News & Specials
The power of a kiss
The simple act of affection with a kiss can lead to deafness. By giving an infant, child, or even a grown adult a kiss on the ear can cause the recipient to have troubling ear symptoms like sensitivity to sound, ringing, distortion, and aural fullness. A kiss on the ear opening creates a strong suction force that pulls on the fragile eardrum causing hearing loss. This condition has become known as the “cochlear ear-kiss injury”. A kiss to an infants ear is much more dangerous than to an adult ear because of the damage to the delicate ear structures. There are two dangers in a kiss to the ear: the level of noise from the kiss and the pressure changes within the...
Read MoreTurn Your Hearing into Listening!
If dogs can hear frequencies up to 45,000 Hz, bats up to 110,000Hz, and beluga whales up to 123,000 Hz, what makes humans so special? The normal frequency hearing range for humans is between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz. The difference between humans and animals is our ability to listen, interpret, and make meaning of the sounds heard. The conversion process of sound into meaning within the brain occurs instantaneously. Douglas L. Beck, AuD and Anjali Bhatara, PhD report that “although human hearing is relatively limited, human listening is extraordinary”. How do we maximize our auditory skills? The brain can be trained through the sounds of music. Trained...
Read MoreWhy Audiologists still matter.
by Ross Cushing, Au.D., A&A Hearing Group More and more, hearing aids are being sold online, through catalogs, and directly to the consumer, bypassing the hearing healthcare provider. If your mailbox is like mine around Christmas time, it is getting filled with ton of catalogs. And if you like gadgets, like I do, you undoubtedly saw some of the same advertising for hearing aids in many of the catalogs from gadget distributers (like Hammacher Schlemmer). This is just one of the many ways hearing aids are now being sold directly to consumers as an over-the-counter product. For the sake of discussion, let’s act as if it were legal to distribute hearing aids in...
Read MoreIt’s music to my ears and brain
Moderate hearing loss affects 30% of people by the age of 60, but research and studies suggest that cognitively demanding activities, such as playing a musical instrument, can delay the effects of aging. According to a study published in the journal Psychology and Aging, lifelong musicians have better hearing well into old age. In this study, Toronto researchers performed hearing tests on 74 adult musicians and of 89 non-musicians from ages 18 to 91 years old and compared results. Researchers defined a musician as someone who started musical training by the age of 16 years and has continued playing until the day of testing; a non-musician has not played a musical...
Read MoreA&A Featured in Bethesda Magazine
The article below was originally published in Bethesda Magazine. Question: How do I know if I have a hearing loss? Dr. Mary Adams: Hearing loss is the third most common health problem in the United States, yet many people are reluctant to admit that they have a problem. An easy self-test to see if you might have a hearing deficit is to ask yourself these questions: Do you often feel like people are “mumbling”? Do you find yourself frequently asking “What?” during conversations? Do others complain that you have the TV too loud? Do you have trouble hearing at noisy restaurants or parties? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should get a hearing exam...
Read MoreMild hearing loss affecting your brain
Hearing loss affects a person’s personality, cognition, and hearing acuity. Hearing loss can cause daily frustration, irritability, and stress in a person’s life. When senses are altered, the brain reorganizes and adjusts. Losing the ability to hear can accelerate gray matter atrophy in auditory areas of the brain. Hearing aids can not only improve hearing but can also preserve the brain. People with untreated hearing loss have less gray matter in the auditory cortex which may begin when hearing ability declines. Studies have found that people with untreated hearing loss have lower gray matter density of the auditory areas and less brain activity when...
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