Keeping Your Pets and Kids Safe

Hearing aids and batteries can attract pets and small children

One thing young children and pets have in common is that they like to explore the world with their mouths. For pets, hearing aids may appear to be tempting toys, especially if they are left on and whistling. To very young kids, a pair of modern-day, brightly colored hearing aids or button-sized hearing aid batteries might look like candy.

Hearing aid batteries can be deadly if swallowed

More likely than not, an accidentally swallowed hearing aid battery will pass through an animal or a child’s digestive system whole, and generally poses no danger. But serious problems can occur if the battery lodges in the esophagus, or if the pet or child has bitten into the battery. The leaked chemicals from the battery can seriously burn the esophagus.  If not treated in a timely manner, swallowing a hearing aid battery can be life-threatening.

Hearing aids are expensive to replace

Thankfully these medical emergencies are rare.  Nevertheless, almost every hearing care professional can tell you about patients who brought in a hearing aid broken into tiny pieces that they wrestled out of their dogs’ mouths. Even if the damaged aid is within the warranty period, it could still cost hundreds of dollars to replace.

The best place to store hearing aids and batteries are in drawers or cabinets with doors that pets and small children cannot reach. Many people like to keep their hearing aids on the bathroom counter-top or bedroom dresser. But hearing aids or batteries left on such open surfaces can be accidentally knocked onto the floor where they become targets for curious pets and toddlers. It’s also important to keep them far away from spaces where you keep foods and medication in order to prevent confusion. Even adults have been known to accidentally pop a hearing aid in their mouth instead of the nut or candy they intended.

Just as you would keep your cleaning supplies and other dangerous household items away from young children and pets, hearing aids and batteries should also be carefully stored to prevent dangerous accidents, as well as avoidable expenses. Also, don’t discard your used hearing aid batteries in trash cans where animals could get to them. When it comes to hearing aids, the old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure definitely holds true.

HEARING HEALTH & BRAIN HEALTH 

( Connected?)

A new study shows there is a higher risk of accelerated cognitive decline due to withdrawal from social activities for individuals with hearing loss who do not actively use hearing aids.

It's widely known that as we get older, most of us experience some decline in our cognitive faculties. We tend to forget things, it takes longer to learn new things and it's harder to concentrate and focus.  This cognitive decline is usually a normal part of aging, unfortunately. We can't stop it, but there are things we can do to slow it down.

Maintain your brain: stay stimulated

According to research, by far the single most important thing we can do to maintain our brains as we age is to stay mentally engaged, through an active social life with friends, family and business associates.

Healthy hearing is a key part of staying involved with people and the world around us. But as we age, for many of us, our hearing ability declines, along with cognition. Is there a connection between hearing loss and cognitive decline? For many years, researchers have speculated about this relationship. For the first time, a new study[1] has documented hearing loss and cognitive decline among a group of nearly 4000 volunteers over a 25-year period.

Click and read the entire Study

 https://eorder.sheridan.com/3_0/app/orders/5336/article.php# 

Feeling Fatigued....Check Out Signia Primax

Binaural Hearing....Happens with the Brain!

When you hear a sound in both ears, it’s like hearing the same sound twice. This helps your brain create a better perceptual image of the sound.

Binaural squelch

In situations where there is both noise and speech, hearing with both ears helps your brain give speech sounds preference over noise. This makes speech seem louder than it really is.

Binaural directed listening

In noisy situations, with many different sounds coming from different places, hearing with both ears helps your brain pick out the one sound source you’re interested in and focus on it.

When you have hearing loss, these effects are significantly reduced.

Signia – smart hearing aids inspired by the way we hear naturally.

To design our hearing aids, Signia engineers drew inspiration from how you hear naturally.   Just like the brain uses sound input from both ears, our primax hearing aids share and exchange signals received from both hearing aids.

Similar to the natural binaural processing in the brain, the two hearing aids can make more intelligent processing decisions together.   By emulating the effects of binaural hearing, primax hearing aids can deliver better clarity, richness of sound, and  a greater ability to know where sound is coming from.

This is why primax hearing aids are clinically proven to deliver better than normal hearing, with less listening effort.

Squinting with Your Ears

04/21/2016

Hearing is a complex process and hard work for your brain. This is particularly true if you have hearing loss. Everything we hear has to be constantly evaluated to separate the relevant from the unimportant. The more sounds accompanying a sentence the harder it is to understand.

A high level of hearing strain can cause you to develop symptoms of stress. You feel tired, drained, and may find it hard to concentrate. The key to relief is hearing aids able to single out a target speaker’s voice from ambient noise to such an extent that listening effort is significantly reduced.

Hearing requires effort

Many daily situations can present enormous challenges for those with hearing loss, whether or not they wear hearing aids. Background noises make it more difficult to follow your conversation partner. The busy family breakfast, a conversation at a noisy train station, talking with colleagues in the cafeteria or chatting in a street café ― these situations require straining to hear what others are saying. Some people described the sensation as “squinting with your ears”. No wonder that you feel exhausted by the end of each day. You have listening fatigue.

These are exactly the sort of challenging hearing situations hearing aids with advanced technology can help. They can pick up the voice of someone speaking to you and elevate it above interfering sounds in the environment. It doesn’t matter whether your conversation partner is standing directly in front of or next to you, or sitting way down a table with other people ― with the right hearing aids, you’ll hear their voice clearly and distinctly.

Reverberation poses an additional challenge

Besides noisy public places, locations with reverberation make it harder to understand speech. Rooms with hard surfaces, such as bare walls or marble floors, reflect more sound and cause greater reverberation than rooms with carpet, drapes, or furniture to absorb sound waves. Unpleasant and distracting sound reflections not only occur in places where you only spend a short time, such as large foyers or entrance halls, but also in training rooms and classrooms. For hearing aids to be effective in these situations, they need to reduce these negative effects in environments requiring you to pay particular attention to what’s being heard. The speech signals have to be made clear and crisp in order to further reduce listening effort for wearers.

We have the hearing aids you need

If brain strain from struggling to hear all day long is a problem for you, we have the answer. In the coming weeks, we are going to reveal our latest hearing aid technology platform, which has been clinically-proven to alleviate these issues. Please visit us again for all the details ― coming soon!