Chronicles of a deaf Audiologist
Rehabilitation beyond hearing aids and cochlear implants: lipreading instruction, brain/auditory training and communication strategies.
Success for Hearing Better
HEARa is dedicated to the idea that people need the right information, at the right times, to be successful with hearing loss. HEARa’s mission is to reach out to adults with hearing loss and say—keep going. Learning about your hearing loss should be a lifelong process.
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From the chronicles
Dear 16 year Old Me: What I Would Tell My Younger Self About Hearing Loss
Did you see the YouTube video clip “Dear 16 Year Old Me,” about skin cancer awareness? To date, it has over 10,500,000 views (as of July 2022). It makes people think: What would I tell my younger self? The first thing that comes to mind for me is–don’t worry about being taller than all the […]
I Don’t Have Hearing Aids. Will Auditory Training Help Me?
In a word, yes. In fact, I would argue that auditory training is even more important for you than for someone who has hearing aids. Anyone who has difficulty communicating or listening will benefit from auditory training. As we get older, there are key changes in our brain, that affect our ability to hear in […]
Adjusting to Hearing Loss
Six Things to Consider Hearing loss due to age has a subtle beginning. Day by day, the difference is hardly noticeable. Over a period of years, though, there’s a significant change. How do you adjust? How do people around you adjust? Researchers at the University of Montréal say that you, and the people around […]
Small Improvements Lead to Exceptional Results
Just finished reading The Secret Letters of the Monk who Sold his Ferrari—a reflection on happiness and leading a remarkable life. Sharma talks about small daily progress. He writes, “The truly wise recognize that small daily improvements always lead to exceptional results over time.” This applies to living a remarkable life, but also to living […]
Happier Relationships
How a Hearing Care Professional Can Help In couples, if one partner develops hearing loss, there’s always a chance that the other partner will misinterpret a failure to hear. Sometimes the explanation for hearing incorrectly is hearing loss; sometimes it is lack of attention and lack of care. What is the reason, most of […]
Technology Rocks!
People with hearing loss who have ineffective communication strategies (such as pretending to understand) are more likely to be lonely and introverted. This has been proven in adults with profound hearing loss. I’ve often wondered if this also applied to people with milder hearing loss. Then I read an interview with Peter Stelmacovich, an audiologist, […]
Multi-tasking, Listening, and Auditory Training
Are we Digital Dummies? is an eye-opening documentary that points out the very real dangers of multi-tasking. In October, 2009, on a flight from San Diego, two Northwest airline pilots overshot the Minneapolis airport by 240 kilometres. They were on their laptops scheduling their hours as the plane flew past its destination! Passengers and the […]
Customer Service Stories: What Are Yours?
Mr. Dan Fleisch, a physics professor at Wittenberg University, travelled over 600 miles to hand-deliver a copy of his book. He wanted his customer to get it in time for Christmas. While reading reviews of his book, “A Student’s Guide to Maxwell’s Equations,” on Amazon.com on Christmas Eve, he discovered that Michel Cuhaci’s copy of […]
Sir Winston Churchill Was More Open About Depression Than Hearing Loss
Mr. Chartwell, a book by Rebecca Hunt, was listed on the prestigious Top 100 books by the Globe and Mail for 2011. I picked it for my holiday reading list. Mr. Chartwell is actually the Black Dog, which is how Sir Winston Churchill referred to his depression. In Hunt’s novel, Churchill’s Black Dog is also […]
Musicians Offset The Effects of Aging
It is challenging to have a conversation with noise in the background. For anyone. It is more challenging as we age—even for people with normal hearing. A research study conducted by scientists at Northwestern University asked the following question: do musicians who are older adults have an advantage? Does musical experience offset the effects of […]