Hearing Informed

I recently visited my audiologist here in San Francisco to meet with him and a representative audiologist from Widex to try out a brand new hearing aid- the Widex Passion. The representative was there to fit and adjust the new hearing aid and see how I responded to a unique concept called the audibility extender. The audibility extender brings the higher frequency sounds that are unavailable to me down to a lower octave that I can hear. It was amazing!

Its certainly a bewildering experience to have new sounds available that I’ve never heard before- and its not without a certain “unnaturalness” and strange sound artifacts. These are the inevitable consequence of tinkering with sound in this way. However, I found the new sounds to be something that I really want. For instance- I can barely differentiate between “sh”, “th”, “ch”, and “s” sounds. The audibility extender brought those particular sounds into a range that my hearing aid could amplify for me- at a lower octave. I could understand speech better as a result…truly amazing and I hope they keep this technology and continue to improve on it. It really clicks with me.

This concept won’t work for everyone. Some people find that the audibility extender makes speech harder to understand and find the strange sounds to be unacceptable. But I think if people stuck with this for a while and went through the training provided on a compact disc- they might find that these strange and foreign sounds become more useful over time. It really requires some work and flexibility. I told the Widex representative that it wasn’t unlike being on a hallucinogenic drug- where the brain has to grasp onto brand new sounds that it’s never dealt with before. I think the brain should be given some credit..built with a huge amount of flexibility it can deal with these new sounds over time and adapt to them. Im confident that the audibility extender will prove to be a more and more useful and positive experience for me over time. I’ll report back on this as I move along with it.

The audibility extender needs to be fined tuned and adjusted for each user. It helps to have someone tinker with the settings and get them right- otherwise the experience won’t live up to its full potential.

Some areas that I’m excited to use the audibility extender in: listening to bird songs, playing the higher notes on my guitar, the high pitched whirring noises that my transmission is apparently making, whispers, overhearing gossip.

This is a deal breaker for me- I might go with the Widex Passion hearing aids over all other hearing aids simply because of this feature. As a quick disclaimer: Please take my opinion with a grain of salt- what works for one person may not work for another. I’d like to hear from other people what they experienced when they tried this feature- both negative and positive!

As a quick sidenote: For my hearing loss, I felt that the Lyric hearing aid was even better than the Widex Passion in terms of sound quality and making high frequency sounds audible for me. Having said that- I find the Widex Passion to be a close second. I’m not going to wear the Lyric because it won’t work for my ear canal. I’ll write more on that later.

Heres an example of a negative reaction that I found at hohadvocates.org forum

Heres an article and a review of a clinical study of the audibility extender from The Hearing Journal

Another more technical article about frequency transpositioning in general

I have a couple questions for my great readers:

Which hearing aids do you wear? Are you happy with them? - How do they help change your life for the better? What don’t you like about them?

Did you pay for them out of pocket? Were you able to get financial assistance from Insurance or other sources? Is the current recession affecting your choice to buy a hearing aid?

If you want to let me know anonymously, email me at davidsigismund@gmail.com. All information shared with me is confidential and private. Otherwise, just post here. Thank you for reading this blog. Your opinions matter to me.

Mind altering substances of many kinds may have something to teach us but they’ve been mostly dismissed, demonized, and cast into broad legal categories that aren’t meaningful.

I had a curious experience a number years ago with one of these schedule 1 substances that led to a bit of an epiphany. No, I didn’t discover the meaning of everything; nor did I experience some radical realization that I needed to join Scientology to save my thetan. My discovery was far more pragmatical and relevant.

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From the point of view of a hearing impaired person, the iPhone sucks. The features that would make the phone more accessible to the hearing impaired are within the internal chip’s capabilities but they have been purposely crippled by the software that runs the phone.

Paula Rosenthal at Hearing Exchange has this to say,

Apple’s new iPhone is not hearing aid compatible on microphone or telecoil settings. Complaints have been filed with the FCC because HLAA believes that Apple, when designing the phone, could have tested it for hearing aid compatibility implemented standards to make it accessible to hearing aid and cochlear implant users.

A hearing aid like Oticon’s Epoq is Bluetooth enabled: it’ll take sound from an MP3 player or phone (or both) and route the sound wirelessly right into the ears. No headphones, no interference, and because they are tailored to fit, they sound great too. However, Steve Jobs has decided to cripple the iphones nascent features so that the iPhone supports mono, call only Bluetooth. i am not part of the “i” in iPhone.

Thanks to David at Hearing Mojo for bringing this to my attention. Check out this forum discussion at MacRumors and go to the iPhone discussion area and tell them what you think. Also see this locked up thread at Apple’s iPhone discussion area.You can also call Apple’s PR Department at (408) 974-2042 or write Steve Jobs.

For the more technically inclined check out Live Journals “Hearing Aid Hacking”.

A new privately held, venture backed company named Insound Medical has developed a very interesting new “hearing solution” called the Lyric (its funny that they avoid “hearing aid” at all costs- most companies are doing this in one way or another). Developed by ENT physicians and audiologists, this new hearing aid rests very close to the tympanic membrane. No surgery is required for this invisible hearing aid. It’s placement minimizes occlusion (like talking inside of a barrel) and feedback. When the battery dies the device dies- usually about 120 days. The user can control the volume or turn it on and off via a magnetic adjustment tool. The Lyric can fit the ear canals of about 75% of the people out there.

Downsides to this hearing aid: these aids aren’t waterproof, limited frequency range and power, and the pricing information, which is really a subscription based fee, is opaque.

Things I like:

1) invisible hearing device

2)minimizes the effect of sounding like I’m “talking inside of a barrel”

3)new, creative idea from a small company when consolidation seems to be the trend.

4)built with lots of input from hearing impaired users. The device uses analog sound which might prove itself over digital.

5)uses your own ear to naturally draw the sound toward the hearing aid

Who can Wear Lyric?

Karl Strom, Editor-in-Chief at The Hearing Review, has an interesting top 10 list- focusing on the big news for 2007 in in the hearing health industry. He knows these are cheesy USA Today Style but does them anyway. I’ll comment on some of these in later posts but here we go:

1) Sonova-GN deal is blocked, putting into question future consolidation. Announced in October 2006, the $2.6 billion purchase of GN’s hearing care divisions by Sonova (formerly the Phonak Group) represented the biggest acquisition in industry history that would have resulted in the industry’s largest company. Just when it looked like the deal was to be finalized, in March, a German court nixed it on grounds that it would have created a German oligopoly (watch for this new exciting game by Parker Bros coming to a toystore near you). The result: not only was the deal quashed, but it also complicates any further mergers or acquisitions between large companies with significant market shares in Germany. GN will retain its hearing care divisions.

2) Mini-BTE revolution continues. BTEs—thanks to open-fit, over-the-ear, and receiver-in-the-canal aids—now constitute half the US market (about 51%) after making up 26.4% of the market in 2004 and less than one-fifth of the market in the 80s and 90s.

3) Wireless and younger users. BTE hearing aids have not only become instant-fit devices, but are increasingly linked to a constellation of communication devices like cell phones, MP3 players, and even the other hearing aid in a binaural fitting. The big question: Will these devices (combined with mini-BTEs) attract a new, younger user population and/or reduce stigma-related issues?

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I’ve been wearing Resound Canta 7 hearing aids for three years now and I have nothing but praise to give them. However, I am in the market to check out the latest technology available in digital hearing aids and I’ll be trying out many different brands. Its usually an obsessive and vapid practice to check on the latest technology when it comes to computers, cameras, ipods, e.t.c. Its often the case that one can be perfectly satisfied with a first generation ipod or a tv that’s several years older. Steve Jobs would tell us otherwise. When it comes to hearing technology I feel differently- because they provide such a massive quality of life difference – I try the newest thing every three or so years to see if a tangible difference can be made with the “ latest cutting edge, smartest hearing aid ever!”.

There are several new (at-least in their honed conception) concepts that I’m very excited to try. One of those is called “transpositioning”. That’s a mouthful for those who don’t speak in esoteric scientific tongues. The gist of it: the hearing aid can take the higher frequencies, those that I don’t hear as well as lower ones, and shift them down an octave so that they are available to me.

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Though I couldn’t disagree more with some of her arguments, I’m glad that Erin Biba, at Wired Magazine, chose to touch upon (with her limited perspective) some of the issues with hearing aid technology and their limitations, perversely high cost, and evolving stigma. The article is part of an expose called “Why Things Suck: The 33 Things That Make us Crazy”. I gave a response on at the magazine. I encourage anyone to share their thoughts and its nice to see the media taking on this issue when it does.

Interestingly, Wired Magazine has other articles that praise hearing device technology instead of trashing it. Like this one on hearing aids and their ability to work with MP3 players and phones. Or check out this report touching on how hearing aids reduce the effort that the brain expends understanding speech in noise.