Hearing Aids in Background Noise!

Noisy restaurant bad for hearing

Would you like to hear better in a noisy environment? You might have been having a hard time understanding your family and friends. The good news is that there is help for you. Hearing aids are now smaller and more affordable. You will be able to distinguish words better, and hear certain sounds better than before. You might find it easier to follow conversations.

Filtering background noise is a complex task that our brains are working on. But did you know its not just the brain at work? The cochlea of the inner ear actually has nerve endings that are tunable and “learn” to amplify more of what you want to hear. This makes it tricky for hearing loss, because we also lose the ability to “tube” our inner ears.

Hearing aids must incorporate some form of programming or even modern artificial intelligence to try and filter background sound for us. Hearing aids may also use microphone tricks or even remote microphones to better assist.

In any event, background noise filtering is where the action is in terms of hearing aid tech development – helping you to hear what you really want to hear!

Solving Ear Pain from Inserts

Custom Earbuds

Tight fitting inserts are rarely needed for hearing aids to function well. Most adults have enough residual low frequency hearing to avoid a tight insert (although some do have the need for custom molded inserts to better amplify low frequency sound).

Usually inserts are rubber or silicone and are made to be periodically replaced. These can be easily changed by the consumer in a RIC hearing aid. If there is pain when inserting the device or pain during use then we need to check out the ear canal. Sometimes skin irritation or ear wax build up may be to blame.

Some patients benefit from oily lubricants in the ear canals, or others may need a different style of insert altogether.

Regardless of the reason, if your inserts are painful we can usually get them adjusted or fixed quickly!

Lost Hearing Aids?

Nothing is more frustrating than losing your hearing aids. They are a very expensive piece of technology. Sometimes the tiny devices are easy to misplace. What can you do? Have no fear, we have the solutions.

Firstly, often we will lose hearing aids because battery life has increased. As battery life increases we can successfully keep functioning hearing aids away from our body for a longer period of time. However, since about 2019 we’ve had a very good selection of rechargeable hearing aids.

The rechargeable hearing aids, extremely more convenient, but do require that we charge them every night or two. This provides a natural base station for the hearing aids to rest upon at night. This alone has resulted in about a 50% reduction in lost devices.

Young children and certain disabled adults may also benefit from a lanyard on their hearing aids. These can be easily added to any existing pair.

Finally, the major hearing aid manufacturers do offer warranty solutions for loss. Most hearing aids now are custom fit and custom designed. These customizations are easily digitally stored, and re-creation of your hearing aids is cheaper than ever. Warranties exist and may be useful to you for a small added expe

New Study :Vitamin supplement successfully prevents noise-induced hearing loss

Tinnitus Retraining Therapy

Researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College and the Gladstone Institutes have found a way to prevent noise-induced hearing loss in a mouse using a simple chemical compound that is a precursor to vitamin B3. This discovery has important implications not only for preventing hearing loss, but also potentially for treating some aging-related conditions that are linked to the same protein.

Published today in Cell Metabolism, the researchers used the chemical nicotinamide riboside (NR) to protect the nerves that innervate the cochlea. The cochlea transmits sound information through these nerves to the spiral ganglion, which then passes along those messages to the brain. Exposure to loud noises damages the synapses connecting the nerves and the hair cells in the cochlea, resulting in noise-induced hearing loss.

The researchers set about trying to prevent this nerve damage by giving mice NR before or after exposing them to loud noises. NR was successful at preventing damage to the synaptic connections, avoiding both short-term and long-term hearing loss. What’s more, NR was equally effective regardless of whether it was given before or after the noise exposure.

“One of the major limitations in managing disorders of the inner ear, including hearing loss, is there are a very limited number of treatments options. This discovery identifies a unique pathway and a potential drug therapy to treat noise-induced hearing loss,” says Kevin Brown, MD, PhD, an associate professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and first author on the paper. Brown conducted the research while at Weill Cornell.

The researchers chose NR because it is a precursor to the chemical compound nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which had previously been shown by Dr. Brown and co-senior author Samie Jaffrey, MD, PhD, to protect cochlea nerve cells from injury. However, NAD+ is an unstable compound, calling into question whether it could be used out of the petri dish and in a live animal. That led the scientists to use NR instead.

Methods for synthesizing NR were recently developed by Anthony Sauve, PhD, a professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell and co-author of the study. This resulted in quantities of NR that were sufficient to test in animals.

“NR gets into cells very readily and can be absorbed when you take it orally. It has all the properties that you would expect in a medicine that could be administered to people,” said Dr. Jaffrey, a professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell.

Beyond just preventing hearing loss, the researchers think the results may have broader applications because of the underlying way NR protects nerve cells. The scientists showed that NR and NAD+ prevent hearing loss by increasing the activity of the protein sirtuin 3 (SIRT3), which is critically involved in the function of mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell.

The researchers hypothesized that it was this enhancement of SIRT3 that was behind the protective properties of NR. To test this, they manipulated SIRT3 levels independently of NR to see if they could still prevent noise-induced hearing loss by administering NR. Sure enough, deleting the SIRT3 gene in mice abolished any of the protective properties of NR. The researchers also showed that a new strain of mice, generated in the lab of co-senior author Eric Verdin, MD, at the Gladstone Institutes and engineered to express high levels of SIRT3, were inherently resistant to noise-induced hearing loss, even without administration of NR.

SIRT3 decreases naturally as we age, which could partially explain aging-related hearing loss. Additionally, some individuals carry different versions of the SIRT3 genes that result in reduced enzyme activity, which may make them more susceptible to noise-induced hearing loss.

Dr. Verdin, an investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, says, “The success of this study suggests that targeting SIRT3 using NR could be a viable target for treating all sorts of aging-related disorders–not only hearing loss but also metabolic syndromes like obesity, pulmonary hypertension, and even diabetes.”

 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141202123840.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Ftop_news%2Ftop_science+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Top+Science+News%29