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a hearing aid fitting appointment with a audiologist showing the patient how to put in his hearing aid

What Happens During a Hearing Aid Fitting and Follow Up

Choosing hearing aids can feel like the biggest step in improving your hearing. Once you’ve selected the devices, you may expect to put them on, turn them on and head home. Hearing aids need more preparation than that. They have to be programmed for your hearing, checked while you’re wearing them and adjusted so they feel comfortable. A hearing aid fitting is the appointment where those pieces come together. Your audiologist sets up the devices, verifies how they’re performing and teaches you how to use them. You’ll then try them during your regular activities and return for follow up care based

The Ontario Infant Hearing Program: A Parent’s Guide to Newborn Hearing Screening

Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash Few things matter more to new parents than knowing their baby is healthy. Among the screening tests offered shortly after birth, the newborn hearing screening is one of the most important yet often overlooked. Hearing plays a critical role in a child’s early development, supporting speech and language acquisition, communication, learning, and social interaction. Identifying any hearing differences as early as possible gives families and healthcare professionals the best opportunity to provide timely support. Ontario has had a universal newborn hearing screening program in place since the early 2000s, delivered through the Infant Hearing Program

What Your Audiologist Needs to Know About Your Health and Daily Life

A hearing test is an important part of understanding your hearing, but it doesn’t tell your audiologist everything. Your health, daily routine, listening environments, and personal goals can all influence the type of hearing care that may work best for you. Knowing what to tell your audiologist helps them see the full picture. A recent health change, a new challenge at work, or difficulty following conversations in restaurants may seem unrelated to your appointment, but these details can provide useful context. The more specific you can be, the easier it is to build a hearing care plan around your real life.

A man holding his ear, showing signs of Tinnitus pain

Understanding Tinnitus And Why It Happens

Tinnitus is often described as ringing in the ears, but it can sound different from person to person. Some people hear buzzing, humming, hissing, clicking, or even a whooshing sound, even when there is no outside noise causing it. For some, it comes and goes. For others, it can become a constant background sound. Tinnitus is also more common than many people realize. More than 40% of Canadians will experience tinnitus at some point in their lives, and for some, it can become bothersome enough to affect sleep, concentration, mood, and daily comfort. Understanding tinnitus means looking at what it is,

Elderly woman with short white hair, wearing a light blue jacket, leans forward with a hand to her ear, struggling with hearing loss.

How Do You Know If You Have Hearing Loss

Have you started asking people to repeat themselves more often? Maybe conversations in busy restaurants feel harder to follow, or you’ve noticed the television volume creeping higher than everyone else prefers. Hearing loss often develops gradually, which can make the early signs easy to dismiss. What feels like occasional mishearing or background noise frustration may actually be the beginning of a change in your hearing. Because hearing loss can happen slowly, many people do not realize how much they have been missing until someone else points it out. Recognizing the signs early can help you take action sooner, making it easier

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RUPTURED EARDRUM

The eardrum, a thin layer of tissue that separates the ear canal from the middle ear, vibrates when sound waves hit it. In turn, those vibrations pass through the bones of the middle ear and are transformed into electrical signals that are sent to the brain. When the eardrum ruptures (due to very loud noises, ear infections, pressure changes between the inside and outside of the eardrum, injury, and foreign objects inserted into the ear), hearing loss, earache, discharge, and/or loud buzzing noises can result. Inspection of the ear with a otoscope can help determine the extent of damage. Fortunately, any

HOW WELL DO YOU HEAR?

Because enjoying music and watching videos on any number of personal electronic devices are such popular pastimes with so many people, they may want to have their hearing checked out. An “audiometry test” utilizes an “audiometer” to introduce sounds into a headphone (one ear at a time), which the wearer uses to hear a variety of sounds at different intervals. The test enables the hearing professional administering it to determine at what level of intensity of a person can hear. If the individual being tested has any hearing loss, the hearing specialist can suggest ways to correct the problem and avoid

NOT ANOTHER CHICKEN JOKE

Sometimes help comes from the unlikeliest sources, in this case, chickens. It seems that, unlike humans, chickens have the ability to restore lost hearing. In fact, all vertebrates (the defining characteristic of which having a vertebral column, or spine), with the notable exception of mammals, have the same ability to restore their own damaged hearing. In the case of chickens, they have supporting cells in their inner ears that can replace “hair cells” that have been damaged by loud noises or other causes. With this in mind, researchers’ goal is to identify the mechanism behind chickens’ ability to repair harmed hair

PREPARE FOR THE WORST

You never know when you are going to find yourself in a situation where exposure to loud noise is going to pose a threat to your hearing. It is generally recommended that you take steps to safeguard your hearing from prolonged exposure to noise levels of 85 decibels and above. For example, lawnmowers and shop tools generally register about 90 decibels, while chainsaws and drills reach 100 decibels, power saws reach 110 decibels, loud rock concerts regularly hit 115 decibels, race cars come in at 130 decibels, and fireworks/jet engine takeoffs measure 150 decibels. Fortunately, it only takes a pair of

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