They would line up at 7 a.m., wait all day and spend their food money to get there – all to gain the ability to hear.

“It was incredible, absolutely incredible,” Ginny Smith said.

“It was overwhelming,” Rick Silverman added.

Smith and Silverman, partners from American Hearing Care in Orange Park, were referring to a four-day mission trip they took to Honduras in December, where more than 2,500 hearing aids were provided to 1,266 people. Because of this mission, many adults and children in Honduras are now able to hear.

“It was giving hearing to people who couldn’t hear before,” Smith said. “We saw them hear for the first time.”

Both Smith and Silverman described instances where they witnessed children hear their parents’ voices for the first time. Some family members even seemed to be more excited about the kids getting the hearing aids, Silverman said.

“Mothers were crying, so the volunteers started to cry. I cried,” Smith said, tearing up at the memory. “It was so moving and so touching and so sad and so happy. Even when I think about it now, I start to cry because they were never given anything before, and now they can hear.”

Now they can hear because of an organization called the Starkey Hearing Foundation, whose mission is “so the world may hear,” according to Smith. Starkey has been manufacturing and giving hearing aids to adults and children around the world who cannot afford them since 1973 through its international and domestic mission program called Hear Now.

Through Hear Now, Starkey has delivered more than 45,000 hearing aids over the past year to South Africa, Bucharest, Turkey, Egypt, Mexico and now Honduras.

–>Read the original article in full on jacksonville.com.

Firstly, I want to to say sorry for not writing much recently and thanks for waiting it out and not unsubscribing from this RSS feed.

Even though I haven’t written much I have not been totally idle. I’ve been building a new part to the site called:

Hearing Aid Market

Don’t know if you remember but I wrote a long time ago asking if people would buy/sell or give hearing aids through this site – a lot of people replied saying that they would. I even managed to put someone who wanted an aid in touch with someone who was giving one away – it was a good start.

So, I am writing this to ask you a massive favour: Could you try out Hearing Aid Market and let me know what you think?

It’s not quite finished yet, I’m still working on a few bits of code and I also need to add text (especially on the about screen). Even though it’s not 100% I would be unbelievably grateful if you could take 15 minutes and register on the site, add a few hearing aids, try the contact us page, browse around, try and break stuff, do whatever you want! All of the user accounts and hearing aids will be deleted before it gets released to the general public so feel free to sign up as Mickey Mouse or whatever.

The address is: http://market.deafness-and-hearingaids.net/

If you can spare 15 minutes to give it a go then please, please give honest feedback. If you think it stinks then please tell me! All feedback to steve@deafness-and-hearingaids.net

And, finally, a big thanks to Sarah for testing it already 

Scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University have discovered that hearing loss leads to a remodelling of the brain in which auditory regions are overtaken by the sensory system that corresponds to touch. This cross-model plasticity could explain why some people with hearing loss struggle with therapies. Alex Meredith, lead scientist on the study stated, “Our study indicates that hearing deficits in adult animals result in a conversion of their brain’s sound processing centres to respond to another sensory modality, making the interpretation of residual hearing even more difficult.” Even if a person retains some ability to hear, the brain restructuring makes it difficult to process sounds.

Pepsi are at it again. Not content with showing a totally silent ad during the Superbowl that features two deaf characters using ASL (with subtitles) – they have produced four other videos that are, frankly, fantastic. I think Pepsi are doing a really great job with this ad campaign – they are showing the deaf community in a very positive light and are doing wonders for awareness.

Whilst Pepsi clearly have one eye on marketing their product I cannot say how great I think this campaign is – only positives can come from this. Well done Pepsi.

The Patriots fan is played by Keith Wann, a deaf culture comedian, and the Giants fan is played by Justin Callaway, a deaf actor.

I walked into the office yesterday morning and walked straight into a conversation between a few people. I said hello and answered a question from one of them and then walked over to my desk. I took my coat off, grabbed my cup to make a tea (I’m English, we do a lot of tea), turned around and….

I got the look from a few people

That look that means I instantly know that someone has spoken to me and I didn’t hear them.

I’m not sure I can describe the look but if you’re hard of hearing that I bet you know what I’m talking about? The look is kind of part embarrassment, part indignation and part amusement. In fact, I don’t really know what it is but the look is always the same, no matter who’s doing it. The picture on the left is about the closest I could find!

I’ve been getting the look for years. It used to annoy me a lot when I was younger, I would get really upset and either storm off or have a bit of a go at the person giving it. But I’ve learned to brush it off, in the office yesterday I just said, “you what?”, answered the question after it was repeated and went to get my tea.

One thing I still don’t get though is why do I still get the look? I mean, everyone knows I’m partially deaf and I wear hearing aids – certainly most of the people having the conversation in the office yesterday morning know. So what is the look for? Is it because they don’t know how to respond after I’ve not heard them? Are they too embarrassed to speak up and re-ask the question? Did they think I was ignoring them on purpose? Was it just funny that I didn’t hear? Guess there’s only one way to find out, ask them.

Do you ever get the look? How do you handle it?

A swedish study indicates that simple treatment with oestrogen stimulating drugs may be useful in combating hearing loss.

The researchers studied the impact of the female oestrogen hormone. They found that one of two receptors the female oestrogen sex hormone binds itself to offers good protection against hearing loss in both males and females. The study was based on experiments with mice.

”We found that the beta (oestrogen) receptor protects against hearing loss”, said Barbara Canlon, a professor at the department of physiology and pharmacology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

The study indicated that treatment of hearing loss may be possible with a hormone treatment already on the market and currently used in the treatment of breast cancer, among other diseases.

Treatment with ER-beta binding drugs was found to protect the mice against hearing damage. The researchers concluded that the identification of an auditory-protective role for the ER-beta oestrogen receptor should make it possible to develop some form of hearing loss treatment for people. Much further research is needed before the possible development of such a new treatment.

Seen on http://www.hear-it.org/. Original study posted on www.cordis.europa.eu

America Hears (www.AmericaHears.com) announced it will offer its popular Freedom SIE (speaker-in-the-ear) hearing aids in an array of six colors for fashion-conscious consumers demanding up-to-date looks along with high-performance digital hearing assistance. The new hearing aids now are available in off-white, slate-grey, ebony, cobalt-blue and ruby-red in addition to the original flesh-toned version.

Henry S. Smith, CEO, said consumers accustomed to colorful, elegantly designed, digital “lifestyle” products such as iPods and slick new cell phones are no longer settling for “your father’s hearing aid.”

“Baby boomers who grew up along with the consumer electronics industry, especially the millions of audio enthusiasts out there, are much more comfortable wearing hearing aids than earlier generations,” Smith said. “In fact, many are so proud to be leading the trend they often want to show off their new hearing aids. America Hears has responded with a sleek new design in a range of flattering colors.”

This is from an AmericaHears press release.

The Signpost website is a great resource for anyone who wants to learn BSL.

They have a fingerspelling video tutorial that goes through the alphabet – you can zoom the video in and out, you can view it in slow-motion and you can also view left of right-handed spelling. More impressively there is another option that allows you to type in a word and it will be finger-spelt back to you – again there are left/right, zoom and slo-mo options.

Singpost also have a learn-a-sign-a-day video. Every weekday a new sign is shown for you to learn – what I really like about this is that alongside the video is a textual description of the sign. For example, today’s sign is Cupidand the textual description is, “One arm is bent at the elbow near the body with the other held out away from the body. Splay the fingers then using the middle finger of each hand curl onto the thumb and flick out from the thumb. This is displaying the bow and arrow action.”. This a great help when the sign is complicated and difficult follow.http://www.signpostbsl.com/

I got fitted with a new pair of hearing aids the other day (more on these soon) and one thing that really struck me almost straight away was how much quieter silence is with them on.

Seems like a weird thing to say. Silence is silence, right? It’s no noise. That’s what I thought but the difference in my perception of a silent room while wearing my old Starkey Destinys and wearing these new aids is amazing.

What I used to think was a silent room was actually being filled with tiny buzzes and sounds from things like computer fans, people tapping, shuffling etc. It’s difficult to explain but now that I’m wearing new aids I can really appreciate just how much ambient noise I was hearing that I didn’t need to. That’s not to say that I’m hearing less with my new aids, I’m just hearing a lot more of the sounds I want to hear and much less of the ones that I don’t.

With my new aids environments seems calmer. There’s less of a rush of competing sounds. Less of a cacophony. Which is fantastic because when someone is talking or there’s another sound that I actually want to hear then there’s less sounds competing for my attention.

When I used to think about noise reduction features in hearing aids I always thought about them reducing, for example, music at a party so that you could hear speech, or reducing road noise while your driving. In the last week I’ve realised that noise reduction does much more, so much more – all the little noises count too.

Silence really is golden.

Preliminary results from studies in Belgium and Virginia offer hope for the future for hearing impaired people. Estimates suggest that approximately 500 million people worldwide suffer from hearing loss.

Belgian scientists have identified the TGBF1 gene as the culprit in one of the most common forms of hearing loss in adults, otosclerosis. Otoschlerosis is a progressive form of hearing loss associated with the build-up of growing bone in the middle ear, blocking sound waves from reaching the inner ear. The current treatment options include hearing aids or surgery. The researchers are hoping that the identification of the TGBF1 gene will lead to even better otosclerosis treatments in the future.

Many types of hearing loss are caused by deterioration of the hair cells in the inner ear. The hair cells process and transmit sound to the brain. Until now it has been considered impossible to regenerate hair cells in the ear once they disappear due to aging or exposure to excessive noise. But a new investigation found that regeneration of hair cells in the ear and, thus, restoration of hearing may be possible.

Scientists at the University of Virginia have done research into the KCNQ4 gene, which, when mutating, cause genetically conditioned hearing loss. The scientists constructed a correct form of the gene and created a gene therapy delivery system that successfully transferred the KCNQ4 into human hair cells harvested from the inner ear.

“This proof-of-principle experiment showed that the system we developed works, and that KCNQ4 gene therapy might be an effective strategy to cure deafness in patients who carry mutations of that gene”, stated Professor Jeffrey Holt of the University of Virginia.

From The Hearing Review.