Starkey Hearing Convention

The Starkey Hearing Foundation held a HUGE hearing aid convention in Las Vegas, Nevada between January 5th-7th at the new Cosmopolitan hotel. This was the biggest convention Starkey has ever put on with 2800 people attending and 400 workers to help make the convention happen! There was approximately 25 different speakers over the 3 day event who spoke on subjects ranging from entrepreneurial mindsets, small business must-haves, and the art of body language to giving back to the community and a world in need.

We had the privilage to see some great people speak. Sir Richard Branson did an interview with a CNN news anchor telling about his rise to the top to own over 200 companies world-wide and how he made it all happen. For those of you who do not know who Sir Richard Branson is, he is the owner of Virgin Mobile, Virgin United Airways, as well as any other company with the name Virgin. He is currently involved in making space travel available to the public (for a hefty price).
Branson gave detail about how you must see a need of people and cater to that need in order to be successful. You must be willing to generate new ideas and be willing to take risk in order to fulfill your dreams. A sense of passion is key to success, the ability to care about people and care about what you offer to those people should be a priority.

We also had the fortune of witnessing former President Bill Clinton do a speech on his growing work with Africa and other countries to get medicine to the sick and has recieved donations from over 25 countries for his companies. Just being in the presence of a former President was something else. The work he has gone on to do with many countries shows that we can all contribute and help in some way or another. It is the drive and attitude that you must have that prevails us to accomplish great things, but no one can do it alone.

Hearing Aid Misconceptions

Today, most hearing aids are technological designs that greatly help with hearing, can be comfortable to wear, are reasonably priced and some are even almost invisible to the naked eye.

Some common misconceptions involving hearing aids are:

Hearing aids do not work and do not help. This is WRONG. Modern hearing aids are highly sophisticated intruments which use the latest in technology. The majority of people who use hearing aids find them very useful and could not imagine going back to their life without them. Hearing Aids will not restore or repair your hearing, but they will increase the amount of sound that travels into your inner ear thus making you hear easier and more clearly.

Hearing aids are ugly, big, and unsightly. This again is untrue. Most hearing aids today are barely, if at all, visible to the naked eye. They are small, discrete and even fashionable.

Hearing aids are uncomfortable to wear. Sometimes at first (just like almost anything) hearing aids can become irritating because you are not use to having something in your ear. However, after a few days of wearing them and the benefits of wearing hearing aids becomes clear, you will forget you are even wearing hearing aids.

If I had hearing loss my Physician would have told me. This is untrue because most Physicians do not screen for hearing loss unless you ask them to. Usually you are examined in an extremely quiet office so your hearing loss might not be easily detected by your Doctor.

These are just some of the more common hearing aid misconceptions. As you can see people have a very distorted view on hearing aids and do not realize how beneficial and helpful they can be for you. If you think you or someone you know might have some form of hearing loss great or small please talk to them and ask them to go get tested.

Sound VS Sight

The debate on the most important of the 5 senses changes from person to person. However, it usually changes between sight and sound. So which one is truly the most important of the 5 senses?

The definition of sight is the ability to interpret information and surroundings from the effects or visual light eaching the eye. People believe we think in pictures and learn from sight. Picture yourself having your son or daughter getting married and looking at a baby picture of them you have not looked at in years, your mind will eventually run through all kinds of memories and emotions from this picture. This causes people to believe we think in pictures.

The definition of hearing is the ability to preceive sound by detecting vibrations through an organ such as the ear. Hearing is the other half of the battle for the most important of the 5 senses. Hearing keeps us in touch with people. If you were not able to hear, people would not be able to communicate and would lose their social life. With the loss of hearing your brain would, in a sense, train you to unlearn speech as you could not hear yourself speak.

As you can see both of these senses are very important and without one of them life can get much harder. So how can you determine which is the most important? They are both equally important and should both be looked after, but most people neglect their hearing. If you eyes were getting blurry would you hold off from seeking help? No, you probably wouldn’t so why not seek help for your fuzzy hearing?

Reconnect with People

One reason we strive to please all our customers is the simple fact we do not want anyone to feel left out in a group or social function. Hearing loss can give people the feeling of isolation. People with hearing loss do not communicate well with others because they just cannot hear them. At Innovative Hearing Solutions we will do anything we can do reconnect you with the people you love and the people in your life. We Guarantee it!

Healthy Hearing, Summer 2011

Healthy Hearing, Vol. 2, Issue 4 (0)
Click to download our quarterly newsletter, enjoy!

Ear Therapy

What if you could touch a single point of your ear and make your craving for food, nicotine, alcohol or anything else disappear? What if by touching a part of your ear you could lower blood pressure or reduce fever, inflammation or swelling? This might sound unbelieveable but BELIEVE IT! This science is called Auriculotherapy. The core principles of this therapy is that every point of the outer ear corresponds to, and is associated with, a specific part of the human anatomy.
Many people have chosen auriculotherapy as their treatment of choice for eliminating addicting behaviours including alcohol and drug abuse, attention deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and even gambling.
Auricoltherapy is very similiar to ear acupuncture but instead of needles, a microcurrent stimulator is place on reflex points on the outer ear that then send a message to the brain based on the location of the stimulation.
You can learn how to indentify the reflex points on the outer ear and their therapeutic effect on the body and do-it-yourself at home!

 Check out this Link: http://www.1minutecure.com/Auriculotherapy.AgingBackwards.07.12.11.html

Memory and Hearing Loss

You can’t remember what you can’t hear!

Hearing loss and memory loss are common in Boomers and both can look the same to an outside observer. For example, research has shown that people with mild to moderate hearing loss might spend so much energy trying to understand what is being said that their ability to remember the conversation suffers as a result.

There are very gradual and subtle effects of hearing loss on memory and cognitive functions. However, the strategies for treating hearing loss and memory loss are quite different.

When considering some of the symptoms Alzheimer’s Disease and untreated hearing loss, the correlation is obvious:

Hearing loss up 26% for Boomers

Those of us born between 1946 and 1964, aka baby boomers, have been the most studied generation ever. And the surveys continue as boomers move toward retirement and those long-sought golden years. Every 63 seconds, another baby boomer over 50 will have difficulty hearing this sentence read aloud. People don’t hesitate to turn to eyeglasses for better vision, but the tendency is to take hearing loss less seriously. What’s even more odd is how a tired social stigma of wearing hearing aids or hearing loss still prevails over improved hearing and lifestyle.

Hearing problems have shot up 26 percent among people ages 46 to 64 since the 1970’s. Many people say they are embarrassed about the loss of hearing and the need to wear hearing aids. Even when someone knows that something is wrong, it can take years before he or she finally seeks a proper diagnosis and then opts for treatment. One such recently-released survey, conducted by Energizer® (makers of batteries including hearing aid batteries), indicates that those between the ages of 50 and 70 have apparent contradictory views on hearing loss… In fact, the disconnect is somewhat startling: 67.1% of respondents said they were concerned about hearing loss, however, only 30% felt it was important to actually visit a hearing health professional for a hearing test. Only 11.5% of those surveyed indicated that they’d been screened for hearing loss within the past 12 months. Therefore, 88.5% of boomers are overdue for a hearing check-up. Now, what would Mom say? 

A Tale of Two Sisters

It was a typical blustery grey, November afternoon here in Fredericton when a long term client came in to see me. I didn’t think she had an appointment, so I was surprised when I saw her standing at the front desk, shaking off the November cold from her overcoat.

I was a little concerned, because in the 2 years since getting her hearing evaluation and eventually being fitted with her hearing aids; her life had completely been transformed.

Every time she’d come in for her scheduled adjustment, she would tell me about how she so loved talking with her grandchildren on the phone, hearing their giggles and their soft voices saying “ we love you Nana”.

But this visit wasn’t for herself.

You see, about 3 years earlier, both she and her sister had been diagnosed with the exact same type of hearing loss. The problem was that, even though they had the same type of hearing aids, her sister was still un-able to get the same results that she was getting.

Numerous visits over the next few months revealed a common problem I see all the time.

You see, everyone’s hearing loss is different. And even though the two sisters had the exact type of hearing loss, on paper, the remedy for that loss was totally different based on their individual life styles. We fitted her sister with a completely different technology and today she couldn’t be happier.

I look forward to meeting you soon,

Sincerely,
Cheryl Morehouse

Patience and Endurance

A natural part of the aging process is that our hearing worsens as we get older. The loss is so gradual that it may go unnoticed.

The person with the hearing loss and even the family members learn to adapt their behaviour without even realizing it. They speak louder, turn the TV volume up or repeat parts of the conversation. People start giving excuses to cover up the hearing loss, such as saying people mumble or don’t speak clearly.

People in general do not have much patience for the people that ask them to repeat things over and over. Most of us, by the third time, have become a little short with the person that has asked.

Although our short-term patience wears thin, our compassion and long-term endurancetakes over. Most of us have a great deal of endurance because we tolerate hearing loss in our loved ones for an average of 7 years before we finally convince them to get the help they need.

We Sometimes Forget How Important Hearing Is

Coming from a family of hearing loss included a profoundly deaf brother I know all too well what it is like to be at a family function or an event where people cannot hear. One of the most common first complaints is that people notice that they cannot hear in background noise. I see people at social gatherings sit in a corner with a grin on their face and cannot participate in any conversation as they cannot hear so they feel isolated and pretty soon will not bother to go to functions any more as it becomes too hard or embarrassing for them.

Children get frustrated and won’t speak with the older folks that cannot hear them as they find it takes too much energy and no matter how they say it their words will not be understood.

People are raising their voices at each other because if they have hearing loss they usually cannot gauge how loud they are speaking to one another.

Someone says where are your hearing aids and they point to their pocket and they have taken them off as they have not gotten used to the back ground noise yet and say everyone sound like a bunch of bumbling bees.

I think sometimes we forget how important our hearing is to our quality of life. Hearing loss makes people feel isolated and left out, anxious and depressed.