Author: David Morse

The weather is beautiful, and it’s time for a family trip. But be aware: if your children use earbuds or earphones during travel, the sound may be loud enough to damage their hearing. It’s up to you to monitor the level of sound to which they are exposed.

Q: Aren’t children’s electronic devices regulated on the maximum volume they can produce?

A: Unfortunately, no. According to a New York Times article, no required standard “restricts the maximum sound output for listening devices or headphones” sold in the U.S. The Times cites a study that examined 30 headphones marketed to children and found that half of them failed to restrict volume to their advertised limits. Some allowed the sound to be “damagingly loud.”

Q: Can an electronic device’s sound level injure my child permanently?

A: Hearing damage depends on sound volume and amount of exposure, so the loudness of a child’s electronic device and how many hours a day the child uses it are crucial to their hearing health. Fifty percent of children as young as 8 to 12 may listen to music daily (nearly two-thirds of teenagers do).2 Even if younger children aren’t listening to loud music, many noisy games are marketed to them.

Hearing damage can occur at any age, and once damaged, the delicate organs of the ear cannot regenerate. Other parts of the brain than those governing hearing may be able to partly compensate for hearing damage, but no one can be sure that will happen.

Q: Why haven’t parents been warned about the risk that mobile devices pose to their children’s hearing?

A: Until recently we haven’t known a lot about how young ears are damaged, or if they are, by levels produced by their earbuds or phones. Concerns about the impact of loud music on young ears have arisen from recent controlled animal studies and retrospective study of adults exposed to intense noises. Evidence has shown that some music listeners select levels that are potentially damaging, and that the effects of early exposure may not be observed until later in life.

Q: My children love their electronic devices, and I know they share other children’s devices as well. How can I protect them from damaging sound volume?

A: First, do a bit of homework before a new device is purchased for the child. Look for one that addresses the issue of sound volume. You may be able to find one that allows you to program volume limits your child can’t override. Second, stay aware of how loud your child is playing his or her device by “listening in” when you are nearby. It is sometimes said that if you can hear what your child is listening to, it’s too loud. That’s a good place to start.

Hearing loss can occur at any age.  We encourage you to always protect your hearing and the hearing of those you love.  If you are noticing any changes in your hearing, give Purchase Ear Technology a call at (270) 558-3996 or visit our office weekdays at 2008 Broadway, Paducah, KY  42001.

In short, yes, earwax can cause hearing loss. But it doesn’t occur as commonly as one might think. In fact, very few patients who are seen by hearing healthcare professionals have hearing loss that is literally due to excessive earwax (cerumen impaction).

More likely, the patient has experienced a gradual decline in their hearing over time and the hearing loss has become enough that the patient is starting to have difficulty communicating with others.  It is when communication starts to become effected that people seek help.

What, you might ask, causes cerumen impaction? Anything that affects the normal outward flow of ear wax may cause impaction, such as advanced age, narrow or abnormally shaped ear canals, use of a hearing aid, incorrect use of cotton swabs, or using needles, hair pins, or other objects to clean the ears. (PSA: Do not stick anything in your ear to clean it!)

Total earwax blockage is rare:

What is important to know here is that soundwaves only need a tiny opening in the ear canal to reach the eardrum. So, unless the ear canal is plugged tightly with earwax, there shouldn’t be noticeable hearing loss. When cerumen impaction is severe enough to cause hearing loss, there will likely be other signs and symptoms noticed, such as dizziness, ear fullness (a feeling that something is plugging up your ear), itchiness or pain in the ears and/or ringing in the ears. Rarely does cerumen impaction occur without additional signs that “something is wrong.”

Earwax removal by hearing professional:

The good news is that hearing loss caused by cerumen impaction is easily treated. It is within a hearing professional’s scope of practice in most states to perform cerumen removal in the office. If your hearing loss is as simple as having your ears cleaned, GREAT! If not, a visit to Purchase Ear Technology in Paducah can help you accurately uncover what might be causing your perception of hearing loss.  Give us a call today at (270) 558-3996.

The fitting and dispensing of hearing aids is part art and part science. Professionals who are licensed in the fitting and dispensing of hearing instruments have been through a State-mandated training and testing protocol. An experienced professional is the key to the question “What are the best hearing aids for me?”

Because, to determine which hearing aid is best for a person, there are many things to be considered first. What is the type and degree of the person’s hearing loss? What is the shape/size of the person’s ear? What communication difficulties is the person having? What is the person’s lifestyle/activities? What hearing aid features would be beneficial for the person? What is the person expecting from hearing aids?

Purchase Ear Technology in Paducah can help you determine all these variables.

There are many different hearing aid styles and features available

Only after those questions are covered will the answer to what hearing aids are best be addressed. And there is a vast range of hearing aids available in many makes, models and circuits to choose from.

There are hearing aids that offer 96 channels, hearing aids that offer 4 channels, and everything in between! There are larger hearing aids and smaller hearing aids. There are in-the-ear hearing aids, behind-the-ear hearing aids and receiver-in-the-canal hearing aids. There are wired, wireless and Bluetooth hearing aids. The list goes on and on.

Again, this is why it is imperative that a hearing professional be involved in the process. Only then can we match the right hearing aid (of all the choices available) based on your unique needs.

Give us a call at Purchase Ear Technology today to schedule an appointment at (270) 558-3996 or visit our office located at 2008 Broadway, Paducah, KY  42001.

A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that hearing loss caused by noise is extremely common. According to CDC Acting Director Dr. Anne Schuchat, “40 million Americans show some hearing damage from loud noise, with nearly 21 million reporting no exposure to loud noise at work.” This means the loss is coming from everyday exposure to noise — things like leaf blowers, attending concerts or sporting events, and even sirens.

The good news is that noise-induced hearing loss is easily prevented  steps.

1. Turn it down. Enjoy your music, but listen at a safe level. Fifteen minutes at maximum volume on your iPod is all it takes to damage your hearing. Listening time is cumulative so you can listen longer at lower volumes and stay safe. Try noise-canceling headphones which block out background noise, allowing you to enjoy your music at lower volumes.

2. Block the noise. Wear earplugs or earmuffs at concerts or sporting events. They come in many sizes and styles. Some are even made specifically for listening to music. If you don’t have earplugs handy, cover your ears with your hands. This works well when an ambulance or fire truck drives by you on the street.

3. Move away. The farther you are from the noise, the safer it is. Always pick a seat far away from loud speakers and if you see a noisy construction site, cross the street.

If you feel that your hearing is not as good as it should be, we can help.  Give us a call at Purchase Ear Technology in Paducah to schedule a hearing test.  You can reach us at 270-558-3996 or stop by our office located at 2008 Broadway, Paducah, KY  42001.

Although hearing loss continues to affect people at younger ages, senior citizens are still most likely to have it. About one-third of individuals between the ages of 65 and 74 experience hearing loss, while that number rises to nearly half of people older than 75. And hearing loss can make it difficult for these individuals to communicate with their friends, family members, and—if applicable—their caregivers.

Whether a professional caregiver or someone taking care of an aging family member, a healthy relationship between caregiver and patient is key to providing proper support. However, if the patient has hearing loss, it can be difficult communicating with them and lead to frustration and confusion. Should hearing loss remain undiagnosed or untreated, the patient may face greater risks to their physical and mental health.

For instance, those with hearing loss are three times as likely to suffer devastating falls. Hearing loss may also be a symptom of more serious health risks like cardiovascular disease or diabetes. And not hearing well can make people feel isolated and cause them to withdraw from social situations rather than struggle to hear conversations.

Treating patients with hearing loss

Given the risks, it’s important that caregivers not only be able to recognize hearing loss in their charges, but know how to communicate with them accordingly. Here are some tips for improving communication:

• Get their attention: Depending on the severity of the patient’s hearing loss, they might not know you’re talking to them, especially if speaking to them from another room or if they’re not facing you. Making physical contact or eye contact will help you get their attention.
• Lower the noise: If there are too many sounds competing for their attention, it will be harder for patients with hearing loss to understand you. Turning the TV off when not in use, conducting conversations away from appliances like a humming refrigerator or dishwasher, and minimizing background noise can help.
• Adjust your voice: When someone can’t hear, it may be natural to raise your voice and repeat what you said. However, this isn’t the best strategy as your patient might think you’re yelling at them. Instead, try to speak more slowly and clearly, enunciate, and pause between words.

Taking care of hearing health

In addition to adapting the way you communicate with your patient you can plan a visit to Purchase Ear Technology in Paducah, KY.  Purchase Ear Technology can evaluate the patient’s hearing and help to determine if there are any underlying health risks that may be causing the hearing loss.

We may also recommend the best course of treatment, such as using hearing aids. By helping patients hear the world around them, hearing aids can improve their quality of life. Better hearing can also strengthen the relationship between patient and caregiver by minimizing the frustration caused by hearing loss.

For more information, contact Purchase Ear Technology, 2008 Broadway, Paducah, KY  42001, call us at (270) 558-3996 or send an email to [email protected].

Glasses help you see, hearing aids help you hear, basic statements like that make it seem like both objects essentially serve the same purpose. We even occasionally see hearing aids advertised as the glasses for your ears! Unfortunately, it’s not so simple, hearing aids and glasses and quite different. Yes, they are both worn on your head and supposed to provide correction (not a cure), but that is where their similarities end.

Even the most advanced hearing aids won’t restore your hearing 100% the way another person can hear naturally. Glasses can restore your vision to 20/20. Hearing aids do a great job of mimicking what our ears are supposed to do, but they aren’t perfect, they are just a substitute for the original.

Glasses and contacts are made in different powers to compensate for eyes that have refractive errors (sorry Eye Doctors for the oversimplification). Once the necessary power is determined and the lenses are put in the frames you leave with the glasses and don’t need to come back until your vision gets worse.

Hearing aids are designed to give your ears different amounts of amplification at every frequency because your hearing loss varies between the frequencies. A hearing aid must also vary the amount of amplification depending on the intensity of the sound at that frequency. Once a hearing aid has been selected and fit it is common to come back for periodic adjustments. Even then, the best-programmed hearing aid will not give a person “20/20 hearing” in every situation. The science of hearing aids has advanced enough to give millions of people the ability to hear the sounds in their lives as naturally as possible, but they are still working to perfectly replicate the intricacies of the auditory system.

Another major difference is that your hearing will not get worse because you are wearing a hearing aid (unless it is improperly programmed). Glasses, on the other hand, do some of the work for the muscles in your eye. The more you wear your glasses the more these muscles get lazy and the more dependent you become on your glasses. Hearing aids are designed to stimulate more nerves in your ear than your natural hearing does on its own. The brain starts receiving more signals from the nerves, which means your brain is actually working harder and is less likely to get lazy like your eye muscles.

Hearing aids are not like glasses when it comes to mechanics. One way we wish they were more alike is when it comes to stigma. Billions of people around the world wear glasses and no one thinks of them any differently. For some reasons hearing aids have not become as mainstream. We hope this changes in the near future.

If you are having trouble hearing, we hope you will let us help you.  Give us a call at Purchase Ear Technology in Paducah at (270) 558-3996.

Writer Arthur C. Clarke, best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey, once wrote: “Any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

This might be true of hearing aids: tiny, powerful devices that open up the world of sound for the wearer and reconnect people to one another. Let’s take a journey through the history of hearing aids and trace their advancement from the low-fi ear trumpet to the advanced wireless models we use today.

Hearing Loss in History

According to History Today, “The earliest written record of hearing loss is believed to date from 1550 BC in ancient Egypt. The Ebers Papyrus offer a remedy for ‘Ear-That-Hears-Badly’: injecting olive oil, red lead, ant eggs, bat wings and goat urine into the ears.” It’s unclear if this refers to earwax blockage of hearing loss – but this solution might be frowned upon today by hearing specialists.

With the advent of the Renaissance, patrons of the arts invested greatly in painters, such as Giambattista della Porta, who “describes horns shaped like the ears of animals known to have excellent hearing (though this may be an attempt to create something more akin to a telescope for sound).” In turn, this resulted in crude hearing technology that looked like ear trumpets, invented by Paolo Aproino (whose teacher was Galileo) in the 1610s.

By the 19th and 20th centuries, we see a big push by scientists and inventors to address hearing loss, inspired and influenced by other rapidly growing industries and new technologies. The history of hearing aids has closely followed the advent of mechanization and industry, evolving into powerful digital devices in the 21st century.

19th Century: The Ear Trumpet

Just as their predecessors in previous centuries, many people who were hard of hearing in the 19th century relied on ear trumpets to amplify sound. Ear trumpets are funnels, held up to the hard-of-hearing ear, to capture sound from the environment. Images and texts of this era show people awkwardly holding these oversized cones to their ears. Apparently, they didn’t function so well, either.

Then, along came one of the most ground-breaking inventions in the 19th century: the telephone. Legend has it that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone to try to communicate with his dear, deceased brother. As a result, he became the first person who transmit a human voice via electric signal to another machine (the first words spoken were: “Mr. Watson – come here – I want to see you”). Though Alexander Graham Bell forever changed how we communicate, his invention had another effect: according to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the proximity of the telephone to the ear helped hard of hearing people with their conversations, and not unlike humans today, they preferred phone calls to in-person conversations!

Late 19th/Early 20th Century: The First Electric Hearing Aid and the Vacuum Tube

After inspecting the inner workings of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, Miller Reese Hutchison put together the first electric hearing aid in 1898. This electric hearing aid used a portable carbon transmitter to amplify weak sound signals. Great minds seem to think alike – especially in this rich time of invention and industry – as an Austrian man named Frederick Alt designed something similar. Quite bulky and heavy, Alt’s carbon transmitter hearing aid amplified sounds by about 15 decibels and was useful for cases of moderate hearing loss.

Along with other things such Dadaist art and Modernist literature, the early 1900s brought many new and exciting innovations. In 1907, in New York City, the vacuum tube was invented by Lee De Forest at the Western Electric Company. The original models were enormous; they weighed approximately 100 kilograms, were the size of a filing cabinet, and had to be plugged in. Additionally, they amplified all sound. While this may initially sound like a great idea for people who struggle to hear, the lack of nuance and differentiation between the unique sounds in your environment can be overwhelming and unhelpful: it did not allow for focus on voices or sounds that users wanted to hear.

Fortunately, the vacuum tube reduced in size to 4 kilograms by 1924, but still, it was not a portable or discreet device. People had to hold “receivers” up to their ears in order to hear the amplified sounds.

1938: The First Wearable Hearing Aid

In 1938, the first wearable hearing aid was invented, which consists of similar components to today’s hearing aids. With this early model, an amplifier-receiver is clipped to the user’s clothes, while a thin wire connected to an earpiece. A battery pack, which powered the device, was also strapped to the user’s clothes.

After World War II, research into the field of audiology expanded. A great number of veterans returned from combat zones with hearing loss and tinnitus. As research grew, newer devices were developed to address hearing loss. Transistor hearing aids were introduced in 1952 (two years before the transistor radio): they were boxy devices used with headphones, worn by the user. Over years of continued research and development and re-design in the 2nd half of the 20th century, these hearing aids became recognizable as the predecessors of hearing aids we use today.

21st Century: Digital, Wireless Hearing Aids

Technological devices of all kinds have gotten sleeker and smarter in the 21st century. After 2015 was named “Year of the Hearable,” advanced hearing aids have only gotten better. In terms of design, hearing aids are now so small that they are nearly invisible (in fact, some are, depending on the model).

As with hearing aids of the past, contemporary hearing aids continue to be inspired by phones. Our newest hearing aids are compatible with your smartphone, wirelessly streaming phone calls, music, and other media directly to your hearing aids. Furthermore, today’s hearing aids are deemed “mini-computers” with super-fast processing systems that automatically adjust program features to help wearers focus on sounds they want to hear. Other fantastic features include the ability to geotag locations with your user preferences, resistance to water and dirt with nanocoated construction, and fully rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.

And, best of all, our newest advanced hearing aids bring significant benefits to your health and well-being by ensuring that you are always connected to the sounds around you.

Want to improve your hearing?  Contact us at Purchase Ear Technology by calling (270) 558-3996 or visit our office located at 2008 Broadway, Paducah, KY  42001.

This is actually a multi-faceted question! At its most basic, the answer could be “yes,” because — from a manufacturing standpoint — hearing aids all require the same parts: a microphone, an amplifier, a receiver (or speaker) and a battery source. And, from a functional standpoint, all hearing aids should amplify sounds, just as all cars should get you from Point A to Point B.

However, if we take a closer look at the hearing aid technology that is available to us today, the answer isn’t quite so simple.

Hearing aids have different features and technologies

First, there are many different technologies and features that are available within today’s hearing instruments. There are memories, channels, bands, wireless, wired, remotes, accessories, and more. Because these options are intricate and confusing to many, it is strongly recommended that one seeks out a reputable hearing healthcare professional to guide them through the process.

Hearing aids come in different styles

There are several styles of hearing instruments available. They range from behind-the-ear hearing instruments to the very smallest invisible-in-the-canal hearing instruments. Again, a hearing healthcare professional will make a recommendation of which style of hearing instrument is the best option for one’s type and severity of hearing loss.

The company that makes the hearing aid also makes a difference

Finally, there are several manufacturers of hearing instruments. Each of these manufacturers make reliable, quality products. And they all offer (mostly) the same styles. But each manufacturer also specializes in, excels at or is known for certain things.

To go back to the automobile analogy: sure, companies like Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen all make sedans, minivans and SUVs that get you from A to B — but think why you ultimately choose one over the other?

So, as you can see, there is not one single answer to the question of “Aren’t all hearing instruments the same?” The best hearing aids will be the hearing aids that are appropriate for the user’s hearing loss and have the features and technology that will best benefit the user’s lifestyle.  At Purchase Ear Technology in Paducah, we can help you find the hearing aid that is right for you.  Give us a call today at (270) 558-3996.