire Appalachian Trail from beginning to end), mountain biking, or swimming. “It was important for us for our children to do it,” she said.

Advice for all Keep moving.

JEFF TAYLOR/THE WINCHESTER STAR

Winchester resident Rosie Schiavone runs in front of Handley High School.

THE WINCHESTER STAR

SENIORS

Go beyond running Schiavone said that strength training has been a really important part of her fitness regimen. “As you get older you lose your core strength. When I started Pilates and strengthened my core, I think that it can prevent a lot of injuries. And it certainly has helped my back.”

good time to work through problems and plan your day.

Schiavone said she was working with a physical therapist due to a back injury, who got her to do mat-based Pilates.

Stay involved Another benefit of running? If you join a running group, you could meet lots of new friends.

“Then I moved on to the reformer, and it makes a huge difference. I don’t think I could do the running or any of it without Pilates. It has gotten me pain-free.

I’ve been doing Pilates for six years. It feels different running now than six years ago,” she said.

Mental age Schiavone believes that exercise is good for mentally staying young. It’s also a

“It perks you up for the day. I’m a big believer in exercise, it keeps your thoughts together. I do lots of planning, lots of praying, I might do my grocery list for the week while running.”

Schiavone also chairs the committee for the Apple Blossom 10K and Kids’ Bloomin’ Mile for the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival.

WHEN CLUMSINESS IS A CAUSE FOR CONCERN Who hasn’t tripped over his own feet or knocked over a water glass on a table? No one is immune to the occasional clumsiness, but some people may grow concerned that their bouts of clumsiness are becoming more frequent.

For healthy people, bumping into a wall when misjudging a corner or dropping silverware on the floor is often a minor, isolated incident. Lack of concentration or multitasking often may be to blame. In 2007, Professor Charles Swanik and a research team at the University of Delaware studied athletes to discover why some seem to be more injury prone than others.

Researchers found that clumsy athletes’ brains seemed to have “slowed processing speed,” which referred to how their brains understand new information and respond to it.

But clumsiness also can be a sign of a bigger issue at play, namely motor problems within the brain. According to Taylor Harrison, MD, clinical instructor in the neuromuscular division of Emory University, coordination of the body is complicated and tied to both motor and senory systems. That

Winchester resident Rosie Schiavone stretches before a run at Handley High School. Photo by JEFF TAYLOR/THE WINCHESTER STAR..

“One reason I still do a few races a year is because of Apple Blossom, it’s my 21st year directing the 10K. I like to go to other races to see what they do (for ideas).”

DID YOU KNOW? Metro Creative Content

Saturday, July 27, 2019 9

means the eyes, brain, nerves, cerebellum, which specializes in coordination and balance, muscles, and bones must work together.

Clumsiness can result from stroke, seizure disorders, brain trauma or the presence of tumors, and other conditions. Healthline also says that clumsiness may be an early symptom of Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s.

Parkinson’s affects the central nervous system and can impair motor skills. Alzheimer’s slowly damages and kills brain cells and may cause issues with coordination. This may be the case with other dementias as well.

Clumsiness may sometimes result from a lack of sleep or overconsumption of alcohol. Arthritis also can lead to clumsiness when joint pain and restrictive movements make it challenging to get around.

Psychologists may suggest cognitive behavioral therapy or propose performing tasks with more mindfulness to reduce clumsiness. If that doesn’t work, men and women should visit their physicians, who can conduct tests to rule out certain things and provide peace of mind.

Health From Page 7 osteoarthritis. How does this affect your life? It’s ver y individual — no one can tell from the outside — and it’s hard to put your finger on as a physician,” she said.

Another possible explanation is that people who feel healthy are more likely to be active and take care of themselves, making it likely they’ll survive longer, Benyamini said.

This positivity isn’t universal. African Americans, Hispanics, people with lower levels of income and education, and individuals with poor social connections are more likely to rate their health negatively as they age. At younger ages, women rate their health more poorly than men, but this changes in later life, with men becoming more likely to report worse health and women becoming more optimistic.

Sometimes surveys assess self-rated mental health separately, and results for older adults again overturn common assumptions about negativity associated with older age. The National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, spearheaded by investigators at the University of Chicago, found that fewer than 1 percent of adults

(ages 57 to 97) rated their mental health as poor; just under 8 percent considered it fair; nearly 23 percent thought it was good; nearly 41 percent believed it was very good; and 28 percent judged it excellent. This data, based on a representative sample of 3,101 individuals sur veyed in 2015, was provided upon request and has not yet been published.

“Mental health becomes an even more important component of self-rated health with age,” Schnittker said.

Depression, in particular, appears to be a negative influence, affecting how people view their circumstances.

Although Laurie Brock, 69, of Denver, has severe arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus, she considers her health “ver y good” and credits her optimism, close relationships and “extremely active life.” Poor health would mean being bedridden, “not being able to go out or be as mobile as I am” or extended suffering, she said.

“My attitude now is ‘I’ve lived 70 good years, and I hope the next years are rich as well,’ “ Brock said. “I think most people fear old age. But once they get there, it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m still going, I’m still OK.’ And fear becomes acceptance.”

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ically prelifestyle disposed to the disease.

The report, compiled by the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, tracked 2,765 individuals over about a decade. All par ticipants were older adults enrolled in either the Chicago Health and Aging Project (CHAP) or the Rush Memor y and Aging Project (MAP), both federally funded, long-term observational studies that examine mental decline among aging Chicago residents.

Over the last decade, studies have increasingly pointed to controllable lifestyle factors as critical compenents to reducing the risk of cognitive decline. Researchers say that, as with heart disease, combating dementia will probably require a “cocktail” approach combining drugs and lifestyle changes. And as recent efforts to develop a cure or more effective drug treatments for dementia have proven disappointing, the fact that people can exert some control in preventing the disease through their own choices is encouraging news, they say.

While the new study’s authors expected to see that leading a healther life decreases the chance of dementia, they were floored by the “magnitude of the effect,”

Doing these five things could decrease your risk of Alzheimer’s by 60 percent, new study shows

By HANNAH NATANSON The Washington Post

Here’s a to-do list for preventing dementia, new research suggests: Ditch red meat, take a brisk walk to the grocery store, do the Sunday crossword and stick to one glass of wine at dinner.

A study presented July 14 at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Los Angeles found that combining five lifestyle habits — including eating healthier, exercising regularly and refraining from smoking — can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s by 60 percent. A separate study showed that lifestyle choices can lower risk even for those who are genet-

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THE WINCHESTER STAR said Klodian Dhana, a Rush University professor and co-author.

“This demonstrates the potential of lifestyle behaviors to reduce risk as we age,” said Heather Snyder, senior director of medical and scientific operations at the Alzheimer’s Association. “The fact that four or five lifestyle habits put together can have that kind of benefit for your brain is incredibly powerful.”

The Rush team assessed study participants’ lifestyles on five metrics: their diet, their exercise regimen, whether or not they smoked, their alcohol consumption and their “engagement in cognitive stimulation activities,” Dhana said. The researchers then scored each factor, assigning participants a ‘1’ if their behavior was healthy in that categor y and a ‘0’ if it was unhealthy.

Individuals who ate a “high-quality diet” of mostly vegetables, nuts, berries, beans, whole grains, seafood, poultry and olive oil — while avoiding red meats, butter, cheese, pastries, sweets and fried food — earned 1s. This was also true for anyone who exercised at least 150 minutes a week, whether by biking, walking, swimming, gardening or doing yard work.

People who did not smoke, limited themselves to one glass of wine a day, and regularly — two or three times a week — ­ engaged in mentally stimulating activities like reading the newspaper, visiting the library or

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THE WINCHESTER STAR

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By CHRISTOPHER INGRAHAM The Washington Post

American life expectancy varies dramatically by location, with groundbreaking research showing as much as a three-decade gulf separating the places where people have the longest and shortest lives. In some cities, the difference between dying in your 50s and dying in your 80s can be measured in the span of a few blocks.

Disentangling the drivers of such differences is a more complicated affair.

In some ways, place is simply a proxy for many factors that affect longevity, such as income, social class and overall health. But what if there were a way to strip those factors out of the equation to arrive at a number that could tell us exactly how much life we stand to gain (or lose) by changing our state or our ZIP code?

That’s exactly what new research by a team of economists at Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology aims to do. Starting with

an extensive data set of every Medicare beneficiary from 1999 to 2014, they explored life expectancy differences between people who move after age 65 and those who stay put.

That allowed them to strip away all the factors that affect longevity — such as health, lifestyle and genetics — to isolate the effect of location on life span.

The results create a picture of life expectancy in the United States that differs significantly from typical life span maps.

What’s surprising is that the relationship between place and longevity is causal: A person of average health who moves to one of the red zones can expect to die earlier as a direct result. If that same person moves to a blue area, it will prolong their life. “Where you live when you are elderly (over age 65) affects your longevity,” Heidi Williams, an associate economics professor at MIT and one of the study’s authors, said in an email to The Washington Post.

All told, moving from a place in the bottom 10 percent to one in the top 10

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SUZAN D. HERSKOWITZ, P.L.L.C. percent would extend the average person’s life by a little more than a year, researchers found.

The five places with the most positive effects on life expectancy were all in New York (Yonkers, New York City and Syracuse) or Florida (Port St. Lucie and Naples). Any would add at least a year to the average senior’s life.

The bottom five were scattered: Gulfport, Mississippi.; Las Vegas; Bakersfield, California; Beaumont, Texas; and Lake Charles, Louisiana.

So what is it about certain places that helps people live longer? A definitive answer requires more research, but there are enough interesting correlations to get the ball rolling.

A significant factor is the availability and quality of health care. Communities with providers who have high national rankings tend to have a more positive impact on senior longevity. On the other hand, a lack of services is probably

one reason rural areas in the middle of the country fare so poorly on the map.

Weather and climate also play a role, and places with extreme highs and lows generally bring down life expectancy.

Given what we know about the effects of extreme heat and cold on mortality, particularly for older people, that’s not a big surprise. Air pollution is another environmental factor that can affect life expectancy.

The authors emphasize that by far the biggest determinant to longevity in any given place is what they call “health capital” — the prior health behaviors, medical care and genetic inheritances people accumulate throughout their lives.

Policymakers looking to increase life spans should take place into account, they said. “There is a substantial causal impact of place-based factors that this conventional wisdom may understate,” the authors write.

Risk From Page 10 playing games such as chess and checkers also earned 1s.

After crunching the numbers, Dhana and his colleagues found that individuals with a score of 4 or 5 — meaning they pursued four or five healthy behaviors over the period studied ­— were 60 percent less likely to develop Alzheimer’s compared to participants who scored 0 or 1. The results did not vary by race or gender, Dhana said.

The average age of participants in the CHAP cohor t was 73 and in the MAP cohort, 81. The population studied included both men and women and blacks and non-Hispanic whites.

Around 50 million people have dementia worldwide, and that number is expected to triple by 2050, according to the 2018 World Alzheimer Report.

The global cost of dementia in 2018 was roughly $1 trillion, a figure projected to double by 2030.

If you cannot adopt all four or five healthy lifestyle habits studied, aim for one or two — whatever you can do, Dhana said. Anything will help: The Rush team found that making just one more healthy choice, no matter how many participants had already made, decreased their chance of Alzheimer’s

by an additional 27 percent.

And, if you’re trying to decide which habits to adopt, Dhana has his favorites.

“My biggest takeaway is I encourage older people to consume more leafy green vegetables, replace red meat with poultry, and avoid as much as possible fried food,” he said. “Also, walk to the grocery store and read books!”

Another study also presented Sunday found that lifestyle choices may even counteract genetic predisposition for Alzheimer’s. That research, led by a team at the University of Exeter Medical School, showed that people with a high genetic risk of Alzheimer’s were less likely to develop the disease if they pursued a healthy lifestyle.

Synder said she expects to see more studies examinining the role of lifestyle choices going forward.

“I think we will see people honing in on, ‘What are the specific aspects of these behaviors that are already identified?’,” she said. “But I also think we’ll see people asking, ‘What are other behaviors?’”

Snyder said she would not be surprised if the number of recommended lifestyle choices eventually rose as high as 10 or 12.

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Metro Creative Content

Hearing is easily taken for granted. Unless a person has experienced temporary or permanent hearing loss, it can be hard to imagine a life in which hearing is compromised or completely lost. But that is precisely the life hundreds of millions of people across the globe live every day.

According to the Hearing Health Foundation, 360 million people across the globe suffer from hearing loss. Within the United States, the number of people with hearing loss doubled from 2000 to 2015.

Coping with hearing loss can be difficult. Hearing loss sufferers may feel disconnected from family and friends because they can’t engage as fully in conversation as they once did. In addition, adjusting to simple pleasures like listening to music after hearing loss can be difficult.

Audiologic rehabilitation ser vices can help people adjust to hearing loss. The American Speech-Language Hearing Association notes that the following are just some ways that audiologic rehab can help people adjust to hearing loss.

· Rehab helps families understand their loved ones’ hearing loss. Audiologic rehab will help people and their families adjust to hearing loss by discussing that loss with family. Family members are often frustrated by conversations with relatives who have hearing loss because many simply don’t understand what their loved one is experiencing. Audiologists may play a recording for families that simulates their loved one’s hearing loss so they can understand exactly what their relative is going through. That can help family members become more patient as people adjust to hearing loss.

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· Rehab can help people understand their hearing aids. Audiologists explain how hearing aids work and how to maintain them.

Various hearing aids are available to people with hearing loss, and audiologists will be able to explain how each type works and answer any questions patients have now and in the future.

· Rehab can teach those with hearing loss to use visual cues.

People without hearing loss may not recognize it, but the ASHA notes that everyone uses his or her eyes to get visual cues about what people are saying. Rehab can help people with hearing loss fine tune these skills to make up for their loss of hearing.

· Rehab can help people with hearing loss and their families communicate more effectively.

Audiologists can provide tips on how to improve families’ listening and how to communicate more effectively. Such tips can make it easier to transition to life with hearing loss.

Audiologic rehab can help people adjust to life after hearing loss. Learn more at www.asha. org.

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