5 Myths about hearing loss

(with recognition to AARP)

5 Myths About Hearing Loss

One of the country's leading audiologists sounds off about a condition that will eventually affect almost all of us

by By Craig Newman, Ph.D., June/July 2015

For a long time, hearing loss carried a huge stigma. People didn't want to be seen as old — and hearing aids were a visible sign that they didn't have all their original faculties intact. These days, with the likes of Rob Lowe, Halle Berry, Jodie Foster and Bill Clinton not just wearing hearing aids but talking about them, that stigma has all but disappeared. Everyone is walking around with something in their ears anyway — headphones, ear buds, a Bluetooth device. Folks may as well use technology that helps them hear.

As section head of audiology at the Cleveland Clinic, I see a lot of patients with misconceptions about hearing loss. Here are a few of the most common.

Myth: Hearing loss happens only to old people.

Truth: In fact, 40 percent of the 48 million Americans with hearing loss are younger than 60. Hearing loss does accelerate with age: Almost 30 percent of those between ages 50 and 59 suffer from some degree of impaired hearing in one or both ears; 45 percent of people between 60 and 69 have impaired hearing; and three-quarters of those older than 70 do.

Myth: Your hearing loss was caused by all those rock concerts years ago.

Truth: They certainly didn't help, but there are many other contributors, including the normal aging process, genetics, medications, smoking, a poor diet and diabetes. All of these destroy the hair cells in the inner ear — and it's the hair cells that send auditory signals to your brain. Once hair cells are damaged, they're damaged. There's no approved drug that will regrow them in humans, though researchers have been able to regenerate the cells in birds and mice.

Myth: If other people would just talk louder, you would hear just fine.

Truth: Hearing is like the body's biological microphone. If you've ever heard anyone speak into a microphone that's damaged, it might be plenty loud, but there's a level of distortion that makes it hard to understand. The goal of today's hearing aid technology is both to make sounds louder and to reduce background noise and extract the more important features of sound to clarify speech. Other technology can turn your hearing aid into a Bluetooth device; some options let you stream directly from your cellphone to your hearing aid, not just for calls but for music apps such as Pandora.

Myth: As long as you can hear some sound, it's OK to wait to get hearing aids.

Truth: The longer you wait, the harder your hearing loss will be to treat. That's because the auditory system in your brain isn't stimulated, and so the brain stops recognizing sound. That's why people with hearing loss who wait to get hearing aids sometimes find that they don't help as much. Fortunately, our brains can "relearn" to hear, thanks to neuroplasticity — the fairly recent finding that the brain can reprogram itself into very old age with the proper stimulation. Practically speaking, that means you have to teach your brain to hear again, by wearing the hearing aids regularly.

Myth: Hearing loss is annoying, but it doesn't really affect your health.

New research from Johns Hopkins University shows that hearing loss may increase your risk of developing dementia. The upside is that research also shows you can improve memory and mood by correcting the hearing loss. And a study that just came out in the journal Laryngoscope found that hearing aids can improve balance. Falling is such a big problem for older adults — and some scientists are now suggesting that hearing aids could be used to treat problems with balance. — As told to Gabrielle de Groot Redford

Growing old gracefully - a must read article

Exercise the years away — how older athletes are winding back the clock

BY GRETCHEN REYNOLDS, JULY 16 2015, 05:43

OLDER athletes can be much younger, physically, than their age suggests, according to a new study of participants in the Senior Olympics. It found that the athletes’ fitness age is typically 20 years or more younger than their chronological age.

Fitness age is a concept developed by researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, who took note of epidemiological data showing people with above-average cardiovascular fitness generally had longer life spans than people with lower aerobic fitness. At any age, fit people were relatively younger than were people who were out of shape.

But since the researchers decided their insight was not useful unless people could easily determine their fitness age, they used a mobile exercise laboratory to test the fitness and health of more than 5,000 Norwegian adults.

They used this data to create a sophisticated algorithm that could rapidly calculate someone’s aerobic capacity and relative fitness age based on sex, resting heart rate, waist size and exercise routine.

They then set up an online calculator at worldfitnesslevel.org that people could use to determine their fitness age.

Pamela Peeke, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland and board member of the foundation that runs the National Senior Games — the Senior Olympics — and a competitive triathlete, took note of the Norwegian study.

Biologically, it seems, she is a spring chicken. When she plugged her personal data into the online fitness calculator, it told her that her fitness age is 36. Chronologically, she is 61.

She wondered whether other older athletes would be similarly youthful, and had a plan to find out.

Contacting the scientist behind the fitness age calculator, Ulrik Wisloff, she suggested that together they study a particular group of older people — the participants in this year’s Senior Olympics.

The Senior Olympics are a biennial competition for athletes older than 50, and consist of track and field, swimming and pickleball, among other sports. To compete, athletes must qualify regionally.

Nearly 10,000 men and women aged from 50 to 100 qualified for this year’s Games, which began last week in and around Minneapolis-St Paul.

Senior Olympians are not professional athletes but most train frequently, Peeke knew. They tend to be more physically active than other people of the same chronological age.

To see just how their lifestyle affects their biological age, she and Wisloff asked all the qualifiers to complete the online calculator. They set up a site so their data could be isolated.

Many of the participants complied, producing more than 4,200 responses.

The results were impressive. While the athletes’ average chronological age was 68, their average fitness age was 43, a remarkable 25 years less.

"I had expected a big difference, since these people have trained for years (but) I was surprised that it was this big," Wisloff says.

The effect was similar for male and female athletes, he points out. Virtually every athlete had a lower fitness age than their chronological age. Peeke and Wisloff have not yet determined whether certain Senior Olympians, particularly those in endurance events such as distance running and swimming, have a younger fitness age in general than those in less vigorous sports. But they plan to parse the data extensively to answer that question and to look for other patterns among the Senior Olympians. They expect to publish their findings soon.

The takeaway message of the data should be inspiring, says Peeke, who was to compete in the triathlon at the Senior Olympics.

"A majority of the athletes at the Senior Games didn’t begin serious training until quite late in life, including me," she says. "We may have been athletes in high school or college. But then, for most of us, jobs and families and other commitments got in the way, at least for a while."

Few Senior Olympians returned to or began exercising and training regularly until middle age or older, she says."So you can start anytime. It’s never too late."

A new beginning : Growing old gracefully

We are now fast nearing the end of the year and have just past the 2 year mark of the first people moving into Featherbrooke Hills retirement village.  It was a new beginning for all of us and as life goes on the new year will again bring new beginnings to some of us and closure to others.

This medium is just my contribution to those of you that wander in the electronic age.  We have just seen the first of a printed news letter for the Village "The Village Herald" It is a commercially funded effort and does not cost any of the residents or the village any money.

This Electronic newsletter is also totally free and not funded in anyway by any commercial venture
It will become a mouthpiece for any resident wishing to enlighten us with their version of growing old gracefully.   Feel free to comment, write us interesting stories, share with us any valuable information regarding life in general and retirement village living in particular.

If you have an email address feel free to subscribe to this publication on the right hand side and you will get an email as and when anything new has been posted.