Hearing Aids

I have the feeling that you could think of many, many more...

 

No, I still wear them at night and they do help to a certain point. But during the day at work I try not to wear them at all. Sometimes I do wear them at work. They did not get rid of the TINNTIUS BUT THEY DID HELP TO A CERTAIN POINT. Would I do it again and get them. Yes I would. They did help in taking a little bit of the edge off. They are costly. But I really think they were worth it. I pods and Jims tones he put on this Forum was really a big help also.

 

Louise -
Here's an article: "Hearing aid amplification and tinnitus: 2011 Overview"

http://www.audicare.com.br/pdf/Hearing-aid.pdf

There are certain things mentioned in the article which your audiologist should be aware of when fitting/setting a hearing aid:"...for best results, binaural amplifcation with open fittings and the widest possible bandwidth are recommended and interestingly, they suggest noise reduction should be disabled, so as to allow background and inconsequential noise to enter the auditory system..."

Reading this stuff, even audiologists use imprecise terms that infuriate me!:"Tinnitus may be related to a lack of neural inhibition and hearing aid amplification may help the brain's inhibitory function correct itself."

My translation: The superior ollivary complex is causing too strong an efferent nerve signal, which the ear listens to as the tinnitus tone. Hearing aides will balance signals at the superior ollivary complex. In response to more balanced/natural input, the superior ollivary complex decreases (inhibits) the efferent nerve signal, thereby decreasing tinnitus.

As Mike says, it appears that hearing aides seem to at least take the edge off.

 

One thing that is interesting about this website is, we have people from all over the world discussing tinnitus. When I read about people in Britain who can easily get hearing aids, I am jealous. My insurance company does not cover the cost of hearing aids.

In the U.S., we seem to pride ourselves on the quality of our medical services. However, it really sucks that things like tinnitus treatment and hearing aids are not covered by a lot of insurance companies. It's amazing that, despite the fact 27% of people age 64 and older have tinnitus, it is not recognized as something serious enough to insure. It's also amazing that so many older people have hearing loss and need hearing aids, but in the US they must pick-up the entire cost.

My mother is 92 years old, and she has very bad hearing. Several years back, I gave her money to cover a portion of the cost of her hearing aids. I had no idea how costly these things can be, at about $2500 per ear.

This situation in the U.S. just isn't fair. Yet, people in the U.S. fiercely defend how great our medical care is compared to other countries. U.S. politics are really negative, contentious and counter-productive about the Health Care Law. We are greatly divided on that law, which was initially intended to bring down the cost of health care and simplify the system.

 

Well we let everyone into Britain for free medical help Karl - they call them health immigrants. Apparently they aren't asked too many questions. I watched a documentary the other week & it said that more money is spent by the NHS on the health of non UK residents than UK ones. So you could always give it a try!

Seriously though - I really appreciate the NHS. There are media stories about how people cannot get certain drugs or have to wait for treatment but I've never had to wait... sometimes it's too quick!

Most of the people I know do also have private medical cover here too as a back up - mainly with BUPA.

 

Very interesting.

We are in nearing our U.S. Presidential Election in a little over a week. Our country is quite divided on issues, particularly heath care.

As they use to say on Monty Ponthon..."Now for something completely different!": I'm reading a new book by Ken Follet, "Winter of the World". Just came out. It's Part II of his trilogy. Very entertaining, especially about Wales and England. I can't put it down.

 

Wales is very very wet We're lucky here - sort of central south England.. the weather's really good for the UK!

Are they still having the election.. thought it would be postponed because of the hurricane?

 

As far as I know, the election is still on. It will be close one, I predict.

We seem to have a constant Presidential election in the U.S. It runs continuously for four years. The elected President gets about two weeks to do his job, before the other side starts running against him.

I've never been to England. Perhaps some day. The London Olympics were great. Loved the pre-Olympic concert, especially Tom Jones. Olympic Finale was too cool. I still don't know who Jessie J is, but she was all over the place.

 

Seems as daft as our political system. We have three major parties who are all basically the same. Pointless.

Glad you enjoyed he Olympics - I only watched the opening sequence and the tennis so you saw more than me.

I love living in England. Winchester, which is my home town, has parts that just seem to transport you back to the middle ages. I lived for most of my childhood in the mediterranean and, about 6 years ago I tried living in Northern France (hated it!) - took me years to realise just how much I like it here.

Chicago conjures up images of Al Capone & Bugsy Malone to me

 

Hi Pete

New member here with some questions for you.

It's great that you have been able to get get such relief with hearing aids. I'm wondering how high your high frequency loss is. My audiograms are within normal range all the way up to 8000. However who knows, I might have loss at a very high frequency that is not normally tested like 12000 (my tinnitus certainly feels much higher than 8000).

My understanding is that hearing aids will not do anything for you if you have loss over the 8000 level, as the technology to deal with truly high frequency loss does not exist yet. No audiologist has ever suggested hearing aids might help me.

Just wondering if you could shed some light on this based on your experience and how high frequency your hearing loss is.

Cheers

John

 

Thanks for this information!

 

Hi Karl, I actually missed this post and have only just seen it. Its a good article. I am hoping to be tested for hearing aids this Friday. I am just hoping that they dont think my hearing is too close to normal to bother with them (its a 30db loss and their 'normal' limit is 20 - 25).

 

My wife's experience with hearing aids is that the hearing aid amplifies whatever it picks up and causes more problems. You need to get the Tinnitus under control first before you can benefit from using a hearing aid. You might be able to do this using a drug called Carvinton Forte 10mg..I am no doctor so consult your physician before using any drug.

 

I'm afraid that website looks like snake-oil, bordering on predatory with regard to tinnitus sufferers, and won't get a lot of respect here. It doesn't reflect well on your post. :-/

 

I had my first fitting today for hearing aids. I have some hf hearing loss in both ears and wanting to try them out. My initial 20 minute test drive was impressive. Everything was slightly crisper with no harseness. I heard a fellow softly whistling about 20 feet which I don't think I would have heard on my own. I was after aids with the tinnitus sound generator which is supposed to be played not as a masker but quieter than your t in a similar tone. Not all hearing aids have this tone generator. My t was less noticeable with the aids in so I am optimistic this will help. Ps behind the ear with the clear tube that slips over the ear and into the canal was recommended rather than the in the ear canal blocker models.

 

Karl, your explanation is interesting. If that is the mechanism for generating t why does it occur in silence ? During silence there is no complex sound which is dismantled into individual tones, etc, etc. help me out with why t occurs during silence using your explanation.

 

I have just joined Tinnitus talk. I have severe to moderate tinnitus for two years now. Most days are medium to severe in loudness and pitch. My tinnitus has no known cause. I continue to look for a reason in hope of curing myself. I belong to another tinnitus support group and although the people are extremely supportive and kind, it is a great place to get a pat on the back, but not very helpful when in need of information. I am going for consultation with a Audioprothesist this coming Wednesday as it has been suggested by the center that is treating me to try Zen hearing aids by Windex. I just read that one of the people in this group has been using them for two weeks and they have not helped. Can anyone give me some input. I am composing a list of questions for the Audioprothesist.

 

Hi Hope,

A guy on here called Mike has these and seemed quite pleased, although they didnt reduce his T. Here's the post where he talks about them... https://www.tinnitustalk.com/threads/hearing-aids.676/page-4

 

Thank you Louise.

 

Thought this was interesting from a UK NHS website. This is a snippet....


Correcting hearing loss
Any degree of hearing loss you have should be addressed because straining to listen makes tinnitus worse.
Correcting even fairly minor hearing loss means that the parts of the brain involved in hearing do not have to work as hard and, therefore, do not pay as much attention to the tinnitus.
Your specialist will be able to test your hearing and recommend the appropriate treatment for you. This may involve having a hearing aid fitted or having surgery.
Improving your hearing will also mean that sounds you would not otherwise be able to hear will now be audible and may help override the sounds of your tinnitus.
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Tinnitus/Pages/Treatment.aspx

 

Don H-
(Hmmmm........let me think....ok, here goes.)

Our brains are geared toward seeking food and avoiding prey. I think that these fundamental auditory organs are "on guard", vigilantly comparing sounds between the left and right ears. It is a never ceasing activity, making these comparisons - for self protection. This is one of those things we have no control over, just like we can't control our heart beat.

In a quiet room, our brain must be straining to hear something. In a super quiet room, we strain so hard that we hear the "background noise" of our nervous system, I think. This was demonstrated in 1953, in a classic experiment by Heller and Bergman. When they placed people in a super quiet room, 94% of them experienced tinnitus sounds in 5 minutes.

 

When I first read the Jastreboff book, way back in the first few months of my T, I firmly believed that my T began because I had been sleeping in total silence for 3 weeks. Three weeks of sleeping in a granite cottage in a sleepy village in Cornwall after years of sleeping in a bedroom in Hampshire where traffic noise was almost constant.

The book really did seem to be saying that silence can cause tinnitus. As there was no other obvious reason (no stress / drugs / hearing loss / exposure to loud noise etc.) for me.. this seemed to be it.

As the months of gone by & I've re-read the book, I have thought of other possible causes (like anti biotics taken long before the T started) but it is still the only 'thing that happened just before onset' & it would go hand in hand with what you are saying Karl - that -

'In a super quiet room, we strain so hard that we hear the "background noise" of our nervous system'.

 

click -
Perhaps in that quiet environment you created a viscious cycle which you reinforced.

For me, I think I have age related hearing loss. It's very minor. My ear got plugged up from a sinus infection, then "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

Now wonder when I watch "Wheel of Fortune" I cringe everytime someone buys an "e" vowel.

Ah, Cornwall, where pasties were invented - one of my favorite foods! As Markkuu knows, in the Michigan U.P. there are a lot of Finns, who love their pasties.

My daughter will be going to Michigan Tech next year, in the U.P. We will be re-stocking our supply. Pasties could be called "Welsh Burritos". Then again, burritos could be called "Mexican Pasties".

 

A real Cornish pasty has meat at one end and a pudding at the other... my parents and all my ancestors are Cornish. When my son moved down there he said that it was amazing how suddenly the streets were full of people who looked like us (he meant they had olive skin with brown hair rather than any facial feature )

I sold the thick granite walled Cornish cottage and moved back to Hampshire because of the tinnitus. I've been back in Hampshire now nearly 4 months & I've just started planning my move back to Cornwall in May. Hopefully I will be there when my first grandchild is born in June (always thought I'd be in my sixties before that happened - ahh well.. it's ever so exciting).

I was too scared before. It was ruined because of T. I blamed everything - the weather, the humidity, the overhead electrical cables - not surprising really.. I'd spent 3 idyllic weeks there and then 'wham' screaming tinnitus. I had to leave. I was also planning on going up to the Jastreboff clinic in London for TRT... (which is easier from Hampshire than from Cornwall) but I'm not going to now.

Hopefully I won't get panic attacks when I move back (I'm renting down there for 6 months... just in case!).

 

Meat on one end and a puddding on the other? Isn't that kind of ..(I'll need to use a precise American term)...yuckie? Seems like the pudding would get all of mushy.

That area sounds nice. Some of my ancestors were from Wales. I can't imagine an area that is too quiet. There's a book by Ken Follett, the first of a trilogy about that area.

 

They began as a convenient way for the tin miners to take their lunch down the mines - main course and pudding all in a convenient package - pastry. Hopefully there was a dividing wall of pastry between the 2 courses - but I'm not sure if there was! My grandmother used to make them all the time.

I was right next to the Atlantic ocean.. it is beautiful down there but it's also rugged and unspoilt- I just hope it doesn't always remind me of the start of the tinnitus... this is the view round the corner from what was my house.



I think I'm going to stick to the towns from now on.. I'll appreciate the traffic noise!

How did it go with your job search Karl?

Jane

 

Louise,

This is why I'm going to try the Widex AE hearing aids that were cited in the recent research article. (http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0051915) I've read about the LOFT technology, and have no idea why it works. I just hope it does. Apparently, the technology is specific to Widex, but other manufacturers may have a similar technology. Please note I have minor hearing loss (30db) in one high frequency region, but that's it. Everything else is perfect, and the hearing loss is identical for both ears--even though my tinnitus is only in one ear. That said, there's something in my left ear that's off and hopefully a hearing aid would cure it.

I hope your tinnitus is doing better. I did find reference to another epileptic drug (like Gabapentin) that helped a girl on another board. The drug is Mysoline (http://www.rxlist.com/mysoline-drug.htm) It looks like the drug has a lot of side effects, (see the above post) but they should lessen in time. There's a girl on DS who had wicked tinnitus and it helped her. Here's the thread (http://www.dailystrength.org/c/Tinnitus/forum/14868857-mysoline).

I do believe any successful therapy has to be multi-modal, e.g., combining drugs with some type of desensitizing therapy like TRT or cognitive behavioral therapy.

 

click -
This is a beautiful area! Awsome, especially that cliff on the right pic. Reminds me pictures of the cliffs of Dover.

The Ken Follett book I was referring to is "Fall of Giants". It's about Wales and Europe at the turn of the century (1900), during WWI. Couldn't put it down. His second book in the trilogy, "Winter of the World", is also a page turner about WWII.

In engineering terms, that piece is the pastie that acts as a divider is a "diaphragm". (I wonder how much a pastie diaphragm designer makes?) In the U.P. of Michigan, there were a lot of mining towns, with miners eating pasties.

My job search wasn't much of a search. The company that I was with for the past 23 years went into bankrupcy on Friday. Damn stressful day. On Monday, I went to work (thinking I didn't have a job) and I got picked-up by a new company. Lucky, yes, but I lost a whole lot of money invested in my previous firm ($380K). Que sera Que sera.

What was especially interesting; On Friday I was asked to propose a bridge supporting a 20" pipe over a river, spanning 580'. I whipped out a design for a suspension cable structure. Wrote, "Good luck, but I'm out of a job". On Monday, the new firm loved the idea! This will be one of the coolest structures I have ever worked on. Presently I'm studying the aerodynamics of this bridge, so to avoid a Tacomma Narrows resonance situation.

 

Karl

The cliffs of Dover are spectacular seen from the English Channel (in a boat) but Kent is so different from Cornwall - it's basically flat and has a completely different atmosphere. Wales is more similar and, like Cornwall, has Celtic roots - but Cornwall has more sunshine than anywhere in the UK & Wales is very very wet

I am so pleased you didn't have to start looking around for new work - one less pressure for you!

Jane