Millions of Americans suffering from hearing loss are hesitant to correct it. One of the primary reasons is the prohibitive cost — even inexpensive custom hearing aids can run in the thousands of dollars, and are rarely if ever covered by insurance. While people of all ages suffer from hearing loss, older people — who are often on fixed incomes — are affected in much higher percentages. Because of this, mass-produced sound amplifiers from retailers like Radio Shack are gaining in popularity.

These inexpensive hearing aid-like devices retail for less than $50. However, while pricier hearing aids come equipped with nifty features and can be programmed to fit your level and type of hearing loss, these inexpensive sound amplifiers do that and just that: make sounds louder. They won’t mask tinnitus or help you hear high frequency sounds. Despite this, they still have some usefulness: if you are watching television at home, and don’t wish to wake anyone else up, this devices can help augment the sound.

In the end, however, using the most inexpensive hearing aids as an everyday device can be dangerous. While sound amplification is better than nothing at all for those suffering from hearing loss, there are still safety and lifestyle issues they are unequipped to properly combat. Reviews suggest that they fare poorly in crowded or noisy environments, where being able to focus on certain sounds is of more importance than just the level of the volume. If you live in a big city, relying strictly on one of these devices while walking around could be dangerous.
Custom hearing aids are pricey, but the technology can help improve or even save your life. But, if you need a quick stopgap for personal home use, inexpensive mass-produced hearing aids could be of help.

It seems like there might be yet a third sense involved in hearing – touch.

Professor Bryan Gick of UBC’s Department of Linguistics, along with PhD student Donald Derrick, completed a study that suggested that our sense of hearing might be tactically influenced. Brief percussive bursts of air directed at skin with certain syllables serve as clues to the words being spoken.

The actual mechanism might not be as straightforward as feeling the puff of air; Gick suggests that the eyes note the shape of the lips and the expulsion of air, which then registers them in the brain which in turn intuits the response. If the conclusion suggested by this study is true, our notions of hearing and hearing loss may have to be updated.

Sensory interaction is important for those with hearing loss. There is no reason that failing ears should automatically mean failed hearing; the ability of our bodies to adapt and compensate is nothing short of miraculous.

Common tips include focusing on one person at a time, choosing areas where background noise is minimized, and focusing on face of the person to whom you’re talking. The last tip is especially important for those skilled in reading lips.

The number of skilled lip-readers might soon be growing, thanks to research out of the eighth International Conference on Auditory-Visual Speech Processing. A study presented at the conference found that for the first time ever, computers are able to read lips better than their human counterparts. The computers were able to do so well by exploiting small but simple differences in images lip shapes, rather than the more complex full-video required by human lip-readers.

This technology has been used in a new series of videos to that were able to teach humans to read lips for one-syllable words: no easy task.

The study’s lead author, Sarah Hilder said, “With just four hours of training it helped them improve their lip-reading skills markedly. We hope this research will represent a real technological advance for the deaf community.”

Hopefully, this new lip-reading technology can seamlessly combine with the ever-changing hearing-aid technology to foster better, easier communication for the 36 million Americans suffering from hearing loss.

It’s easy to see why: It’s sleek, functional, and features cutting-edge “touch” technology–scrolling and choosing is as simple as the flick of a finger.

What’s the connection between an iPhone and a hearing aid?


That’s the question Starkley Laboratories sought to answer. Their answer, the S-Series with Sweep ™ technology for behind-the-ear hearing aids, won them the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Innovations 2010 Award in the Health and Wellness category. This technology does away with the buttons and dials of past hearing aids, and instead uses a touch-sensitive interface that allows the user to adjust volume and settings smoothly and easily.

The advantages over traditional buttons are obvious; tiny buttons can be difficult to adjust, especially for the elderly who constitute the biggest users of BTE hearing aids. Furthermore, the variety of dials and buttons can oxidize and fail over time, or allow moisture and dirt to impact their ability to work properly.

Sweep technology is effective and user-friendly. If you are having issues with your Behind-the-Ear hearing aid, or simply want to upgrade to a more user-friendly model, it might be right for you.

Hearing loss is usually stereotyped as an older person’s issue or disease.

The senior citizen cupping his hand to his ear and yelling “what did you say?” to the toaster is practically a cliché. It’s understandable, in a way – hearing does degenerate as you age.

But over half of the 36 million American hearing-loss sufferers are under the age of 65.

What options does a young hearing-loss sufferer have?

The Nios Micro, the world’s most technologically advanced pediatric hearing aid. This hearing aid comes with SoundRecover (especially helpful because fellow children’s voices tend to be higher pitched),  RealEar Sound, and WhistleBlock technology.

Depending on the model, it can also come with a wide variety of other features, including Voice Zoom, for speech intelligibility, and NoiseBlock processing, which filters out background noise in a way that even healthy ears can’t.

As a bonus, it comes in 13 (!) different styles. Even a picky child can find the right one for themselves.

Hearing loss isn’t just for the old. If you think your child might be suffering from it, do not hesitate to visit an audiologist, or give us a call–we’ll be happy to answer any questions.

With all of the fascinating technology being developed on a near-daily basis, hearing aids seem – and have become – thoroughly modern devices. However, the history of hearing aids stretches back several decades, to a brilliant physicist and author named Harvey Fletcher.

Fletcher’s prototypical hearing aids were worn on the body, and consisted of an ear mold connected to a case about the size of a deck of playing cards. This case was connected to the mold via a loop, and attached to the belt or pocket of the wearer. Because of their great size, they were capable of great feats of amplification; through their bulkiness and unwieldiness they have been replaced  by “behind the ear” hearing aids. Still, for the time, they represented a watershed moment in hearing amplification.

Behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids are tubes that wrap, fittingly enough, behind the ear of the hearing loss sufferer. They provide sound through air conduction through this length of tubing. Because they keep the ear open, they allow the user to retain use of whatever hearing they have left, and are therefore appropriate for those with mild-to-moderate hearing loss.

Hearing  aid technology progressed further with the development of In-The-Ear (ITE) hearing aids. These devices go directly into the ear canal. Further advancements have created digital hearing aids that are programmable and can come with a number of exciting and helpful accessories.

Even less obtrusive in every-day conversation are implantable hearing aids. These aids can be implanted directly into the bone of people who suffer from hearing loss, in a procedure that can be recovered from in mere hours. Extended-wear hearing aids have also been introduced, allowing hearing loss sufferers to hear clearly on a daily basis without worrying about taking an aid in or out frequently.

The history of hearing aids is fascinating, and ever changing. The sheer amount of accumulated knowledge that has resulted in the modern class of hearing loss technology is astounding.

Hearing loss has a variety of negative impacts for it’s sufferer.

One common one is impairment that results in inability to distinguish high-frequency sounds. Traditionally, the greater the hearing loss, the more gain needs to be applied at that frequency. However, for some people, hearing sensitivity is so poor in the high frequencies that it is not possible to provide sufficient gain and achieve audibility. In many cases, the gain is limited by acoustic feedback or by discomfort, resulting from excessive loudness. Cochlear damage renders these sorts of frequency problems with hearing:

>>An inability to recognize certain speech sounds

>>Difficulty distinguishing high-pitched background sounds–like bird chirps and songs

>>Difficulty in maintaining speech quality

>>Difficulty, especially in children, in developing proper speech

These hearing loss challenges are by no means easy; however, Phonak has developed a revolutionary new technology to help combat it.

It’s known as SoundRecover, and it compresses high-frequency noise into lower frequencies–where a person suffering from hearing loss can better distinguish them.

Because only a selected range of frequencies is targeted (those above a given range), SoundRecover is able to more accurately combat high-frequency hearing loss. Not only is SoundRecover active all the time, the settings are based on the user’s hearing loss, which means better compression, and an overall better hearing aid for the patient.

To learn more about SoundRecover, visit the Phonak’s website.

In some situations, omnidirectional microphones can be preferable; hence, many modern hearing aids feature a toggle that allows the hearing aid wearer to choose between the two types. Thus, the hearing aid provides a greater and more focused benefit.

This hearing aid technology is further sophisticated by what are called “adaptive directional microphones.” These hearing aid devices are better able to distinguish speech from noise and automatically filter out noise from a given angle.

No small feat: not even healthy ears can do that!

Why not?

One study indicated that 25% of people that rejected hearing aids did so because the felt like those hearing aids did a poor job in eliminating background noise.  This rejection of potentially helpful hearing aid technology was one of the impetuses for a recently concluded three-year double-blind study to test the real-world benefit of directional hearing aids.

Ninety-four subjects, all previous users of omni-directional hearing aids were fit with directional hearing aids for a month, followed by omnidirectional hearing aids for a month. For each hearing aid, they were given objective and subjective hearing tests and asked to respond on their experience.

The data showed that while subjective testing failed to produce a clear preference, directional hearing aids fared notably better in objective hearing tests.

A significant conclusion can be drawn from the test that the use of directional microphones in hearing aids can help users identify speech-in-noise. Identifying speech-in-noise is one of the primary concerns for any wearer of a hearing-aid; it is what allows the user of the aid to distinguish between the clattering of dishes and the funny story of a coworker.

This study helps show the vast improvements and the brilliant science going into hearing aid technology.

But can hearing aids help save the economy?

That’s what a UF professor whose work helped develop the project is saying.  Alice Holmes, a professor in UF’s Department of Communicative Disorders at the College of Public Health and Health Professions, has worked with other UF researchers to pioneer a new type of hearing aid.

This hearing aid is programmed not to the tonal beeps of past hearing aids, but rather to be responsive to speech sounds such as “ata” and “aba.”

It is Holmes’ contention that many people, especially in an older state like Florida, are prematurely forced out of the workforce by poor hearing. A scant 20 percent of the 31 million Americans with hearing loss that could be benefited by the use of an aid actually take advantage of hearing aid technology, some no doubt frustrated by ill-fitting or unhelpful hearing aids.

Furthermore, by allowing hearing aids to be programmed more quickly and efficiently, the new technology hopes not only provide a lifestyle benefit to the patients, but an economic boon to the audiology clinics. Hearing loss ranks second to only arthritis as a permanent disability in the older community, Holmes says.

As hearing aid technology gets better, and better, we continue to reap benefits. This additional potential boost to the economy is a welcome one.