Easter Opening Hours 2013

House of Hearing will be closed on Good Friday 29th March up to and including Easter Monday 1st April. We will reopen on Tuesday 2nd April.

Emergency procedures: Are you in danger?

A warning is being made to hoteliers that they may be risking the lives of some of their hearing impaired guests by not having the correct emergency procedures in place.

Some 232 hotels in London were surveyed by Action on Hearing Loss and they found that one in ten admitted to not having a specific procedure or equipment for deaf or hard of hearing guests in the event of an emergency.

Of those hotels that had modified equipment systems in place, only 13% used flashing alarms specifically designed for people with reduced hearing ability, in addition to acoustic sirens or bells.

Under the Equality Act 2010, hotels as well as other public areas are duty bound to make 'reasonable adjustments' to accessibility for those people with disabilities.

It is not known if these figures are reflected across all areas of the UK but it would be wise for anyone with affected hearing levels to always ask, when staying at a hotel or guest house, what procedures they have in place for guests with impaired hearing.

How old?

According to an American plastic surgeon, earlobes can give your age away.

Earlobes - like other areas of the face and neck - lose collagen and elasticity in much the same way your face does, leading to sagging lobes that are elongated. This is exacerbated with woman if they wear heavy earrings and hoops that are so popular nowadays.

This plastic surgeon recommends to all his face-lift patients, that they should consider ear lobe surgery in addition to their face-lift as gravity takes its toll on earlobes too.

Did you know? #3

The emperor of Rome, Hadrian 76 to 138 AD who inherited fame for building Hadrian's Wall in Britain, had to cup his ears to hear orders repeated because of hearing difficulties, as recorded in contemporary court descriptions.

Inner ear memory

Our ears still hear sounds even after the sound source has stopped. Researchers have found that sounds create after-vibrations in our inner ear and these vibrations, in all probability, function like a form of short-term memory.

It has always been assumed that the hair cells in the inner ear only moved when they were directly affected by sounds. The study has, however, shown that there are after-vibrations in the inner ear. How long the small hairs move after the sound depends on the strength of the sound and its frequency.

The goal of these after-vibrations, according to the research team, could be to function as a form of mechanical archive or short-term memory in the inner ear. The researchers believe that the after-vibrations can have an effect on our ability to perceive sounds and language. The ability to detect brief gaps in an ongoing stimulus is critical for speech recognition. Even a minor hearing loss can lead to a substantial reduction in these after-vibrations and that would mean it is more difficult to perceive the small gaps in an ongoing stimulus, which in turn would have a bearing on speech recognition.

A link between hearing loss and dementia?

Researchers in the United States have found a close relationship between losing your hearing and memory loss. The study was carried out at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. 693 men and women aged between 36-90 years were studied. All participants underwent initial hearing and cognitive testing at the outset of the study between 1990 and 1994; none of the participants had dementia at that point.
These participants were then followed for the development of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia through to 2008 - an average of 12 years.

The study revealed that the risk of dementia increased among participants with at least a mild 25-decibel reduced hearing ability. Participants with more severe hearing loss were most likely to be diagnosed with dementia – and even Alzheimer's. The relationship between Alzheimer's and hearing loss should come as no surprise - After all, how can you remember what someone said if you didn't hear them say it.

Several symptoms are common to both Alzheimer's and untreated hearing loss. These symptoms include depression, anxiety, feelings of isolation and problems with talking and understanding what is being said. In addition, people with either Alzheimer's or unidentified hearing loss may have inappropriate responses to social cues, lower scores on tests of mental function, attitudes of denial, defensiveness, or negativity, and increased distrust of others' motives, even those of family and friends.

Research has shown that hearing loss damages interpersonal and family relationships and may lead to emotional instability, low self-esteem and even depression. Untreated hearing loss not only reduces one's quality of life, but it can also result in the brain losing its capacity to recognise everyday sounds.

Therefore, it is imperative that a hearing loss is dealt with as quickly as possible and using the most appropriate and up to date technology available will significantly ease everyday communication.

Good Vibrations

Two thirds of the 250 million people worldwide who suffer from a disabling hearing impairment live in the developing world. Conventional hearing aids are much less effective in these areas because the majority of problems are due to infection damaging the ear drum and middle ear.

Hearware is a hearing aid designed for the developing world that uses bone conduction, bypassing the need for a good ear drum. The aid is even solar powered and sits on the bone behind the head sending sound vibrations through the skull to the inner ear bypassing the parts that are damaged by infection.

This device can have the colour of its casing changed to make it culturally more acceptable and dispenses with the need for hard-to-get micro batteries in places like sub-Saharan Africa.

Have we earned your vote?

People of all ages around the UK are being invited to join the search for the country's top hearing expert. Audiologist of the Year is recognised as the leading accolade for hearing professionals and is judged by an independent panel of industry experts.

The award recognises the work of audiologists throughout Europe who go beyond the call of duty in their quest to deliver a life changing service for their patients and clients. Patients with inspirational stories to tell are encouraged to vote. It may be your hearing professional has provided support at a time of real need or delivered care over many years. Anyone can enter providing you've had a hearing device fitted in the last five years. All you need to do is to tell about the care you received and the difference it has made to your life. If you would like to help us again this year email us for a nomination form which you can download or complete on line.

www.audiologistoftheyear.eu

Race for 2012 Audiologist of the Year begins

For the fifth year running hard of hearing people across Europe once again have an opportunity to show their appreciation for the people who care for their hearing. The world's no.1 selling hearing aid battery manufacturer, Rayovac, has teamed up with Audio Infos magazine to find the 2012 Audiologist of the Year.

They are looking for hearing patients in the UK, France, Germany, Austria, Spain and Sweden to nominate professionals who they believe go the extra mile to help them overcome their hearing problems.

The winner will follow in the footsteps of 2011 champion Jens Warnecke (Germany) who was crowned winner at the EUHA hearing congress in Nuremburg last October. He picked up the title ahead of AIHHP's own Robert Beiny (UK), Michel Bourdin (France), Lidia Rossello Martinelli (Spain) and Anna Kennryd (Sweden), who were each named national champions in their own countries.

Rayovac marketing manager Paula Brinson-Pyke said: "It’s a great pleasure for Rayovac to be launching the 2012 Audiologist of the Year award in partnership with Audio Infos. We look forward to reading each of the many hundreds of entries we receive for each country.

"Audiologist of the Year has become an important standard within the industry and it will once again highlight the expertise, professionalism, dedication and compassion with which hearing professionals approach their job.

"We were delighted to welcome Jens to our winners club in 2011 and want to hear more patients telling us why their audiologist deserves the award."

The Audiologist of the Year award, which was first held in 2008, has grown to become the leading industry award for hearing professionals and is judged by a panel of industry experts. All nominations are judged anonymously with the judges particularly looking for audiologists that demonstrate:

• Outstanding commitment to the patient
• Support for the patient and the family
• Making a difference in the patient's life
• Knowledge about new technologies
• Working closely with other specialists, providing a team approach

Entries can be made online – or via post - and votes can be cast until 13th July 2012. Further information is available at the competition website. The overall winner of the competition will again be presented with their award and prize at the annual EUHA Congress which will be held in Frankfurt in October 2012. Each of the national champions also receives an award as do the nominating patients. (All nominations have to be made by patients)

For more information about the competition visit www.audiologistoftheyear.eu.

Did you know #2

Quintus Pedius was a Roman painter and the first deaf person in recorded history known by name.

He is the first recorded deaf painter and his schooling is the first recorded education of a deaf child.

The height of discretion

Long gone are the days when a hearing aid was a large, obvious, embarrassing beige-coloured prosthesis with poor performance. Just like computers and mobile telephones from a decade ago, modern hearing aids are now available as much smaller devices and they perform in unthinkable ways compared to ten years ago. The best type of hearing assistance depends on the level of hearing loss, lifestyle and size of ear canal. However, they are all significantly less noticeable than trying to cope unaided with hearing difficulties. Nothing is more obvious than frequently asking people to repeat themselves.

Fractal tones help tinnitus

Tinnitus is a ringing or buzzing in one or both ears and although many people have experienced this condition temporarily after being in a noisy environment or whilst suffering from a head cold, for over 7 million people in the UK, it never goes away.

Tinnitus has been and still is the object of extensive research in terms of establishing effective treatment methods or management strategies. Tinnitus is for many a distressing noise leading to increased stress and affected quality of life. As stress is one of the highest exacerbating factors involved with tinnitus, stress reduction is a vital element in effective tinnitus management. To this end and inspired by the relaxing effect of certain types of music, Widex, a Danish hearing instrument manufacturing company, developed ‘Zen’ programs to help tinnitus sufferers.

Based on what is known as fractal technology which ensures that the music is predictable without repeating itself, Zen is a unique music program available in some Widex hearing instruments. Zen plays random, chime-like tones that can be used for relaxation and for making tinnitus less noticeable.

An experiment was conducted in 2009 at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to determine the effectiveness of fractal tones, contained within this hearing instrument, with tinnitus patients. The experiment concluded that fractal tones corrected for hearing loss are effective in relaxing the tinnitus sufferer, as well as reducing the annoyance of tinnitus.

To find out more information on this technology, simply contact us or call us on 0131 220 1220.

Happy New Year from House of Hearing!

2012 is upon us, and all of us at House of Hearing wish you a very peaceful and prosperous year ahead. It's time, of course, for New Year resolutions, and perhaps time to get your hearing checked. Hearing voices clearly on TV is often a problem for people who have even a mild degree of hearing loss, and often people aren't aware of how much technology is available these days to assist with this.

From specialist infra-red TV listeners, to state of the art hearing aids which will receive a direct wireless transmission from a small device attached to the TV, there are many options which take the headache out of trying to hear what's going on.

If your festive TV-watching has left you with complaints about the volume ringing in your ears, fatigue from concentrating so hard to follow the dialogue, or even a sense of anti-climax from having read the punchline on subtitles a few seconds before it was actually delivered, come in for a free hearing check and a chat.

Beat the January blues by improving your hearing... and your quality of life.