MPs say urgent action needed to clear backlog. Some people are waiting more than two years for new hearing aids on the NHS in England, an MPs' report has said.

The House of Commons Health Committee said urgent action was needed to clear a backlog of around half a million people waiting for hearing aids.

It added that not enough priority had been given to the supply of new-style digital hearing aids by the government or local Primary Care Trusts.

And the committee said it was ‘surprised’ the authorities failed to anticipate a surge in demand after the introduction of the digital devices, which are far superior to older analogue aids.

Hearing loss

About one in seven people in England - around 7 million in total - are affected by hearing loss.

But the NHS is currently able to supply and fit digital aids to only about 500,000 adults a year, said the report.

It called for extra NHS capacity to clear the backlog and raised concerns over evidence that many NHS-trained audiologists are unable to find jobs.

The committee said that audiology should be added, as soon as possible, to the list of health services covered by the government's target to cut waiting times from referral to treatment to 18 weeks by December 2008.

Digital hearing aids

Dr John Low, Chief Executive of RNID, the charity representing the UK's nine million deaf and hard of hearing people, said: ‘It's a disgrace that audiology has been excluded from the general 18 week waiting time target.

‘No-one should have to wait more than 18 weeks - let alone two years, as in some cases - when digital hearing aids can literally transform their lives.

‘RNID welcomes the committee's call for a maximum 18 week wait to have a hearing aid fitted following RNID's campaign. The Department of Health must act now to achieve this.

‘However the NHS will never reach this target unless capacity within the audiology system is urgently increased, in line with government commitments.’

Article courtesy of Hear It.

If you have tinnitus, a hearing aid may help you, according to hearing specialists. Hearing aids may reduce the stress of bad hearing and offer sound therapy.
Hearing aids are likely to make you feel better about your tinnitus. According to hearing health specialists in the United States, six in 10 tinnitus patients report that they experience some degree of relief when wearing hearing aids, and a total of one in five (22 percent) receive major relief.
These were among the findings of a survey conducted by the Better Hearing Institute among 230 hearing specialists in North America.
The researchers behind the survey mention two reasons why hearing aids may alleviate tinnitus.
First, tinnitus is almost always accompanied by hearing loss. People with untreated hearing loss often find communicating stressful. When using hearing aids, they increase their ability to communicate. This reduces their stress level, leaving them better able to cope with their tinnitus.
Second, hearing aids may offer a kind of sound therapy. As the hearing aid amplifies background noise, the perceived noises of tinnitus become less prominent.
Less than two percent of patients experience a worsening of their tinnitus when wearing hearing aids, while 39 percent receive no benefit.


Article courtesy of 4 Hearing

In a study published in the March 2010 issue of The American Journal of Medicine, researchers determined that regular use of aspirin, acetaminophen and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) increases the risk of hearing loss in men, particularly in younger men, below age 60.

Hearing loss is the most common sensory disorder in the US, afflicting over 36 million people. Not only is hearing loss highly prevalent among the elderly, but approximately one third of those aged 40-49 years already suffer from hearing loss. Even mild hearing loss can compromise the ability to understand speech in the presence of background noise or multiple speakers, leading to social isolation, depression, and poorer quality of life.

Investigators from Harvard University, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Vanderbilt University and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston looked at factors other than age and noise that might influence the risk of hearing lose. Aspirin, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen are the 3 most commonly used drugs in the US. The ototoxic effects of aspirin are well known and the ototoxicity of NSAIDs has been suggested, but the relation between acetaminophen and hearing loss has not been examined previously. The relationship between these drugs and hearing loss is an important public health issue.

Study participants were drawn from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which tracked over 26,000 men every 2 years for 18 years. A questionnaire determined analgesic use, hearing loss and a variety of physiological, medical and demographic factors.

For aspirin, regular users under 50 and those aged 50-59 years were 33% more likely to have hearing loss than were nonregular users, but there was no association among men aged 60 years and older. For NSAIDs, regular users aged under 50 were 61% more likely, those aged 50-59 were 32% more likely, and those aged 60 and older were 16% more likely to develop hearing loss than nonregular users of NSAIDs. For acetaminophen, regular users aged under 50 were 99% more likely, regular users aged 50-59 were 38% more likely, and those aged 60 and older were 16% more likely to have hearing loss than nonregular users of acetaminophen.

Writing in the article, Sharon G. Curhan, MD, ScM, Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, and colleagues state, "Regular use of analgesics, specifically aspirin, NSAIDs, and acetaminophen, might increase the risk of adult hearing loss, particularly in younger individuals. Given the high prevalence of regular analgesic use and health and social implications of hearing impairment, this represents an important public health issue."

Article courtesy of Natural News
 
NaturalNews has already reported how a long-accepted "fact" about aging -- that our brains shrink -- has turned out to be bogus science.Now comes research that strongly suggests another medical "fact" about getting older is just plain wrong. New evidence indicates that a physical problem considered to be virtually inevitable as people age, hearing loss, could be preventable by eating an antioxidant rich diet or by taking antioxidant supplements.

The most common sensory disorder among elders, hearing loss affects more than 40% of people in the US over age 65, according to data from the National Health Survey. And hearing loss is expected to be a problem for at least 28 million older Americans by 2030. Losing hearing acuity in later years involves the death of nerves, hair and membrane cells inside the inner ear. Because the hair and nerve cells are not thought to be capable of regeneration, their death causes permanent hearing loss. But is it just living into middle age and beyond that causes these changes? Findings recently published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicate the answer is "no".

Antioxidants protect against hearing loss
University of Florida (UF) researchers, along with scientists from the University of Wisconsin and three other institutions, have identified a protein that appears to be the key that directs processes causing oxidative damage to cells. The result of this damage is hearing loss. These findings suggest protecting against oxidative damage with antioxidant therapies or by regularly eating antioxidant rich foods could potentially prevent or even treat hearing loss in older adults.

A popular theory of aging revolves around the concept that oxidative damage from free radicals harms the mitochondria, the energy center of cells. When the damage continues over months and years, the mitochondria are thrown into havoc and release proteins that cause cells to die. This leads to a host of physical effects associated with aging -- including hearing loss.

"Within the mitochondria these proteins cause life, but when they're out they're deadly," Professor Christiaan Leeuwenburgh, Ph.D., chief of the biology of aging division at UF's College of Medicine and a member of the Institute on Aging, said in a statement to the media.

A particular protein dubbed Bak is induced by oxidative stress and levels of this protein increase when people age. Bak is known to play a specific role in weakening the mitochondrial membrane, making it leaky and allowing harmful proteins to move into the rest of the cell. So, to find out if Bak is involved in age-related hearing loss, the scientists studied middle-aged mice bred to be deficient in Bak. They found the animals had hearing levels comparable to far younger mice.

Then the researchers exposed inner ear cells of the Bak lacking mice to a chemical that caused oxidative stress. The result? There was only a minor loss of cells related to hearing. So the research team concluded it must be Bak, produced in response to oxidative stress, that pushes the death of cells in the auditory portion of the inner ear. And because older people faced with oxidative stress (from chemicals, drugs, air pollution, processed foods, etc.) over the years have more and more Bak in their bodies, it is easy to see the connection to hearing loss.

In addition, the scientists discovered that the onset of age-related hearing loss was significantly delayed in animals with excess amounts of an enzyme that scavenge free radicals, as well as in animals that were fed antioxidants. "This paper clearly shows us that oxidative stress causes hearing loss," said Jinze Xu, a UF postdoctoral fellow, in the media statement. Bottom line: if oxidative stress triggers damage and death of hearing-related cells, boosting the defenses of the mitochondria with antioxidants should prevent or reduce this damage.


Article courtesy of Medical news today

In 2009 a student research project investigating a low frequency therapy for temporary tinnitus was joint runner-up in the 2009 BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, held in Dublin, Ireland. The student research project which has now evolved into a web-based company, Restored Hearing was one of the companies which showcased recently at the 2010 exhibition.

In 2009 Eimear O'Carroll, Rhona Togher, Niamh Chapman, then 6th Year Leaving Certificate students in the Ursuline College, Sligo, NW Ireland, together with Anthony Carolan, their physics teacher entered the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition 2009 with a project entitled 'The Sound of Silence An Investigation into Low Frequency Therapy for Tinnitus Sufferers'. In addition to being overall runner-up, their project won the Health Research Board's special prize for medical innovation.

During 2009, Eimear, Rhona and Anthony further developed their project incorporating as Restored Hearing in May 2009 and formally launching in August 2009. Restored Hearing has now become a client company of NovaUCD, the Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre at University College Dublin. One of the company co-founders is now a first year undergraduate physics student at the University.

Temporary tinnitus, or 'ringing in the ears' is caused by exposure to loud environments, for example listening to loud music at concerts or on iPods or operating loud machinery. In such noisy environments damage is done to the sound receptor cells in the cochlea. The cochlea is that part of the ear which converts wave-vibrations into electric signals before sending these signals onto the brain. When these receptor cells, or tiny hairs, get bent or damaged during exposure to the loud noises, signals continue to be sent to the brain even after the exposure to the noise has ceased. This results in a continued perception of a noise that isn't there.

To alleviate this problem and to assist sufferers, Restored Hearing has developed a unique online and tailored, minute-long therapy sessions for individuals who want to clear their ears of the 'ringing' sensation and regain 'buzz free' hearing. The therapy is based on sound and wave theory, using a low hum to physically stimulate the cochlear hairs back into their original upright position.

Speaking after the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition 2010, Eimear O'Carroll, co-founder, said, "We were delighted to exhibit at this year's exhibition. We were genuinely surprised that we have gone from a school project to a corporate exhibitor in one year but this illustrates the importance of the competition." She added, "Taking part in the BT Young Scientist competition has shown us that science, and making new discoveries, can lead to both business and academic opportunities."

During 2010 Restored Hearing intends to continue researching the therapy's effects for the sufferers of permanent tinnitus. In addition to running the company, Rhona and Eimear are continuing their studies and are undergraduate physics students in University College Dublin and University of Edinburgh respectively.

Article courtesy of  ScienceDaily

Scientists have gained new insight into why a relatively short-term hearing deprivation during childhood may lead to persistent hearing deficits, long after hearing is restored to normal. The research, published by Cell Press in the March 11 issue of the journal Neuron, reveals that, much like the visual cortex, development of the auditory cortex is quite vulnerable if it does not receive appropriate stimulation at just the right time.

It is well established that degraded sensory experience during critical periods of childhood development can have detrimental effects on the brain and behavior. In the classic example, a condition called amblyopia (also known as lazy eye) can arise when balanced visual signals are not transmitted from each eye to the brain during a critical period for visual cortex development.

"An analogous problem may exist in the realm of hearing, in that children commonly experience a buildup of viscous fluid in the middle ear cavity, called otitis media with effusion, which can degrade the quality of acoustic signals reaching the brain and has been associated with long-lasting loss of auditory perceptual acuity," explains senior study author, Dr. Daniel Polley from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

Dr. Polley and his colleague Dr. Maria Popescu from Vanderbilt University implemented a method to reversibly block hearing in one ear in infant, juvenile, and adult rats then looked at how auditory brain areas were impacted by the temporary hearing loss.

They observed that the temporary hearing loss in one ear distorted auditory patterning in the brain, weakened the deprived ear's representation and strengthened the open ear's representation. The scope of reorganization was most striking in the cortex (and not "lower" parts of the auditory pathway) and was more pronounced when hearing deprivation began in infancy than in later life. Therefore, it appears that maladaptive plasticity in the developing auditory cortex might underlie "amblyaudio," in a similar fashion to the contributions of visual cortex plasticity to amblyopia.

"The good news about amblyaudio is that it is unlikely to be a permanent problem for most people," concludes Dr. Polley. "Even if the acoustic signal isn't improved within the critical period, the mature auditory cortex still expresses a remarkable degree of plasticity. We know that properly designed visual training can improve visual acuity in adult amblyopia patients. We are gearing up now to study whether auditory perceptual training may also be a promising approach to accelerate recovery in individuals with unresolved auditory processing deficits stemming from childhood hearing loss."


 
Article courtesy of Natural News
 
Current thinking has us believe that age-related hearing loss is an inevitable consequence of getting older, but is it really? Hundreds of studies from around the world show severe vitamin deficiencies in those with hearing loss. Even more importantly replacing the missing vitamins improved the hearing loss in vast numbers of people, making hearing loss simply another one of many age-related problems preventable with good nutrition.

When most of us think of getting older, we think of canes to walk, glasses to see and hearing aids to hear. But is this an inevitable consequence of aging, or is it due to modifiable and preventable environmental factors? We are told that the only modifiable way to prevent hearing loss is to keep away from loud noises, but hearing loss seems to have less to do with loud sounds than it does with nutrition.

Nutrient deficiencies are often overlooked as causes or contributing factors in many diseases, and they are also overlooked factors in hearing loss. Studies done all over the world by completely different teams of researchers using completely different nutritional supplements and using completely different methods of studying the problem have all come to the same conclusion- hearing loss can be prevented and even improved with nutritional supplementation.

Vitamin D

Some of the most interesting studies come from Vitamin D Research. Vitamin D is well known to be responsible for the calcium absorption required for strong bones. The most well known problem associated with lack of vitamin D is rickets, a softening of the bones in children leading to bowed legs. But less well-known is a similar condition in adults called osteopenia where the bones can become porous and demineralized. When vitamin D deficiency causes osteopenia in the tiny bones of the ears, this can lead to hearing loss and even deafness. Strikingly, correcting the vitamin D deficiency often corrects the hearing loss and even the deafness in these specific cases.

Magnesium

A nutrient with a wider application in hearing loss is magnesium. We are fortunate that hearing loss is an issue in governmental applications such as the Air Force, because this has given us a rich source of studies done in order to find Practical ways to Prevent the hearing loss associated with continual noise.

"Magnesium treatment has been repeatedly
shown to reduce the incidence of both temporary
and permanent noise-induced hearing loss."
'Magnesium treatment for sudden hearing loss'

And magnesium has been shown to do this well. Many studies have been done where people subjected to noise were protected from noise-related hearing loss when they were pre treated with magnesium. Magnesium given AFTER noise exposure worked to CORRECT that hearing loss as well. Industrialized countries have an "epidemic of magnesium deficiency", according to Dr. Carolyn Dean, author of 'The Magnesium Miracle'. Since magnesium is inexpensive and readily available, this one nutrient could have wide uses in high noise settings and even in nursing homes where the vast majority of residents suffer from hearing loss as well as magnesium deficiency.

Free Radical Scavengers

Denoted as `Free Radical Scavengers`, Vitamin C , Lipoic Acid, Vitamin E and glutathione have all been used to prevent and treat hearing loss. Poor hearing was significantly improved in as short a time as 8 weeks. Interestingly enough, several of these studies were done using patients that had exhausted all other treatments for their condition without improvement, yet there was significant improvements in hearing using free radical scavenger therapy.

Other Nutrients

Vitamin B-12, folic acid and zinc have all been shown to improve hearing in different studies, with zinc being singled out by Dr. George E. Shambaugh Jr., Founder of the Shambaugh Hearing and Allergy Center in Hinsdale, Illinois: "We believe zinc deficiency is one causation of presbycusis [hearing loss]; by recognizing and correcting it, a progressive hearing loss can be arrested". One study even showed that Homocysteine Levels in the blood, a good indicator of B vitamin status, is inversely correlated with hearing loss. This means that the higher the Homocysteine levels, indicating worsening B vitamin deficiency, the worse the hearing loss.

Most of these supplements are inexpensive and readily available. More importantly, the majority of these substances are safe to take for the vast majority of people who suffer from hearing loss. Who knew that better hearing was as close as the nearest multivitamin!

Article courtesy of BBC News

The RNID believes that the number of people who have some hearing loss will rise from the current one in seven of the population as noise pollution increases and people live longer.
 
"This is likely to become one of the biggest health and social issues of our time," said RNID chief executive John Low.
"Millions of people who could benefit from wearing a hearing aid or hearing protection are reluctant to do so."

The charity is calling for a revolution in people's thinking about hearing products and says that there is insufficient investment in the customer appeal of hearing aids.

"There has been an incredible revolution is the design of glasses, why not in hearing aids," wonders Dr Low.

Although the European market for hearing aids is worth £2.9bn, the concern is that millions of people who could benefit from them are reluctant to do so.

Design journalist and Blueprint deputy editor, Henrietta Thompson, has a hearing impairment and refused to wear hearing aids until she was 14.

"Too many people prefer to struggle to hear rather than wearing one," she said.

"It's ridiculous, today, when we're surrounded by good design in all areas of our lives, that hearing aids have been forgotten in this way."