Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT)

http://www.all-about-the-human-ear.com/The beat form of tinnitus treatment involves counselling, masking and relaxation. The brain naturally habituates to sounds that are unimportant, i.e. clock ticking. Tinnitus retraining therapy combines counselling, and habituation to reduce the fear of tinnitus.
This involves the use of a tinnitus masker and the patient is able to reduce the intensity of the tinnitus, by reducing the volume of the masking noise. If this situation happens, the patient is now in control of the tinnitus (this process involves lengthy rehabilitation, but results are proving to be successful).

Other useful advice to tinnitus sufferers

• Decrease caffeine levels and alcohol intake (reduces ototoxic effects)
• Monitor effect of diet (low salt diet recommended)
• Alternative therapies-acupuncture, homeopathy, Chinese medicines, and music sound therapy.(good as a pleasant distraction)
• Attend a health authority tinnitus clinic.
• Cognitive behaviour modification- therapy used to adjust people's reaction towards their tinnitus.
• Refocus therapy- many sufferers focus on their tinnitus for much of the day and the more they think about it the worse it gets. Therapists are used to focus attention on other areas  of the patient's life.
• RNID (Royal National Institute For The Deaf) Tinnitus helpline
• British Tinnitus Association

Hearing Protection Is Better Than Cure!

http://www.all-about-the-human-ear.com/Earplugs - How to protect your ears from noise

The best defense against noise-induced hearing loss is to stay out of hazardous noise areas. But when spending any amount of time in a noisy environment, use hearing protection devices. When used correctly, Hearing protection devices (HPDs) help prevent hearing loss. And always remember, that the discomfort of wearing them, if any, is nothing compared to the permanent effects and discomfort of a hearing impairment or a worsened hearing loss.

Using earplugs or earmuffs can be effective measures to protect your hearing in noisy environments at work or at play. In addition, handcrafted custom-fitted ear molds with filters are available, often at considerable cost, but well worth the price for those who wear hearing protection frequently.

Custom-fitted ear mould are formable foam earplugs that are often used in work places. The formable foam earplugs will serve most occasional users well, but if not inserted correctly, they may be less than ideal. Earmuffs may, at times, be hot and uncomfortable. And for any hearing protection to serve their purpose, periodical removal in the noisy environment may reduce their preventive effect significantly. For these reasons, new types of custom-fitted ear molds with filters that protect your hearing while allowing you to hear speech and warning signals have been developed.

Despite their higher cost, they have been adopted eagerly in many workplaces, because they are comfortable to wear for extended periods of time. However, according to the American Society of Safety Engineers there has been some dispute in the past as to their efficacy as claimed by their manufacturers, but significant improvements in design and manufacture have improved the performance of the most recent models to high levels.

Assistive Listening Devices

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The most popular television assistive listening systems now on the market are infrared systems. The transmitter (emitter) is placed on the television to pick up sound. Some systems provide an external microphone that can be positioned on the t.v. speaker.All systems provide the choice of plugging an audio cable directly into the audio output jack on the t.v.. This is the preferred method to obtain the cleanest signal possible.
Most systems use an under the chin style, or stethoscope style receiver and require that the hearing aids be removed. Some receivers have one or two buttons to adjust under the chin. One receiver has a large, wide wheel to turn and can be easy to use for people with limited dexterity.Other systems have either a headphone style receiver or the ability to use a neck loop to interface with hearing aid telecoils.

Being A Musician,.There are dangers from....Noise Induced Hearing Loss ......

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Rock and pop musicians are at risk of having noise induced hearing loss the same way industrial workers do. Loss of hearing may be considered an occupational injury among musicians. A Spanish study among 60 young musicians and 60 youngsters in the control group with an average age of 26 years found a connection between being a musician and suffering from noise induced hearing loss.

More symptoms of NIHL were found among the musicians. At 4,000 Hz frequency, or high pitched sounds, the audiometry showed significant differences between musicians and non-musicians. Although young musicians did not suffer from hearing loss at the time of the study, almost 7 percent already suffered from permanent tinnitus, and 17 percent had experienced temporary ringing sounds in their ears.

Researchers concluded that NIHL may develop over the years in musicians. Also, they suggested that some instruments, such as electric guitars and drums may affect hearing more than others, but further research should be done on this subject.

Hearing protection and taking breaks from the loud music will make a difference for professional musicians.

Lip Reading and the use of visual clues

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Lip reading or more accurately speech reading, since it includes facial gesture and body language, is a great help to the hearing impaired in making sense of speech. Lip reading is not sufficient on its own but together with the additional visual information available, even with impaired hearing, speech is much easier to understand.

Most of us lip-read to some extent in difficult listening situations and this can be a most useful adjunct to hearing aid use. Even with normal hearing a person will look at a speaker whenever possible to assist the communication process. In noisy surroundings, there may be some reliance on mouth movements and facial expressions to increase understanding. Many hearing impaired people acquire great skill without any conscious effort, while others may benefit from lip-reading classes.

Such classes also bring together people with similar problems, which may also be very helpful in an individual’s adjustment to hearing loss.

Many speech sounds cannot be differentiated by the visual pattern alone. Groups of phonemes that look the same when spoken are known as ‘visemes’ *(visemic-visually distinctive) E.g. `p’, `b’ and `m’ are part of the same viseme group, a speech reader could only conclude that one of the group had been spoken.Is is thought that only about 50% of a spoken message can be understood through lip reading alone. Lip- reading classes provides activities to aid development of speech reading. Even when significantly reduced hearing is coupled with speech reading, the listener’s ability to comprehend may be greatly increased.

Lip-reading classes are usually provided through the local education authority. With impaired hearing, there is likely to be some dependence on visual clues. Visual information may through observing visual cues (speech reading) or through a manual communication system (signing or finger spelling). The degree of dependence is related to the degree of hearing impairment. Someone who is profoundly deaf is reliant on visual information, whereas with a mild hearing loss hearing remains a primary communication channel.

What it's like for a deaf person..............

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Quote from a deaf person

"What Hearing people who work with the Deaf think of of music is not what we Deaf think.

We value eyes, hands, motion, and rhythm!

These things are the basic elements of communication, language, and art in Deaf culture.

Voices, instruments, and sound are NOT very important in our culture. Our world is a rich, visual world! It is true that many hard of hearing people love music.

Very few people who are "stone Deaf" enjoy music."

Many of us feel intimidated by those who are different from us. It is often hard for people to feel comfortable around the deaf because it is difficult to communicate with them. It is especially hard for one to do three difficult tasks at once: Feel comfortable with someone deaf, communicate with a deaf person, and ask someone out Deafness is a condition wherein the ability to detect certain frequencies of sound is completely or partially impaired. When applied to humans, the term hearing impaired is rejected by the Deaf Culture movement, where the terms deaf and hard-of-hearing are preferred.

Pre-lingual deafness

Prelingual deafness is hearing impairment that is sustained prior to the acquisition of language, which can occur as a result of a congenital condition or through hearing loss in early infancy. Prelingual deafness impairs an individual's ability to acquire a spoken language, but children born into signing families rarely have delays in language development. Most pre-lingual hearing impairment is acquired via either disease or trauma rather than genetically inherited, so families with deaf children nearly always lack previous experience with sign language.

Post-lingual deafness

Post-lingual deafness is hearing impairment that is sustained after the acquisition of language, which can occur as a result of disease, trauma, or as a side-effect of a medicine. Typically, hearing loss is gradual and often detected by family and friends of affected individuals long before the patients themselves will acknowledge the disability.[citation needed] Common treatments include hearing aids and learning lip reading for deaf people.Post-lingual deafness is far more common than pre-lingual deafness.