Vertigo, what is it?

Vertigo is a hallucination of movement,arising from problems within the vestibular portion of the inner ear.
The world spins about the patient, or the patient feels there is moving in space.
Dizziness is a giddy or swimming  sensation ,and is not vertigo.
Any disorder, tumor, infection or trauma causing a unilateral decrease in vestibular function may cause vertigo.

Hearing loss, is it a volume problem?

Anyone who is not familiar with hearing loss assumes that it is like turning the volume on a radio lower and lower until,you have difficulty understanding the words, or cannot hear at all.
Hearing loss is far more subtle than that.
A person with hearing loss usually has a different amount of loss at each frequency across a range of hearing. For example, a person may have normal hearing in the lower frequencies,  a moderate hearing loss in the middle frequencies and a severe loss in the high frequencies.
In relation to hearing aids,and in order to understand speech better, the person wants the low frequencies unchanged,the middle frequencies a little louder, and the high frequencies very loud.
Increasing the volume of the radio makes all the frequencies louder. The volume is so loud in the lower frequencies,where the hearing is normal, that it becomes intolerable. Louder does not mean clearer in relation to frequencies unless the frequencies are properly balanced.

Rock & Pop Musicians And noise.

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 audiometer 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.

What is swimmers ear?

Swimming and surfing is generally a quiet sport – but it can damage your hearing. It’s the exposure to water that causes the problems.

Swimmer’s ear or Otitis Externa is an infection of the ear canal when too much moisture irritates and breaks down the skin in the canal.

Symptoms include earache, itching or redness in the canal, hearing problems and sometimes an unpleasant smelling discharge.

If you are still having difficulty after you finish the treatment your doctor has prescribed, talk about a referral to a specialist. Water can be a problem in many peoples' ears. If drying your ears after swimming does not provide enough relief, you might want to consider swim plugs. These are custom made plugs just for your ears that would keep the water out.

Many people use them and find them comfortable and effective for keeping ears dry. Ear infections (swimmers ear) will vary in severity and duration. Your doctor is the best person to assess your particular problem and the correct treatment. Most ear infections do not cause permanent damage as long as they are treated in a timely fashion.

Should you use cotton swabs to clean your ears?

When you clean your ears with a cotton swab, you risk damaging your ear drum if the swab goes too far into the ear. A study shows, that more than half of the people who visit ear, throat and nose specialists confess to using cotton swabs to clean their ears. 

A ruptured eardrum, also known as tympanic membrane perforations (TMP), is a tear in the tympanic membrane, which separates the outer ear from the inner ear. A ruptured eardrum may be accompanied by sharp ear pain, an earache, ear drainage, ear ringing or buzzing, dizziness or hearing loss. In severe cases, vertigo and facial paralysis can occur. 

A ruptured eardrum can lead to discomfort, and even though the study showed that most cases healed on their own within two months, surgery can in some cases be required. 

There are many alternatives to clean your ears without damaging them,

For example,

1.Cordless ear wax cleaner safely and easily suctions out wax.

2.Ear candling.

3.Earwax removal aid. 

4.Lighted Ear Wax.

Can a hearing aid help a profoundly deaf person?

A profoundly deaf person does not rely on hearing for communication. The hearing aid cannot compensate for the level of hearing impairment. A hearing aid maintains contact with the hearing environment and allows the patient an awareness of what is going on around them, using auditory clues.

Why do most people dislike loud noise?

Most people do not like loud noise. Some people have particularly sensitive ears, they cannot bear ordinary levels of noise.
Hyper sensitive hearing is most commonly associated with hearing loss.Have you noticed how some older people ask you to speak up a bit. After a while they may ask you to stop shouting or they may say "I'm not deaf".


Loudness discomfort is typically a problem for people that suffer from a sensorinueral hearing loss (A sensorineural hearing loss is caused by damage or a disorder of the inner ear, or of the auditory nerve, nerve fibres going from the inner ear to the brain stem).


However this is not a problem who suffer from a conductive hearing loss(A conductive hearing loss involves the breakdown or obstruction of some part of the external or middle ear which transmits or conducts the physical vibrations of sound through air, bone or tissue.)


As we age, the number of hair cells and nerve fibres that are responsible for picking up in the inner ear is reduced.The ability to grade different intensities of sound is reduced. How do we compensate for this? 
Our brain will "switch on " all remaining nerve fibres to produce almost maximum loudness. As a result, even quite moderate sounds may seem to be unbearably loud.


The dynamic range is narrowed or reduced in the ears: If sounds are heard at all, they are heard as loud noises.


When a person suffers from hearing loss and needs to use hearing instruments, the hearing instruments should not overload the ear with amplified sound. To overcome this, many hearing instruments have "peak clipping". Another more sophisticated form of compression is known as automatic volume control.


Some recent research has shown that in some cases the use of white noise applied to the ear by a white noise generator masker can help.