Even moderate hearing loss is very odd.
It's not until I stick my hearing aids in that I realise how much I'm missing out on - mostly birdsong, but also little household noises.
My hearing aids sometimes feel like a lot of bother, almost a cruel imposition, but the benefits are immense.

Get your hearing checked - you may not know what you are missing.
The RNID has a very good online screening tool https://rnid.org.uk/information-and-support/take-online-hearing-check/

Cyprus forces re-evaluations for lifelong disabilities, stripping vital benefits, KNEWS https://www.byteseu.com/967252/ #Cyprus #Disability #disabled #HearingLoss

A new article by me about #hearingloss (in German) and cool new #bluetooth tech.

https://digitalcourage.social/@doofeohren/114275512926722438

A contact of mine (from #YACF ) has drawn up a webpage as an attempt to explain a few key things about deafness, hearing aids and 'hearing as a deaf person' in the hope it will help deaf and hearing people understand and communicate better and more kindl

https://barakta.org.uk/deaf_tips.shtml

It includes a lot of extremely useful information and advice - give it a read. You don't know when you'll next meet someone with hearing difficulties.

After finally asking my GP for a hearing assessment just before Christmas I was fitted with 2 hearing aids yesterday. I can’t even begin to tell you how much better I can hear. The difference is amazing. #NHS #HearingAids #HearingLoss

There's a new article by me about #hearingloss.

https://digitalcourage.social/@doofeohren/113854857185205860

I firmly believe #GNOME should add a dictation (speech-to-text) and reader (text-to-speech) capabilities.

If you have some kind of hearing loss, you just go for macOS or Windows.

And it's not that you need to reinvent the wheel. You can load local models that run locally.

One of the bonuses of getting hearing aids for mild/moderate hearing loss is being able to listen to fiction podcasts at any time you want.

Oh, and being able to hear other things, I suppose.

Is there a Thing (app, dongle, hardware device) that would let my kid stream music from their iPhone to a Bluetooth hearing aid in one ear and a regular Bluetooth headphone for the other ear?
Assume neither are airplay compatible.

After falling down various assistive tech audio rabbit holes (ooo music haptics!), I suspect that this is just not A Thing. Prove me wrong!

What's the possible harm in listening to music all the time?

How dangerous a sound is to your hearing depends on 3 things:

The volume of the sound
The length of time you listen
and how close you are to the sound

And if you listen to music while you work, another thing to consider is the kind of music and how it might be distracting you or affecting your ability to multitask.

https://theconversation.com/is-it-bad-to-listen-to-music-all-the-time-heres-how-tunes-can-help-or-harm-233624
#health #music #hearingloss

Paul Simon says that he is "optimistic" about the possibility of touring again after losing most of his hearing in his left ear. The 82-year-old last toured in 2018 but has continued to write new music and recently played alongside two guitarists at a fundraiser for the Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss. Here's more from CNN.

https://flip.it/weX6Ms

Time for a new #Introduction . I’m a Lecturer in #Neuroscience in #London at the #UniversityOfRoehampton . I study #NoiseExposure & #HearingLoss & how it affects #AuditoryProcessing , #Audiology , & #Hearing ; particularly #SpeechInNoise & #PredictiveCoding . I focus on #HiddenHearingLoss noise exposure & I’m really interested in the intersection between noise exposure & #Neurodivergent conditions like #Autism & #Schizophrenia .

My home is a #Boat & most of my pictures here involve my #Cat .

I'm really bad at remembering to use my hearing aids - I forget to stick them in, and then don't bother. This is to the frustration of those around me more than myself.

I'm attempting a new strategy - keeping the little blighters next to my shaving kit.
So far it seems to be working.

However, there are days - particularly when I'm tired anyway - that I find the additional sensory input quite exhausting.

There's an increasing amount of evidence that links poor, uncorrected, hearing to dementia - so I'll stick with it.

BRAS OFF FOR JESUS: Home From Partaking in a Virtual Reality Research Study For Sound Localization Assessment in Individuals With Hearing Loss Edition

‘As you go about your business – shopping, walking, playing a sport, riding a subway – someone may notice that glint of silver behind your ear, or that almost-imperceptible plastic wire entering the pinna…’

And this is when the magic happens. The fact someone can see your hearing aid makes you an advocate for addressing your hearing loss.

#HearingLoss
#Deaf
#HearingAids

https://hearinghealthmatters.org/better-hearing-consumer/2024/when-a-stranger-sees-your-hearing-aid/?

@iangriffin

"A lovely young doctor examined me and said, "You probably have a blocked eustachian tube". I begged to differ. .... Even she had to look it up! So two, relatively young but experienced doctors hadn’t come across this thing that apparently is an emergency!"

[It is a positive that she looked it up BTW!]

I taught physical diagnosis for twenty years at a major university in the US. We older doctors often lamented that good old history and physical exam skills were being lost to the next generation.

Your history was "not normal" for a eustachian tube problem. "...over about a minute, the hearing on my right side faded until I couldn't hear anything at all." A *Red Flag* we would say. Sudden loss of any neurological function is an emergency.

There are easy bedside tests that could have been done to confirm this (see graphic). Did the young docs know them/perform them?! A good review...

https://www.jabfm.org/content/34/1/216.long