health tips and info

Monday, August 18, 2008

Irritant Contact Dermatitis

There are several differences between allergic and irritant contact dermatitis. One is that strong chemicals can quickly irritate the skin of practically everyone, with no latent period necessary, while it usually takes at least twenty-four hours for a rash to appear after exposure in allergic dermatitis. Persons with sensitive skin or with previously existing skin problems are more easily irritated. Some chemicals can cause both irritation and allergy.

In irritant dermatitis, the severity of the reaction is directly proportional to the strength of the irritant and the susceptibility of the skin. Thus soaps and solvents are weak irritants while acids and alkalies are powerful ones. Thick and generally healthy skin is more resistant than thin, unhealthy, or fair skin.

These distinctions generally do not hold for allergic contact dermatitis. It is possible to have a mild allergy to something, but relatively brief exposure to the substance will usually produce a rash, regardless of the sensitivity of the skin. The rash may be more severe on sensitive areas such as the face, but it will develop anywhere the chemical penetrates the skin.

The early stages of a severe irritant dermatitis may be similar to an allergic dermatitis. Considerable swelling, itching, and blistering, especially with streaks and patches, normally suggest an allergic problem. A burn from a strong irritant could produce similar swelling and blistering, but the individual would probably be aware of the cause of his problem. In chronic cases of contact dermatitis, it may be quite difficult to distinguish between allergic and irritant causes. Some chemicals can cause both irritation and allergy.

Friday, August 1, 2008

Information on Hearing Aids

The Miracle of Hearing Aids

A hearing aid is in actually a pretty simple device. But when you think of the huge impact it has on the lives of those that benefit from this technology, it could be considered a major medical miracle for thousands if not millions of people who suffer hearing loss.

For those who have never lost their hearing, that sense of isolation as more and more you cannot understand what others are saying can be really devastating. We take so much of what we hear for granted. Little things like being able to hear your favorite TV show and enjoy the jokes or being able to hear a baby laugh or listen to your favorite music are wonderful parts of life. Hearing is one of the greatest joys of life and to lose that can diminish the quality of life for people in ways that is hard to appreciate it until you go through it.

What is tragic is that so many have some degree of hearing loss and never do anything about it. The reason that this is tragic is that hearing amplification technology is well understood, easily accessible and affordable. In fact, many health insurance programs will pay part or all of the costs of getting a hearing aid if the hearing loss can be verified. And yet many people whose hearing is diminished but not gone just struggle along either because they don’t want to deal with the clumsiness of having a hearing aid in their ear or they are too proud to admit that they are having a problem.

Part of the reason for such hesitancy about getting help with hearing comes from a lack of understanding about hearing devices. Many have a picture of someone with a large hearing machine attached to their ear that everyone can see so well, they can see the amplification dials. This image comes from the days when the hearing devices people used were so large that it was the first thing you noticed when you met someone. And when you met someone with a hearing aid like that, you naturally had the urge to shout to make yourself understood. This is particularly silly when the entire purpose of the hearing aid is to keep others from having to shout at you.

Modern hearing devices have moved away from those days of big clumsy boxes attached to the ear. Many modern amplification systems are very small due to the wonders of the digital age and they fit entirely in the ear. Unless you notice the little dot deep in the ear, most people would never know you had on a device to help you hear. In fact, there have been breakthroughs to correct certain types of hearing loss in which the device is implanted deep in the ear through surgery which means no taking the unit out and putting it in again, no fuss about caring for it and nobody needs to know you have one in at all.

This technology is only likely to continue to become more sophisticated as technology continues to advance. And as that happens, there will really be no excuse for anyone to not be able to hear if they want to. And to eliminate hearing loss entirely would truly be a miracle.

The Best Hearing Aids are the Ones That Work for YOU

Too often, there is a stigma that goes with using a hearing aid. And when that happens, many people just put up with the hearing loss rather than wear a corrective device that can really do them a lot of good. The reasons for avoiding using a hearing aid are pretty much universal. The wearer doesn’t want to be seen as damaged or "special" in any way. The wearer fears he or she will be pitied or that the hearing aid will be ugly and cause people to stare.

There is really just one word for the reason the majority of people avoid getting help with their hearing in this way. That word is "vanity". The sad thing is that in terms of how others perceive you, far more people will be negatively impressed with you if you are constantly asking them to speak up or playing your music or TV too loud because of your hearing loss. As with many aspects of life, you appear more foolish trying to pretend you don’t have the problem than if you just got that hearing aid and began to enjoy the benefits of good hearing again.

Another reason people often hold back on getting help in the form of a hearing aid is that they are timid about the fact that they don’t know what would be the best device for them. Of course, fear of people you don’t know learning things about you holds us all up in a lot of ways. But when it comes to an issue of your lifestyle or health, it is really silly to let your vanity or fear of asking questions hold you back from getting the help you need and deserve. After all, nobody expects you to know everything about hearing aids and how to use them without some help. That is why we have doctors and hearing experts to help us. All you have to do is ask for the help and you will quickly get brought up to speed on what the best kind of hearing aid would be for you.

A hearing aid is not a silly or vain thing to get. Being able to hear well is just as important as being able to see. And just as people are not afraid to show they have loss of sight by wearing glasses, there should be no shame in the fact that you need a hearing aid. Your loss of hearing does not reflect a personal failing or weakness on your part. It is a medical need and a hearing aid is a medical answer to that need.

Some consultation with a doctor will help you find out from a technical standpoint what kind of hearing aid will help you the most. But your lifestyle issues are important too. You can be fitted with a hearing aid that can accommodate your athletic lifestyle and you can even have hearing aids made that fit your personal style. The hearing aid industry is sophisticated and able to find a device that is perfect for you. And after all, what makes a hearing aid the best one for you is whether you like it, it fits you and if it really helps your life. It is worth all the effort once you can hear well again.

Medical Solutions That Aids Hearing that You Can Use in Your Everyday Life

When you are faced with the task of figuring out what hearing aid to buy, it is almost as though you are expected to suddenly be an expert in hearing and medical technology just so you can conduct a conversation with the salesperson. The dizzying array of options, features, styles, ways that hearing aids are worn and prices can make the task of picking a hearing aid pretty intimidating. You need a hearing aid that you can live with, that doesn’t take a college degree to operate and that you can understand before you even buy it.

The first stop in getting some orientation to what everybody in the hearing aid world is talking about is your ear doctor, otherwise known as your "audiologist". This medical professional will be the first person to tell you that you need a hearing aid and he or she can point you in the right direction as to what kind of hearing aid to look into and what you must have and what is optional in your final choice. Now, the audiologist probably won't just tell you what to get because you may want to spend your money on the latest fashion hearing aid that just hit the market. But the doctor can tell you what you must have so you have the basic training needed to start shopping.

The second level of education that will go a long way to make you an educated consumer when shopping for a hearing aid is one you already discovered. It is the internet and we know you already discovered it because you are reading this article that you found on this web site. This is an overview article but you can find as much depth of explanation about hearing aid technology on the internet as you can stand. Don’t be concerned if you suddenly get quite fascinated by this area of medical and technical research and development. It is fascinating and the more you know, the more comfortable you will be with this next step in your life.

The internet can help you at least learn the terms and the categories of hearing aid design. You can learn the differences between analog and digital hearing aids and get an understanding of the terminology of the controls and the different designs of hearing aids and how those design affect how your hearing aid will be worn when you are using it every day. The value of getting a crash course in terminology is that when you start looking for your hearing aid, if you can converse intelligently with the sales people, that puts you in the drivers seat about what you finally buy and that is exactly where you want to be.

You are already off and running on learning more about this fascinating topic. If getting a hearing aid is in your immediate future, you are motivated to learn more and more. Go with that instinct because taking the mystery out of hearing aids will help you accept this medical wonder as part of your everyday life where it can do you so much good.

It Takes Some Savvy to Use Hearing Aids Consumer Reports

If you are the kind of person who likes to do plenty of research before making a major purchase, then you should be congratulated because the more homework you do about what makes for a good project in its category, the better chances you have of making a really good purchase decision. And when it comes to product research, there are a wealth of consumer reports that are available in just about any product category to draw on. That is certainly true when it comes to the art of buying hearing aids.

Of course, any consumer report worth its salt applies the same standards to hearing aids as any good product has to live up to. Those standards would include…

Durability. The hearing aid has to keep on working for many years trouble free.

Usability. The unit must work well, giving service without troubling the owner.

Support. If the hearing aid has a problem, the manufacturer must be professional and always ready to repair or replace the unit.

Serviceability. The user of the hearing aid (you) must be able to take care of it easily. That means the batteries are easy to find, affordable and easy to change. It also means you can clean the unit without special equipment and that you can get it thoroughly clean.

There are many good product reviews websites and publications that are a good starting place to find objective and critical opinions about what hearing aids are made well and which ones are "lemons". By critical we mean you need a consumer report site that knows how to evaluate a product fairly and without bias. In that way if they find the hearing aid to be a quality product, they will tell you so without payment or kick back from the manufacturer. Similarly, they can give a product a bad review if it genuinely a poorly made hearing aid and they are insulated from reprisal from the maker of the unit.

Of course, the flagship of this kind of publication is the Consumer Reports magazine. They excel because they employ experts in each area of expertise to review products. But you can add to what Consumer Reports has to say by looking at consumer review sources that are devoted to issues of hearing impairment and aging including AARP and the Beyond Hearing organization which operates a listserv and web site that can help you a lot.

But there really is no better consumer report than one that comes from a consumer. So don’t overlook a resource for solid hearing aid reviews in your friends and neighbors who use hearing aids. If a real world user of a hearing aid gives a particular unit or manufacturer high marks, that is solid experience talking and that is worth its weight in gold as you evaluate what hearing aid you will buy.

Inexpensive Hearing Aids That Don't Compromise Quality

You never want to cut corners on your health. When it comes to hearing loss, however, many people neglect to seek out medical help because they don’t think there is any way to get a good quality hearing aid that will do a good job of restoring hearing and be affordable at the same time. Quality is a big issue. Of course, you can probably find some brands or knock off of good makes of hearing aids that you can get for next to nothing and those products advertise themselves as "just as good" as the quality products that are trusted by hearing professionals.

But "next to nothing" in this case usually described both the price and the level of quality you are going to get when you buy that kind of merchandise. And when it comes to your hearing, buying equipment that is of poor quality of that will stop working just when you begin to depend on it is not worth the effort at all.

The good news is that there are levels of expense in the hearing aid industry and you can get a very good hearing aid that does not have every special add on or the many "bells and whistles" that some of the top of the line models brag about. But you can still get a very functional hearing aid that is just that, a basic hearing aid that does its job and continues to do its job day after day for many years of service.

Lets not kid ourselves, a hearing aid is something you wear. That means that like anything else that becomes part of your "look", you can get designer hearing aids or you can get one that goes with anything. So as you begin to shop for a good hearing aid, don’t be drawn into a sales pitch that is based on how stylish your hearing aid will look or what fashion colors you need and you will dodge an entire layer of expense that way.

A great way to make a huge dent in the lowering the expense of your hearing aid is to simply shift to the older technology. For a long time analog hearing aids were the industry standard. Then, as happened in many industries, the digital revolution kicked in and digital hearing aids became "state of the art". But don't let salespeople fool you because analog hearing aids still work quite well and they are readily available. And because they are the older technology, you can get an analog hearing aid much cheaper than a digital version and it will serve you well.

Other features such as the level of programmability and hearing aids who have been miniaturized to fit deeper in the ear are also part of modern technology. But they are also areas that have driven up the costs of hearing aids for features that it is very likely you do not need. So get a good idea what you basically need in a hearing aid and then use some sales resistance against getting a unit that does more than you need it to do. In doing so you will get a quality piece of equipment that will serve you well without devastating your budget along the way.

How to Get Hearing Aids Wholesale

For thousands of people, the idea of getting a hearing aid is not a fashion choice but a necessity if they wish to continue their routine lives, as they know them to be. While some can adapt to reduced hearing by learning sign language or lip reading, many whose jobs depend on hearing such as teachers and musicians must go to some form of hearing aid when their natural hearing begins to fail or they have to leave behind their means of making a living.

The problem is that hearing aids can be very expensive depending on what you need. And when face a medical necessity like this makes you choose between a purchase you cannot afford and being able to keep living your life the only way you know how, that can be a terrible choice that is impossible to make. The answer is not to go without and lose your ability to have functional hearing but to find ways to get your hearing aid wholesale so you can find a price level you can afford.

There may be no person in this world who knows the hearing aid market better than your ear doctor. And it is that doctor who knows what you need and what you can afford. So turning to your audiologist is your first step in finding an affordable answer to the cost dilemma. While you are in your consultation with your doctor and the need for a hearing aid comes up, that is the time to express your concerns. Ear doctors are well connected to the medical supply industry and your doctor will already have networked with merchandisers who are more than willing to sell you a hearing aid at cost if the doctor asks them to.

This is a connection that is not very well known and seldom used. And doctors are not going to advertise that medial suppliers will help out their patients because they would be swamped with requests even from people who don’t need the discount but just like the idea of getting their hearing aids wholesale. But medical suppliers are always in a close relationship with doctors, particularly specialists like your audiologist and it just takes a phone call from a doctor for a merchandiser to "comp" a hearing aid to you. All you pay is the costs of the unit and none of the profit. The supplier writes it off to good doctor relationships and the doctor has helped out a patient, which good doctors love to do.

You ask, why doesn’t everyone get their hearing aid this way? The truth is, not many people think to ask. Also, because the supplier is in essence giving you a free hearing aid, you may not get a designer unit with every feature and extra function there is. But your doctor will make sure you get just the right unit to fit your prescription. When the transaction is done, you have just the right thing and you got it for a price you can afford. And that is what really matters when all is said and done.

How Do Hearing Aids Work?

I can remember growing up you would sometimes see a comedy bit on TV that showed a grandpa with a primitive hearing device to help him with his terrible hearing. In the bit, the senior citizen used a huge cone that was about three times as big as his head which he would stick in his ear to amplify the sound. And if I remember right, it never worked very well.

I don’t know if that method of supplementing hearing was every popular but we have had conventional hearing aids around for a long time. In a way to a casual observer, the hearing aid seems to do the opposite of what it is supposed to do. That is because if you see someone wearing a hearing aid, the device blocks the opening to the ear. So it would seem that keeps the person from hearing well when the opposite is actually the truth.

A very basic hearing aid is actually a pretty simple device. You can think of it as a PA system in reverse. Instead of taking sound and amplifying it over a large space to many, it amplifies it into a very small space to just one person. But the base components of the hearing aid are a microphone, a battery and a small amplifying circuit that makes the sound louder and easier to understand and then transmits that sound back into the patient's inner ear where it can be clearly understood.

This very basic design served for a long time under the analog method of sound transmission. But the design has been adapted to a number of different ways that simple design if used for different kind of patients and to deal with different kinds of hearing loss. For example, in an early design, the entire device except for the amplification transmitter existed in a small box worn on the back of the ear. This kept the mechanism clean and out of the ear of the patient and allowed the box to be large enough for ease of access to change the battery.

Over time, this basic design has been expanded, adapted and enhanced. Analog hearing aids are still around but now hearing aid patrons can also look into getting a digital hearing device which translates the sounds it picks up into a digital signal and then into the ear. The value here is that digitization has allowed hearing aids to get very small so many hearing aids can reside easily just inside the ear where they are not so conspicuous. In fact, in some cases, very small hearing aids can be implanted into the ear in such a way that nobody even knows it is there.

Controls have been added to both analog and digital hearing aids so the wearer has the ability to adjust the quality of sound coming in as well as to filter out surface noise and deal with different frequencies differently depending on what the hearing need is. All of these have made hearing aids better and more adaptable to may people's needs. And we can only expect that medical technology will continue to enhance hearing aid technology even more in the future.

Finding the Technology that Aids Hearing Online

Internet shopping has taken over almost every aspect of retail and in many cases, it has all but replaced the retail world outside of cyberspace for items like books and music. So when it is time to buy a new hearing aid, it makes sense that you will use the internet at least to some extent. It doesn’t mean that it is a given that you will always buy your hearing aid online. But there are ways to use the internet to benefit your search for good prices for quality units, which eventually results in you getting a good deal on your hearing aid

For one thing, the internet is a tremendous way to get an education into hearing aid technology and what is out there for you to pick from. You can bone up on the differences between analog and digital hearing aids and learn the advantages and disadvantages between "behind the ear" hearing aids and units that virtually disappear inside the ear. There are significant differences in what is available to you. All of these hearing aids will do a good job helping you hear but the cost of your hearing aid will vary widely depending on the choices you make in design and style.

So before you ever go to a retail outlet to discuss hearing aids, let the internet turn you into a smart consumer. That way, when you walk into a retail environment and you know what you are talking about, right away you will get treated with more respect and you will be less prone to be pressured by a salesman who knows how to sweet talk you into a higher priced unit than you need.

But the internet can also be an alternate retail option for you just as it probably has for Christmas presents and other forms of shopping that you have already started doing online. You will notice the minute you use your search engine to hunt up hearing aid retailers that there is a big marketplace out there in cyberspace all of whom are competing heavily for your business.

You do have to approach the internet retail setting with some internet savvy so you are sure you are getting high quality and good support when you buy online. One way to do that is to use the internet presence of a major hearing aid supplier to make your purchase. That supplier may be ready to offer very competitive pricing to get your business online because they know that they could lose your sale if they are not competitive. But if you buy from an established supplier, they can offer local support from those same retail outlets who can help fit you with the hearing aid and support you once you own it so you and your hearing unit learn to work together successfully.

By combining the strengths of the retail world with the educational and cost savings strengths of online shopping, you are taking control of the purchase experience. You get the price you want without giving up quality. You can't ask for a better deal than that.

Finding Affordable Hearing Aids Means Knowing What You Need

When you found out that you needed a hearing aid, you may have thought, "I can't afford that." It is easy to lump hearing aids in with sophisticated medical equipment and to think that for you to own your own hearing aid might be out of range for your budget. But a better type of personal medical equipment to compare your hearing aid with is to think of it in the same way you think of your glasses.

Nobody would consider their glasses to be optional or an extraordinary cost. That is because there simply is no question that your sight is critical to your ability to do your job and take care of your responsibilities. Well, your hearing is just as important as your sight. And hearing aids are far more common in the general population than you might have known. The reason you may not see them as much as glasses is that technology has gone a long way to miniaturize hearing aids so they fit neatly inside the ear and others just don’t know they are there.

The first thing you should do before you reject the idea of buying a hearing aid is check with your health insurance provider. In many cases, at least some of the cost of a hearing aid may be covered if you have a prescription from your audiologist for a hearing aid. Because your doctor considered a hearing aid to be necessary for your health and for you to live a healthy lifestyle, many times insurance will respect that judgment and kick in.

Nothing beats good old capitalism and competition for giving you options when it comes to finding an affordable alternative to the higher priced hearing aid retailers. And those market forces have been made even more intense, to your advantage, because of the internet. So before you decide that you have covered all bases when looking for good hearing aid prices, don’t give up until you have scanned the internet for competitive options.

In many industries, internet retailers have been able to give you deals that are far better than what you can get at the mall for the simple fact that internet retailers don’t have to sustain a lease or keep an inventory. But they can offer the same quality service and even offer good support and customer service as long as you don’t mind using that support via internet contacts rather than having a "brick and mortar" store to go to for your help in getting a hearing aid.

The key to knowing how to shop for affordable prices for your hearing aid is to not only know in detail what you need and what your prescription calls for but to know the brands and models that have a strong reputation for quality. Further, if you know what options you must have in a hearing aid, you can be particular when shopping and so keep retailers from selling you a high priced hearing aid that is more than you need. By being a smart shopper and an informed one, you are calling the shots on what you buy. And that is always a formula for getting the best deals.

Finding Some Great Deals at a Hearing Aids Sale

There are some items that do very well when you here of them going "on sale" and others that don't. If there is a red apple sale at the mall, by all means get down there before the good stuff is all gone. But if you go to a flea market and you see a sign that reads, "hearing aids on sale, prices slashed", you should probably run. Anything that pertains to your health and particularly something as expensive and important to your long term well being like your hearing aid is not an area where you want to cut corners.

But there is also room in the hearing aid retail world for some deals. Just as in any marketplace, the more you come to the shopping experience with some awareness of what makes a good deal and how to find those deals, the better you will do with your final purchase. That doesn’t mean you are going to cut corners on quality. But it does mean you know where to look for a good deal and what can be compromised in your hearing aid purchase decision and what is absolutely not negotiable.

If you read the journals, magazines or web sites that stay on top of what is going on in the medical world in the field of hearing aid design, you know that there are new breakthroughs happening every day. But if you are wise about this kind of technology, you know that the old phrase "nothing new under the sun" also is a good motto for shopping for hearing aids. New breakthroughs might make available sophisticated options and technical wizardry but those things come with a cost. And the truth is that hearing aids designs that are decades old are just as effective as any new technologies when you get right down to it.

But the good thing is that new technologies cause older designs to become less desirable to marketers. That means that the big medical equipment manufacturers will put older styles of hearing aids on sale as newer models begin to enter the market. By staying on top of the web sites and outlets that the larger hearing aid manufacturers use, you can often find phenomenal sales there that don’t get much notice because they just come and go for those who are paying attention.

Similarly, companies that sell hearing aids will often push a lot of extra features that are really not necessary to have in a very basic unit that does one job well which is to help you hear. But like any good business will do, they will market to you the high end products that are made to be trendy and have lots of "bells and whistles" because that is where their the biggest profits are. But if you stick to your guns and insist on only buying the basic model in the basic colors that do the basic job of hearing enhancement but do it reliably and well, then you will get a quality unit at a good price.

The skills of being a good shopper and knowing how to find the deals are just as important in finding a quality hearing aid as it is in any type of shopping you do. By knowing exactly what you want and, more importantly, what you don’t want, you can find good deals and even an occasional "sale" that will result in you saving a lot of money and still getting a great hearing aid you can use for years.

Disposable Hearing Aids are the Right Answer for a Lot of People

One of the reasons many people are hesitant to seek help with their hearing is confusion over how to find the right kind of hearing aid and the bother of learning to use it. One solution that has helped many who really do not need an elaborate hearing solution is to go with a disposable unit that is inexpensive, easy to get and easy to replace.

To know what kind of disposable unit you will need for your hearing, you will still need a prescription and a hearing test so the extent and cause of your hearing loss can be determined. This is always a good idea because if the cause of your hearing loss is something serious, you want to know about that. But since the majority of hearing loss is minor and routine results of aging, the disposable route is a good one for you once you have determined how much help you need.

Like "store bought" glasses, once you have your prescription, you should be able to buy a new disposable hearing device pretty much like you buy milk and eggs. That is one of the advantage is this approach because if the unit you are using fails, the batteries run down or you lose it, it is not a disaster. Your hearing aid virtually becomes a commodity item to be changed like a light bulb. It is just that easy.

If you get maximum use out of one purchase of a disposal hearing unit, you should be able to get as much as a month to a month and a half out of one unit. You might be tempted to buy your next one in advance but since you do not change the battery in a disposable unit, it might be best to wait until you are about a week out from when the one you have stops working. But if you have come to depend on the improved hearing you are getting from these convenient and affordable hearing aids, being prepared is a good idea.

Many times a disposable unit is a perfect solution for older people or for you if you want to eliminate the fuss and cleaning associated with using a hearing device that you have to take care of. For one thing, because hearing aids are very small, buying, storing and changing the batteries is a huge inconvenience. People with poor hearing or arthritis have trouble swapping the batteries out and the cost of batteries alone almost justify just going with a replaceable hearing aid.

It is often difficult to keep an old style hearing aid clean. By going the disposable route, when your hearing aid gets soiled with earwax or other grime, you don’t have to clean it, just throw it out and buy a clean one. This is actually more sanitary too because if you want to use a clean unit when it comes to putting something in your ears every day.

Disposable units are not for everyone. But they have become a huge success on the market because they are a great alternative for a big part of the hearing impaired community because they are convenient and affordable and they can do so much to improve your quality of life.

Bone Conduction Hearing Aids Can Help Even Severe Hearing Loss

The hearing aid industry is primarily focused on those who have partial or somewhat minimum hearing loss. The design of hearing aids that most of us know about are amplification devices with a microphone that picks up the sounds and sends them into the ear with a boost so a weakened ear can understand them more clearly. The advancements in conventional designs for hearing enhancement also make it possible to block out ranges of sound, surface noise and control other factors so the hearer hears sound that are more precise and not as affected by unrelated chatter around them.

This is a very successful approach to hearing management and it has helped countless thousands if not millions be able to live happier lives because hearing has been restored due to this technology. But in a small number of patients, this kind of technology is not effective. But these hearing loss sufferers are not left out entirely.

There is another design approach to hearing aid that actually transmits the vibrations of sounds into the bone of the hearing apparatus directly and this kind of hearing design can give even people with severe hearing loss problems some quality of hearing that restores a portion of what it means to be a hearing person.

This unique approach to hearing enhancement is called bone conduction. In a nutshell, these kinds of hearing aids don’t just magnify sound into the ear. Instead sound is picked up and translated into vibrations which are then sent to the bone of the inner hear. So the bone of the ear experiences "conduction" of the sound vibrations, which is somewhat how the ear functions when it is working correctly in the first place.

There are a number of conditions where the ear canal is blocked due to an injury, illness or birth defect in the ear. Ordinarily this would lead to deafness outright because the sounds cannot penetrate the blockage. But by using bone conduction, the device vibrates the skull in such a way that the brain interprets the vibrations which are converted from incoming sound and the patient is able to "hear" albeit not as well as a conventional ear might hear.

Bone conduction systems are obviously not nearly as commonly used as conventional hearing aids. When they were first designed, to be effective they had to be held to the patient's head with a tight headband that was not only very uncomfortable, it was conspicuous which made the use of such systems in public less desirable. But with advances in technology and medical science, it is now possible to implant a bone conduction hearing enhancement device in the ear so that it becomes a permanent part of the inside of the ear.

Not only does this new design work much better than the previous designs, once the system is in place, it is completely invisible to the outside world and maintenance free. The user has to get used to "listening" with the aid of this kind of device but for people who otherwise would be deaf, this kind of hearing enhancement is a tremendous blessing to them and to their loved ones as well.

Bone Anchored Hearing Aids and the Good They Can Do

Medical science and technology has given us a variety of ways to deal with hearing loss. And the success of hearing aid technology is so widespread that you can probably think of one or two people in your own life that have benefited from a hearing aid. What you might not know is that one of the most effective forms of hearing aid technology are the ones that other people will never see because they are bone anchored which means they virtually become part of the ear.

Most hearing aids are "worn" in a similar way that glasses are worn by the owner. Conventional hearing aids are put on by inserting the device in the ear where it serves as a very small amplifier. But the very name of a "bone anchored" device lets you know the big differences and in the way an implanted hearing aid works. Instead of being worn on the outside, the bone anchored approach is installed in the ear surgically. Not only does this mean you do not have to fuss with taking it out and putting it in, it is also invisible to the outside world so nobody really knows you are using a hearing amplification device at all.

The way the bone anchored design works is also dramatically different than most hearing aid. Instead of just amplifying sound as it enters the ear, the bone anchored system sends the sound directly through the bone of the inner ear which is far more effective. The three elements of this kind of hearing aid which are the sound processor, the implanted part and the external sound collection unit all work together to take sound and pass it deep into the ear where it is then processed. This is a novel approach because most hearing aids use the middle ear and the structure of the ear canal to amplify sound. The bone connected design bypasses both of those parts of the ear entirely to begin sending sound to the individual at the connection to the bone.

Because the bone anchoring style of hearing support does not use the middle or outer ear at all, it is ideal for people with damage to those parts of their ear which is common in an ear infection situation. In fact the bone anchoring system can even help people who have lost hearing in one ear entirely by anchoring just outside the affecting ear and sending the sound to the good ear and creating the same effect as being able to hear with two ears.

There are some real values to this approach to hearing amplification. Some might object to minor surgery to implant a bone anchored system but it is so much more comfortable that those objections vanish pretty fast. And when you can hear again when you once could not, that makes any small surgery concerns worth enduring.

Behind the Ear Hearing Aids Do the Job Right

When you start to look into what kind of hearing aid to get, you have a lot of choices. You can have a digital unit or an analog unit. Within each of those choices, you can also decide if you need a unit that is programmable to not only amplify sound as it comes to your ear but to manage that sound and the surface noise that would keep you from hearing good sounds well. Even within the programmable hearing aid category, there are levels of sophistication from those you program yourself to digital units that adjust to your environment on the fly.

Another big decision to be made has to do with the style of the hearing aid you finally decide to use in terms of how it is worn. The standard "image" of a hearing aid is the behind the ear model, which seems old fashioned compared to the kind that go inside the ear. In fact, some modern models of hearing aids can be implanted entirely within the ear through minor surgery so they are completely invisible to the outside world. Each of these styles comes with advantages and disadvantages.

The behind the ear style of hearing aid seems like it is the most conspicuous and clumsy approach and until you actually get to know the different advantages and disadvantages of each kind of hearing aid, you might think that wearing the unit behind your ear is not a great design. But there are some significant advantages to this approach to helping your hearing out that make the behind the ear approach a serious option for a lot of people.

One compelling advantage is cost. Since most behind the ear units are analog, the cost of getting set up with this kind of hearing aid is significantly less than going with a more sophisticated unit that goes inside the ear. When you wear a hearing aid behind your ear, all of the working unit lives in that small unit outside of the ear itself. That means that what goes into the ear is just a unit to channel the amplified sound. The magnifier, programming controls and the battery do not go in the ear. It is a simple and yet elegant approach.

Actually, the larger control box is an advantage to the behind the ear design. The batteries are easier to replace and the controls easier to manage which is a big advantage for senior citizens using this kind of unit. And because most of the hearing aid stays out of the ear, it is far easier to keep clean of earwax, which can really gum up a hearing aid that stays inside your ear.

The idea that having a hearing aid behind your ear will be uncomfortable is silly because they are customized to your head and the wearer gets used to having the unit there. They are no more uncomfortable than a pair of glasses and no more conspicuous to others. But because this kind of hearing aid is a lot cheaper to buy and to maintain and they do a good reliable job day after day, going with this older technology may be the right choice for many hearing aid users.

Are Digital Hearing Aids Worth the Money?

For decades, hearing aids used the same analog technology as radio and television. But when the digital revolution came along, it made sense that you would see a revolution in hearing aid technology in the form of new sophisticated hearing aids as well. The outcome is that when you are shopping for a new hearing aid, you now have a choice. Of course, the digital alterative might be more expensive. But at the same time, there are some real advantages to going digital in this area of your life like we all have in so many other ways.

One reason that new technology like modern hearing aids do come with a high price tag at first is that the research and development effort that goes on behind the scenes when a big breakthrough is brought to market is expensive. In some cases, new designs in hearing aid technology might take years to develop and test and all of that research has to be paid for. So when the hearing aid hits the market, much of that initial cost is there to pay off the tab from all the work it took to discover and test that technology.

For most of us, when we have made the change to digital technology in other areas of our lives, we are glad we did. That will be true when you make the switch to digital design in your hearing aid as the technology becomes more available to the rest of us. For one thing, a word that goes hand in hand with digital technology is miniaturization. So once we get used to hearing aids that take advantage of miniaturization, your hearing aid will get smaller so it is not as cumbersome to wear and not as noticeable as well.

Part of the big expense in developing and distributing these new designs in hearing aid research is that digital technology allows scientists to imbed computer chips right into your hearing aid. This will make your hearing aid a "smart hearing aid" that is able to make small adjustments and notice things about the atmosphere, noise level and other factors that can affect your ability to hear and it can make adjustments to the hearing aid settings to compensate for you.

In this way, the hearing aid of the future will be smart and do a much better job of working in any setting because of digital technology. And that technology isn’t centuries away, it is here right now and soon to become part of your life.

Of course, the price barrier in digital technology in the hearing aid industry will almost certainly come down. Just as has happened in every other area of technology, once competition gets into the market and what might be an "exotic" feature in hearing aids becomes more common, the price will come down and make it possible for everyone to afford all of these nice features. So it might just be a waiting game to let the market catch up with the technology before you make the transition to a digital answer to your hearing loss correction technology.