Category: Hearing Loss

Learning that your hearing health is excellent may make you smile, but did you know that your oral health can actually influence your ability to hear? Tooth decay and gum disease are caused by pathogenic bacteria, which can enter the bloodstream and threaten a person’s overall health.

While hearing loss can make you feel alone in the world, many people understand exactly what you’re going through – about 20 percent of Americans report some degree of hearing loss. Although you experience it alone, your hearing loss can affect all of your relationships. At Sound Relief we have found that when someone in the family has hearing loss, the whole family has a hearing problem. Don’t underestimate the impact of hearing loss on your spouse or partner. Oftentimes, both halves of a couple will report frustration, a sense of isolation, and resentment toward their partner when hearing loss is left untreated. These negative ramifications can also occur when one half of a couple suffers from tinnitus or ringing ... Read more

There are more than 600 prescription and over-the-counter drugs that can trigger tinnitus, make existing tinnitus worse, or cause a new tinnitus sound to appear. In fact, most drug classes have tinnitus-causing drugs sprinkled throughout. For example, antibiotics, painkillers, anti-anxiety, and anti-depression drugs, antimalarial medications, anti-cancer drugs, and blood pressure-controlling medications – to name a few – can all trigger tinnitus.

Ears come in pairs. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that hearing conditions come in twos as well. When it comes to single-sided deafness (SSD), that’s a good thing. SSD, also referred to as “dead ear,” is a condition in which a person has lost total hearing in one ear. In the other ear, the person may have anywhere from normal hearing to severe hearing loss. Treatment options for single-sided deafness often involve using your “good” ear to help correct the “dead” ear.

Stem cells have an extraordinary power: the ability to divide for indefinite periods in culture and to give rise to specialized cells. Countless research studies have focused on stem cells and the many conditions that could potentially be treated using them, which has led audiologists to wonder about the relationship between stem cells and hearing loss. Do stem cells hold the key to a cure for hearing loss or tinnitus?

Hearing loss is completely natural, especially as we age. Unfortunately, in our society, there’s also a stigma attached to hearing loss, perpetrated by advertisers, the public, and even those with hearing loss themselves.