Hearing loss...........is snoring a culprit?Access to for South Coast Residents to Cochlear Implant technology Cochlear implants have improved the hearing of millions of people around the world. They are effective, long-term solutions for people with one-sided deafness or with hearing loss whose current hearing aids don’t seem to be working as well as they once did. But until recently, people who could benefit from this marvellous technology have had to travel long distances to treatment centres in Sydney, Canberra or Melbourne. Now people living in the South Coast of NSW can have convenient access to this marvellous technology. The Jervis Bay Hearing Centre, which has clinics conveniently situated at Vincentia and Ulladulla, now offers cochlear implant services. “We can now offer cochlear implants to our clients here in the Shoalhaven, cutting out the longer travel times and making ongoing support much closer to home,” said Alison Chiam, Director of the Jervis Bay Hearing Centre. She made the announcement at a recent celebration to mark the Ulladulla Centre’s 6th anniversary of providing services to the southern part of the Shoalhaven. “No longer will our patients on the South Coast need to travel outside the region to access a complete range of hearing services and technologies,” she said. “Many people in the Shoalhaven who are experiencing difficulties because of poor hearing, will now have new options for improved hearing,” she said. If you would like more information about cochlear implant services, then please call or email us, or drop in to see us in person and speak to our friendly team. Author Alison Chiam is an Audiologist, Artist and Educator. She is an Independent Audiologist in Private Practice and is Principal Audiologist at Jervis Bay Hearing Centre (NSW). Her speciality areas include Hearing rehabilitation, Tinnitus and Sound Intolerance. At the International Tinnitus Seminar in Brazil 2011 she was part of a team who was won the Ted Vernon prize for their ground-breaking work on Tinnitus and Hypercusis. Why Parties are good for your brain! The benefits of hearing technology on cognition cannot be emphasised enough. Past studies have shown that even early stages of hearing loss are linked to cognitive decline. The theory is that when the brain’s ability to process sound is compromised a person’s ability to understand speech declines. Alison Chiam, Audiologist for the Jervis Bay Hearing Centre, commented “We know how important hearing is to cognitive health. In fact, it’s been known for several years that there is a correlation between the presence of hearing loss and accelerated cognitive decline in elderly adults. Additionally the rate at which this happens appears to be faster among those with hearing loss. This has been demonstrated by researcher Frank Lin and other researchers around the world. What had yet to be established was the mechanism, how it happens.” For years, a common theory among the research community has been that the link between hearing loss and cognitive decline is related to a loss of socialisation. People with hearing loss are more likely to avoid social situations out of frustration or embarrassment. Research shows that being in social situations is one of the best things to do to preserve cognitive function. “This is the first time there is evidence that people who have hearing loss, and who use hearing aids are no more at risk of cognitive decline than people with normal hearing,” explains Alison. “The hearing aids act as a protective mechanism against a more accelerated loss of cognition, cementing the hypothesis that the relationship between hearing loss and cognitive decline is related to loss of socialisation. Since hearing aids allow for greater stimulation through socialisation, people stay engaged and active for longer. People with hearing devices are using the cognitive system very actively.” According to Alison, social interaction is key. “One of the most stimulating things you can do is go to a party. The complexity of the environment and having conversations with multiple people is very healthy for the brain. If someone is hesitant to socialise then you might notice them avoiding parties, groups and background noise, dropping out of conversations, guessing answers, nodding when they should be disagreeing. If you know someone who is like this then it might be a lot easier for them to access conversation with some help from a hearing aid. There can be a positive impact on long term brain health by correcting your hearing. The results of recent studies on hearing and cognitive function represent an opportunity to get more people to do something positive about their hearing. “This is probably the most important thing to come out of this research” Alison said. “If we can get more people to take positive action and treat their hearing loss then this is very good for them and their families over the short and the long term” Jervis Bay Hearing Centre understands how to help you with your hearing and provides a step by step support system for helping your brain adapt to processing new information and sounds. We call this our hearing wellness journey and it’s unique to Jervis Bay Hearing Centre. If you would like to be supported to hear better now and into the future, give us a call on 4441 8886 (Vincentia) or 4455 6000 (Ulladulla). Author Alison Chiam is an Audiologist, Artist and Educator. She is an Independent Audiologist in Private Practice and is Principal Audiologist at Jervis Bay Hearing Centre (NSW). Her speciality areas include Hearing rehabilitation, Tinnitus and Sound Intolerance. At the International Tinnitus Seminar in Brazil 2011 she was part of a team who was won the Ted Vernon prize for their ground-breaking work on Tinnitus and Hypercusis. Can sound heal? How can sound improve health? Sound is a vibration and is produced by continuous and regular vibrations. We can use these vibrations in different ways. Firstly, ultrasound, commonly used to assist doctors with diagnosis it is also now being used to treat cancer. High intensity focused ultrasound or HIFU is used to kill cancer cells. Doctors give the treatment using a machine that gives off high frequency sound waves. These waves deliver a strong beam to a specific part of a cancer. Some cells die when this high intensity ultrasound beam is focused directly onto them. Other procedures such as Lithotripsy use shock waves to break up stones in the kidney, bladder, or ureter (tube that carries urine from your kidneys to your bladder) saving thousands of people a year from the scalpel by pulverizing the stones with the high-intensity sound. Sound healing is a wonderful modality. It's has been around for thousands of years. Modern science is adding to and developing new ways of using sound to increase wellbeing and to reduce symptoms of many conditions. We now know that a very low frequency (40Hz) sound delivered through speakers to people with dementia improves their state and we also see temporary improvements in memory. Music therapy has also been shown to improve engagement, memory and wellbeing in patients with Dementia and Alzheimers. And music, of course. Just listening to music is good for you, music that's made with good intention, made with love increases feelings of wellbeing and connectivity, reducing depression . Playing music is even better. We know that musicians have bigger brains and one of the best ways to prevent onset of memory problems like dementia and Alzheimers is to learn how to play a musical instrument. AuthorAlison Chiam is an Audiologist, Artist and Educator. She is an Independent Audiologist in Private Practice and is Principal Audiologist at Jervis Bay Hearing Centre (NSW). Her speciality areas include Hearing rehabilitation, Tinnitus and Sound Intolerance. At the International Tinnitus Seminar in Brazil 2011 she was part of a team who was won the Ted Vernon prize for their ground-breaking work on Tinnitus and Hypercusis. Do men hear better than women?  Are we losing our listening? We spend 60% of our time listening but only retain 25% of the content. It seems that we spend a lot of time doing something we are not very good at. Listening is an active process and is more than simply detecting and perceiving sound from the environment. Listening is about extracting meaning from sound. Listening is work, in our modern world with the noise and information competing for our attention, listening is really hard work, its tiring and its hard to keep focus. Our brains have some pretty neat techniques which help us to listen. One of them is pattern recognition. We recognize patterns to distinguish noise from signal, and we are especially responsive to things that are important to us, our name, our childrens cry or our favourite car motor. Differencing is another technique we use. This is where a sound which is constant and has low or no meaning is ignored. We do this for sounds like the hum of the fridge or if you live next to a train station or a busy road, your awareness of the traffic noises in your environment reduces to almost zero. You literally cease to listen to some sounds. We listen to differences; we discount sounds that remain the same. We have many other filters which help our brain to make sense of our world and to focus on the sounds which provide it meaning or importance. People with long term untreated hearing loss don't use these filtering systems and begin to lose the ability to process sounds in this way. My interest in listening comes from my job as an audiologist, where I help people regain these skills and to support them to do this over time. Sound also places us in space and in time. If you close your eyes right now and clap you will become aware of the size of the room and the type of furnishings in the room from the reverberation and the bouncing of the sound off the surfaces. Keep listening and you become aware of the people and things around you from the micro-noises you're receiving. Sound places us in time as well, because sound always has time embedded in it. When we listen consciously we live fully, connected in space and time to the physical and to the world around us. We become connected to understanding each other. With an oversupply of low quality intrusive information barraging our visual and auditory senses its no wonder we feel strapped for time and resource. It takes less effort to process a neat sound bite instead of extracting meaning from a meandering conversation, debate or discussion. Then to help us to remove the extraneous noise, we isolate ourselves under headphones removing us from our environment and the world around us. Our brain no longer practices its sound extraction techniques and so goes it gets harder and harder. Take a moment folks to listen to the world around you, listen to the wind, the trees, the water and the birds and to silence. Listen consciously in order to live fully and to become connected to space and to time. AuthorAlison Chiam is an Audiologist, Artist and Educator. She is an Independent Audiologist in Private Practice and is Principal Audiologist at Jervis Bay Hearing Centre (NSW). Her speciality areas include Hearing rehabilitation, Tinnitus and Sound Intolerance. At the International Tinnitus Seminar in Brazil 2011 she was part of a team who was won the Ted Vernon prize for their ground-breaking work on Tinnitus and Hypercusis. Do men and women hear differently? Our ears are made not for hearing, but for listening. Listening is an active skill, whereas hearing is passive, listening is something that we have to work at -- it's a relationship with sound. And yet it's a skill that none of us are taught. For example, have you ever considered that there are listening positions, places you can listen from? Here are two of them. Reductive listening is listening "for." It reduces everything down to what's relevant and it discards everything that's not relevant. Men typically listen reductively. So he's saying, "I've got this problem." He's saying, "Here's your solution. Thanks very much. Next." That's the way blokes talk, right guys???! :-) On the other hand, Expansive listening is listening "with", not listening "for." It's got no destination in mind -- it's just enjoying the journey. Women typically listen expansively. If you look at women conversing, they will have eye contact, be facing each other, possibly both talking at the same time. (Yip, I know!!) Boys, if you get nothing else out of reading this, practice expansive listening, and you can transform your relationships. AuthorAlison Chiam is an Audiologist, Artist and Educator. She is an Independent Audiologist in Private Practice and is Principal Audiologist at Jervis Bay Hearing Centre (NSW). Her speciality areas include Hearing rehabilitation, Tinnitus and Sound Intolerance. At the International Tinnitus Seminar in Brazil 2011 she was part of a team who was won the Ted Vernon prize for their ground-breaking work on Tinnitus and Hypercusis |
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