October 19, 2006 Issue

             HEARING LOSS HELP E-zine
"The premier e-zine for people with hearing loss"


Volume 1, Number 9                       October 19, 2006
Publisher: Neil Bauman      neil@hearinglosshelp.com
            http://www.hearinglosshelp.com
    Copyright Center for Hearing Loss Help 2006

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                      "Hearing loss may change your life,
                        but your life need not be any less
                                rewarding and fulfilling
                        because you have a hearing loss."

                                                               -- Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

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Please recommend and/or forward this issue of Hearing Loss Help
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In this issue
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1. Understanding Hearing Loss

2. Beware of (Ototoxic) Drugs That Can Damage Your Ears

3. Answers to Your Questions

4. Tips for Successfully Coping with Hearing Loss

5. Subscriber-only Special

6. Information on Hearing Aids, Cochlear Implants and/or
    Assistive Devices



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1. Understanding Hearing Loss
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Sounds That Hurt--Recruitment Kicking In

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.


The parents of a hard of hearing boy wrote: "We had a weird
experience this last weekend and wanted to see if anyone else has
had something similar happen to them or their child. Our son
(age 10) has a mild to moderate hearing loss in his left ear, and
a moderate to severe hearing loss in his right ear. He wears 2
hearing aids.

He has always complained that certain loud sounds are physically
painful in his ears, particularly high pitched ones. It usually
comes up in the context of one of his younger sisters shouting or
screaming near him, especially when they do it in the car (a
practice we discourage but can't always prevent). He has
complained about it, but it is not the kind of thing that happens
often, nor has it prevented him from doing anything he wanted to
do, until now.

We took him to see a football game last weekend, an occasion
where 110,000 people all get together and scream as loud as they
can at the same time. We lasted about ten minutes and finally had
to leave the game because he was so miserable. What's going on
with his ears?"

This experience of your son's hearing distress is not weird at
all. Actually it is very common in people with sensorineural
hearing losses such as your son has.

What is happening is that he is suffering from recruitment. With
recruitment, as the sound level increases certain frequencies of
normal sounds all of a sudden become much too loud and hurt.

Note that the physical volume of this sound typically isn't
damaging to a person's ears (apart from the roar at the football
game)—so it will not cause more hearing loss, but it does cause
pain, and in some people, tinnitus. Both of these sensations are
generated in the brain, so think of it as the brain's psychological
response to a real stimulus.

There are three things you can do if you have severe recruitment.

One (and I do this all the time since I have severe recruitment)
is to yank your hearing aids out when recruiting sounds occur (or
just turn them off). In my case, I find that almost no sounds
recruit if I am not wearing my hearing aids. Therefore, in noisy
situations, I just leave my hearing aids in my pocket. Then I can
enjoy whatever activity is going on. Your son may want to try
this and see if it works for him also.

Two is to get his hearing aids adjusted properly so they won't
recruit. The problem is that few audiologists really understand
recruitment so don't adjust hearing aids properly for it. Just to
prove a point, in all my 55 years of wearing hearing aids, I've
never had an audiologist test me properly for recruitment except
the last one--and this was at my specific request.

The proper way to test for recruitment is to use the audiometer
and test each individual test frequency. To do this, the
audiologist keeps turning the volume up for that tone until you
wince or jump, your eyes blink or you otherwise react to the
sound. After the audiologist does this for all test frequencies,
then you will know exactly which frequencies cause recruitment.

The next step is to properly adjust his hearing aids. The
audiologist needs to set the compression on the bands that cover
those recruiting frequencies such that the sound can never come
close to, or exceed, the recruiting volumes. When this is done,
he won't have much of a problem with recruitment anymore. (Note
that a few people have such severe recruitment that it is beyond
the hearing aid's capability to control it.)

Three, avoid sounds that you know will recruit. This doesn't just
have to be the 100,000 screaming fans in the stands. For example,
just setting a glass on the table will hurt me because it sounds
so loud with hearing aids on. To a person with normal hearing it
is just a quiet "thunk" or "clink." To me it has always been a very
sharp painful sound when I am wearing my hearing aids. Without
them on, I hardly hear it either. With my new hearing aids
adjusted specifically to control recruitment, I can finally
almost stand this sound! (In my case, if I have the hearing aids
properly adjusted to control my recruitment, then it degrades
speech so much I don't understand much of what I am hearing—so I
tread the fine line between understanding speech and controlling
recruitment.)

If your hard of hearing child complains of sounds being too loud
(and you know they are not), take his complaint seriously. Your
child has recruitment and these sounds are painful to him.

You can read more about recruitment here.

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2. Beware of (Ototoxic) Drugs That Can Damage Your Ears
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Gentamicin and Balance Problems

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.


More often than I care to remember, I receive correspondence from
people whose ears have been seriously and permanently damaged
from blindly taking the ototoxic drugs prescribed by their
doctors. Doctors are not infallible and do make mistakes.
Furthermore, there are good doctors and bad doctors as the
following story attests.

A lady wrote: "My sister suffered permanent vestibular damage
from taking Gentamicin eye drops prescribed off-label for use in
the ear (as a preventative for infection!). My sister, an RN,
questioned the doctor repeatedly at the time he prescribed the
Gentamicin, especially about the wisdom of using ophthalmic drops
in the ear, and he replied reassuringly that 'all those membranes
are the same'.

She told him about the large hole in her eardrum. In fact, she
gave him a complete and comprehensive history (a result of her
training as a nurse). She had had an ear tube put in her eardrum
which had somehow fallen into the middle ear. The repeated
attempts to retrieve the tube had caused a large irregular tear
in the eardrum, which is why her doctor had then inserted the
largest Richard's T-tube. That ill-fitting tube then caused a
small blood blister, which is why the on-call doctor over the
phone prescribed the Gentamicin (as a preventive measure) without
even seeing her. But there was no infection, thus no need for
antibiotics.

I'm sure he just didn't know any better, although certainly the
Gentamicin was a tragic mistake on his part. Just proves the
amount of ignorance out there.

As a result of taking the Gentamicin, my sister now has
vestibular damage, nystagmus, and oscillopsia. She experiences
all the gamut of symptoms you mention—the vertigo, dizziness,
nausea, vomiting, and the ataxic gait. She even experiences motor
function shut-down, and a loss of consciousness when in an
environment that becomes too challenging for her brain—to much
visual stimuli.

Furthermore, the fear of the unknown is overwhelming when doctors
are unable to explain what is occurring, and are even denying the
obvious—both the problems and their cause.

I cannot begin to thank you enough for your article (Protect Your
Balance System—or Else, 2003). We only recently came across it.
If only we had had your article several years ago to explain what
was happening at the time.

What I find even more appalling is the arrogance which we have
witnessed first-hand. We even went to the President of the [name
of state omitted] Ear, Nose and Throat Foundation for testing and
help, and he simply denied that Gentamicin could have caused her
vestibular damage, even bragging about having testified against a
woman in a Gentamicin lawsuit.

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4. Tips for Successfully Coping with Hearing Loss
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Wireless Routers and Hearing Aid Interference

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man explained: "I am about to replace my dial up Internet
connection with a broadband one and wireless connectivity would
seem preferable to wired via USB or Ethernet for many reasons.

However I have been wondering whether the wireless signal could
in any way interfere with my wife's digital aids. She has enough
problems with them anyway, and additional interference would not
be welcomed!

Hopefully my concern is unjustified, but if not, I would be very
grateful for your comments."

First, I want to commend you for being so concerned about your
wife's hearing. Not all husbands are so understanding.

Now for the good news—I don't think your wife will have any
problems with wireless routers. My digital hearing aids don't
pick up a thing from my wireless routers. I think it would be
highly unlikely for any hearing aids to pick up interference from
wireless routers.

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5. Subscriber-only Special
==================================================

As is our custom, with each issue of Hearing Loss Help eZine we
bring you a subscriber-only special that is only available to
you, our loyal subscribers.

This issue's special is for the eBook version of Grieving for
Your Hearing Loss—The Rocky Road from Denial to Acceptance.

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health. This book leads you through the process of dealing with
the grief and pain you experience as a result of your hearing
loss. It explains what you are going through each step of the
way. It gives you hope when you are in the depths of despair and
depression. It shows you how you can lead a happy vibrant life
again in spite of your hearing loss. 'Grieving for your Hearing
Loss' has helped many successfully adjust to their hearing losses
(37 pages).

Take advantage of this special, This eBook version (identical in
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Take advantage of this special offer now while you are thinking
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To take advantage of this special offer, you must click on the special
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Here is your special link.

==================================================
6. Information on Hearing Aids, Cochlear Implants and/or
    Assistive Devices
==================================================

Batteryless Flashlights and Cochlear Implants

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.


A warning recently circulated around some of the Cochlear Implant
(CI) lists that read:

"Attention Cochlear Implant users—you should never use the
flashlight that never needs batteries, just shake it. Also, it
never needs bulbs, is waterproof and floats in water.
Single/double super coils create the charge with every shake. The
problem is that there is a magnet in it that can erase the maps
from a cochlear implant or corrupt computer hard drives. Please
pass the word, better to be safe than sorry."

So often the "warnings" that you receive via email are just not
true. Someone "thinks" something could happen and warns everyone
else—all without a shred of evidence that there is any real
problem. This is what has happened in this case. (In addition,
there are the many malicious emails whose only purpose is to
deliberately scare you silly, but this isn't one of them.)

So what is the truth about these batteryless flashlights? Are
they really capable of wiping out the programs in CIs and
corrupting hard drives? I decided to find out.

You see, I have one of these very flashlights sitting on my desk
where it has been for a number of months without causing any harm
to my computer. I decided to try and see if it could deliberately
wipe out data on a floppy disk. I put some files on a floppy
disc, then held the disk as close to the magnet in the flashlight
as possible for a minute and then tested it in my computer. Still
good. Then I held it against the flashlight and shook the
flashlight for a couple of minutes and tried it again. Still
good.

Note: since the magnet is in the center of the flashlight handle,
the closest it can come to any disc or CI is just over half an
inch. Also, note that the CI has a magnet of its own to hold it
on your head, and this magnet has not been implicated in wiping
out CI programs.

Based on my brief tests, I can see no problem with using this
flashlight for casual use, even if you have a CI. Now if you
taped the processor to the flashlight as close as you can get to
the magnet and left it there for a couple of months, who knows
what might happen—but is anyone ever going to do that in real
life?

As for the hard drives on your computer, you couldn't get the
flashlight as close to them as I did to the floppy and no harm
came to the floppy. Thus, I think this flashlight is perfectly
safe in normal use.

Notice that according to this article, this flashlight never has
actually wiped out CI programs. The author was just warning it
could happen. And that might be true—that it could happen,
although from my testing, the chances are very remote—you'd have
to deliberately try to make it happen, and even then, there are
no guarantees you could ever make it happen.

This "warning" is similar to the warning a doctor gave to a hard
of hearing customer of mine (and patient of his) who had a heart
pacemaker. He told this person that he couldn't use a PockeTalker
to help him hear better as it could interfere with his pacemaker
and kill him, but didn't say anything about carrying a small
radio, iPod or DVD player that use basically the same electronics
and thus would be just as "dangerous."

I'll bet the doctor didn't even know what a PockeTalker was.
Besides, there are no known occurrences of this ever happening.
This pseudo-professional warning was just harming the patient who
needed an assistive listening device (ALD) in order to hear
better. Therefore, just because some of the stuff floating around
the Internet seems to come from an authoritative source doesn't
make it true. Take these warnings with a grain of salt until you
see them proven to be true.