Your Health Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Hearing Loss’

1. There are many common symptoms of dyslexia. Some of these include a child who is late to recognize letters, has weak spelling, has trouble learning to recognize words, has difficult rhyming, and reads slowly and deliberately. It is important to remember that a complete examination is needed to truly determine rather or not there is a dyslexic problem.

2. Research has informed us that dyslexia is a problem within the brain, but we do not know exactly what causes the disorder. For unknown reasons, letters and sounds are not able to be remembered easily. It does not mean that they are not smart, because many of these children have the ability to speak with excellent vocabulary and understand text that is read to them. However, they may have a difficult time with reading, spelling and writing even after becoming adults.

3. No two dyslexic people are alike. One may have a slight case of dyslexia, only struggling with one aspect of the learning disability. Another person may have dyslexia on a much greater level, causing many learning problems. To take this one step further, another individual can have dyslexia and also other learning disabilities such as Attention Deficit Disorder. Do not assume, therefore, that you understand the full scope of a person’s problems because they have dyslexia. Only a professional is able to truly diagnosis learning disabilities.

4. Dyslexia is either present at birth or is acquired due to hearing loss. However, because dyslexia is related to writing and reading words and other forms of communication, parents often do not know that there are problems until their children are older.

5. People do not outgrow dyslexia, because the source of the problem is within the brain. However, many people learn to overcome the obstacles of dyslexia and are able to read and write well and have successful careers. Because the disability has become recognized and understood, it has become much easier to get help for dyslexia.

6. The main problem with this disability is not a visual problem, as many assume. The problem with dyslexia is the processing of sounds. For example, just because a child reverses their letters sometimes does not mean that he or she is dyslexic. Many children do this when they are first learning to write. It could be an indication of a bigger problem, but is certainly not enough evidence to give a diagnosis.

7. There are many ways to help dyslexics today. For example, online grammar checker has been found to be extremely beneficial to dyslexic people. This is because even though dyslexics make many spelling errors, even ones that they recognize, they do not know how to correct the mistakes. With the use of a spelling checker, people are able to see what they have done wrong and how to correct the mistakes. Another way they can be helped is through text to speech online programs. These programs read typed words back to the writer, letting them know when they have made errors in their writing.

8. Contrary to popular belief, boys are not necessarily more prone to dyslexia than girls. Studies show us that there is a fairly equal number of boys and girls who have the disability. The only thing that may cause this to appear so, is because boys tend to act out more as a result of their problems, while girls will often try to hide their problem quietly.

9. Studies vary of how much of the population suffers from this disorder. Some studies show figures as high as 17% of the population, while others believe there is only about 4-8% of people with the disability.

10. People with dyslexia tend to suffer with low self esteem because of their learning problems. The best way to help them is to give them much praise, credit and encouragement. Understanding that they have a disability, do not expect too much, but do everything to set them up for success.

We’ve all seen the old tv shows or movies or sometimes see a comedy routine that showed a grandpa with a primitive hearing device to help him with his terrible hearing. In the routine, the senior citizen used a huge cone or funnel device that was about three times as big as his head which he would stick in his ear to amplify the sound. And if I remember right, it never worked very well.

I don’t know if that method of supplementing hearing was every popular but we have had conventional hearing aids around for a long time. In a way to a casual observer, the hearing aid seems to do the opposite of what it is supposed to do. That is because if you see someone wearing a hearing aid, the device blocks the opening to the ear. So it would seem that keeps the person from hearing well when the opposite is actually the truth.

A very basic hearing aid is actually a pretty uncomplicated device. You may want to think of it as a PA system in reverse. Instead of taking sound and amplifying it over a large space to many, it amplifies it into a very small space to just one person. But the base components of the hearing aid are a microphone, a battery and a small amplifying circuit that makes the sound louder and easier to understand and then transmits that sound back into your inner ear where it can be clearly recognized.

This somehat basic design served for a long time under the analog method of sound transmission. But the design has been adapted to a number of different ways that simple design if used for different kind of patients and to deal with different kinds of hearing loss. For example, in an earlier design, the entire device except for the amplification transmitter existed in a small box worn in the pocket with a wire connecting to a small earpiece. This hearing aid looked like a small transistor radio and allowed the box to be large enough for ease of access to change the battery.

With time, this basic design has been expanded, adapted and made smaller to fit behind the ear. Analog hearing aids are still around but now hearing aid patrons can also look into getting a digital hearing device which translates the sounds it picks up into a digital signal and then into the ear. The value here is that digitization has allowed hearing aids to get very small so many hearing aids can reside easily just inside the ear where they are not so conspicuous. In fact, in some cases, very small hearing aids can be implanted into the ear in such a way that nobody even knows it is there.

Greater control has been added to both analog and digital hearing aids so the wearer has the ability to adjust the quality of sound coming in as well as to filter out surface noise and deal with different frequencies differently depending on what the hearing need is. All of these have made hearing aids better and more adaptable to may user’s needs. You can only expect that medical technology will continue to enhance hearing aid technology even more in the future. Hearing aids in the future will be even smaller and work even better.