- I'm audiologist Dr. Emily Taylor,
and I'll be answering your Twitter questions today.
This is "Hearing Support".
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All right, Lexamerwexa wants to know,
how do ears work?
Please send help.
This is a model of the ear.
Let's bring it here.
Right here you see the pinna,
this is the large part of your ear.
That is for funneling sound waves into your ear canal.
So when the sound wave enters your ear canal,
it's gonna make it down to your eardrum
which it's gonna vibrate your eardrum back and forth.
Behind the eardrum
it is an air filled chamber called your middle ear.
Right here are the three smallest bones
in your body called ossicles.
When the ear drum moves back and forth
it is moving the ossicular chain back and forth as well.
That chain actually amplifies the vibrations
and sends it into the inner ear
which you can see here
it's called your cochlea.
Inside the cochlea it is fluid filled
which is really important to know
which stimulates different hair cells
that are tonotopically organized
which means they all are responsible
for different frequencies.
And then from the hair cell
it's gonna send electrical signals up your auditory nerve
and send it to the brain
where we process sound and understand it.
Axtwentee is asking, ear infection?
What am I a child?
So yes, there is a higher incident rate
of ear infections among children,
but we do see them in adults as well.
The most common you would see is an outer ear infection
which right here on my little model,
there are a few different reasons
but it's typically from a buildup of bacteria in your ear.
Swimmer's ear is what they are commonly calling it
which is just when you've got
a lot of moist water in your ear canal
that just gets left there
and that's a breeding ground for bacteria.
So it is important to keep your ears dry,
just taking a towel to your ear and drying it off.
Also putting your ear down
letting the water run out naturally,
or putting your blow dryer on a very low setting
and just blowing it near your ear.
Withernseaswee.
What the [beep] is ear candling
and why would you pay for it?
Don't pay for it, it's a hoax.
This is a really dangerous thing
that's going around on the internet.
What it is is you're lighting a candle
coming out of your ear
which some people believe creates a vortex
which can suction out your ear wax.
At the end of that procedure
you look in the candle and people see stuff.
That's actually just parts of the candle that you're seeing,
that is not the actual debris coming out of your ear.
Some interesting videos to watch would be
when they put one in the ear
and then right next to it
they put one in a cup
and you see the same things inside of the candle.
Also, it does not get hot enough to actually create suction,
and you're lighting a fire by your head
so that to me just already sounds like a bad idea.
So don't waste your money on it, don't buy it,
and don't let your friends do it to you.
Next question is from JLRumhor,
is Apple's Conversation Boost
essentially making the AirPod a hearing aid?
If so, I'm sold on it.
Apple does have this Conversation Boost feature.
What it's doing is basically
giving you a directional microphone
so that you hear directly in front of you
and then trying to cut back on the sound around you.
Some of the reviews say it sounds a little unnatural
'cause you're actually not
sure how loud the background noise is.
Other people find it really helpful.
Definitely can make speech coming from in front of you
a lot clearer and louder.
If you find it helpful,
go ahead and use it, there's no downside to it.
Apple's Conversation Boost
is different from a hearing aid.
A hearing aid itself,
we would program it to your hearing loss
and just give you back the frequencies you are missing
where this does not take an account your hearing loss.
Nowadays some hearing aids
don't use the directional microphones anymore.
Hearing aids do have two microphones,
that is how we do better in background noise,
but it's not just pointing a signal right in front of you
because you wanna hear all around you
so that's a big distinction between the two.
Stimmyskye sent in the question,
how do hearing aids work?
I mean, if you have a drop in specific frequencies,
do they amplify specifically these frequencies
or just make everything louder?
That is such a good question.
A lot of times you'll see these really
inexpensive hearing aids advertised online.
Those are just amplifiers.
They are making everything louder,
but unfortunately loudness does not equal clarity.
So that is why a hearing aid is so much more sophisticated.
It's not just making things louder,
we're trying to make things sound clear and natural.
So a hearing aid has a few different parts to it.
This is an example of a hearing aid.
Some of the main components are in this back piece
which sit behind your ear.
In this tiny packaging there is a very sophisticated chip.
Some of the chips actually have what's called
a deep neural network
that has 20 million sound samples stored on it
so that when you hear a sound,
the hearing aid can actually put it on a map
and figure out what it is,
like a bird chipping or a tea kettle going off.
There's also microphones on board
which sends the signal to an amplifier
which then it's produced in the speaker
directly into your ear canal.
Some really cool things about hearing aids today is that
they are Bluetooth compatible
so you can stream audio from your cell phones
and different devices.
But a really important thing to remember is a hearing aid,
it's not canceling the background noise,
it's just trying to adjust the signal to noise ratio
so that what's important like the speech signal
is gonna come above the background noise
so that you can actually hear it
without having to work hard.
Question from Frnknstnmnstr.
What is the purpose of ear wax?
It does this world no good.
There are a few purposes to it,
it's actually quite important to have it.
First of all, we have glands in our ear canal.
They produce the ear wax.
Ear wax is antimicrobial
so it can prevent infections in your ear.
It can also hydrate the skin.
If you didn't have that,
your ear might be itchy or dry.
Another reason we have ear wax is to prevent debris
from getting all the way down to your eardrum.
So ear wax is really important to have.
People are always thinking it's like the enemy,
but we produce it on purpose
and your ear actually self clean.
Say that back to me,
it self cleans.
People are obsessed with putting things
in their ears right now.
You should not put anything in your ears to clean them.
I do recommend an at-home video otoscope.
These are about $35.
It connects to your smartphone,
it's super easy to use
and you just take it and look inside your ear
while looking on your smartphone
and you can clearly see if there is ear wax or not.
But sometimes these come
with little tools to get it out with.
I don't recommend using the tools.
There are safer ways to remove it at home
or you could go see a professional
like an ear, nose, and throat physician, or an audiologist.
BadLightskinm asked,
if q tips can damage your ear canal
or pushes the ear wax back,
how the [beep] are we supposed to clean our ears?
First of all, q tips, they are the enemy,
they are not helping us.
They even say on the box,
do not put in your ears.
Q tips what they're really doing
is just pushing any wax you have
deeper into the ear where it's much more sensitive
and it would make it a lot harder for me
to take it out of your ears.
I recommend not using any objects blindly in your ears.
The safest way to remove ear wax
would be to use wax softening drops,
Debrox is a popular brand,
and I recommend using it multiple times a day
for a few days in a row
and using warm water flushes in between,
this should be the most effective way.
But if you don't feel comfortable doing it at home,
or you've tried it for a few days and it is not working,
I do recommend seeing a professional
like an audiologist or an ear nose and throat physician.
BronalystSweetB writes, nephew,
"What's a decibel?"
My dad, "A 10th of a bell obviously."
A decibel is a way to measure the intensity of a sound.
We can use it to measure loudness.
So with an audiogram,
that's a test showing how soft you can hear,
we can tell you what decibel level
you can hear at for each frequency.
This question is from maybe Maybemikki,
why would I wear earplugs to a concert?
I want Halsey to damage my ears.
I mean, don't we all?
But the truth is we need to be protecting our hearing.
Going to a concert could be dangerous
depending on the decibel level of the concert.
A recommendation I have is to download a decibel meter.
They are free on the App Store,
and then you can actually monitor how loud it is.
If you are listening to something 80 decibels,
you can only safely do that for eight hours.
But once you go all the way up to a hundred decibels,
you can only be there for 10 minutes
without possibly causing any sort of damage to your hearing.
And even going up to 110 decibels,
technically you can only be in that for safely one minute,
and concerts are well over a 100 decibels.
One of the biggest side effects from noise exposure
would be hearing loss as well as tinnitus.
Our inner ear has thousands of hair cells
and I'm not just talking about hair fibers,
these are sensory hair cells.
They can become weak or break and we cannot regenerate them.
So for example, acoustic trauma or repeated noise exposure,
they will affect those hair cells and cause damage to them
and we can't regenerate them
so it's really important that we protect them
'cause we have one shot at it.
All right, BFNoles is asking [beep] that hearing test
where you sit in a booth and listen to beeps.
The [beep] are they testing for?
My ability to hear my wife
when she says [beep] her breath? [laughs]
So, a hearing test consists of a lot of different parts.
The first part would be otoscopy
where we look in your ears and check for any debris,
lax, anything blocking the eardrum.
The next test would be tympanometry
where we move your eardrum back and forth
and we're checking the pressure in your ears,
the volume of your ear canal,
and how well your eardrum vibrates back and forth.
Now, what you are referring to is the beep test.
We are presenting different beeps at different frequencies
and we're trying to find the softest sound
that you can hear.
This is how we measure hearing loss.
I'd say the number one complaint people have
when they come into my office is that
they have trouble hearing in background noise,
this is a very common complaint.
Everybody has trouble hearing in background noise,
but what we do in the office is we measure,
it's a test called the Quick-SIN
and we can measure
what signal to noise ratio your brain needs
to understand well in background noise.
So the average listener who does well in background noise
only needs a zero to two decibel advantage
over the background noise.
Sometimes in the office we'll find that
some people have a 20 decibel signal to noise ratio meaning
let's say the background noise was at 60 decibels,
someone would have to speak to them at 80 decibels
so that much difference over the background noise
for them to understand clearly.
This question's from Bayouwilson.
I said, what causes tinnitus?
So, there are a few causes of tinnitus.
And first and foremost,
tinnitus is a sound that you are hearing
inside of your ear.
Nobody else can hear it around you.
So it can sound like a buzzing, a ringing.
Some people say it's like cicadas in your ear.
And some of the causes of tinnitus,
the first one would be noise exposure.
Some other causes of tinnitus are
infections as well as stress and anxiety and fatigue.
There are technically no treatments for tinnitus,
that's probably the number one question I get asked online.
My first question is, have you had a hearing test?
Because if you do have hearing loss,
hearing aids are an amazing way
to mask the sound of your tinnitus.
I have fit hearing aids on people
who have had tinnitus in their ears for 20 years
and they put the hearing aids on
and they said for the first time in decades
they have silence which is a really powerful thing.
The next question is from Emmaawarnerr,
how do our ears affect our balance?
A lot of people are unaware that our balance organ
is actually located in the inner ear.
That is what you see right here.
These are our semicircular canals,
they actually detect gravity and movement
and that's what keeps us upright and keeps us balanced.
Vertigo is when you experience a room spinning sensation.
There are a few different causes for that.
Ménière's disease is a disease that does have vertigo
accompanied with it.
Head trauma.
Sometimes we see positional vertigo,
which would mean if you turned your head in one direction,
that would bring on dizziness,
but if you turned your head the other way, no dizziness.
The dizziness that happens with movement,
what is happening there
is we have little calcium carbonate crystals
in our semicircular canals that are lodged
meaning they are stationary.
They can become dislodged,
and when they are free floating
it is hard to detect gravity
which will cause vertigo or room spinning dizziness.
There is a maneuver that I recommend
having a professional do,
don't look on YouTube and do it yourself,
definitely more effective
if you see a physical therapist
who specializes in vertigo
or an ear, nose, and throat physician,
or an audiologist that specializes in vestibular issues.
The next question is from Manny Edwards.
What is the highest frequency you can hear?
Not humans in general, but you?
In general humans have the ability to hear
from 20 hertz all the way up to 20,000 hertz.
It's hard to know how high I personally can hear
'cause your standard audio test only goes up to 8,000 hertz.
There are some high frequency testing at other facilities.
A common thing we see in the clinic
is hearing loss due to aging which is called presbycusis.
This typically looks
just like a high frequency hearing loss.
We all do tend to lose our high frequencies first,
that is the most common configuration of a hearing loss
that I'll see in the office.
And that's because how the ear is set up,
our cochlea is snail shaped
and the base sounds which are lower frequency,
they get less attention than the high frequency hair cells
so we do see damage to our hair cells
more so in the high frequencies.
We have a question from Kellyyyllek,
can my eardrum burst on a plane?
My right ear is blocked from sickness
and the plane pressure as we descend
is causing extremely sharp pain.
Yes, your eardrum can burst on a plane
especially when you're having a sinus infection
or a negative pressure in your ear.
The sudden change when you're in an airplane,
it's very fast,
which is why a lot of us feel popping,
that's actually your eustachian tube
trying to regulate atmospheric pressure
to the pressure behind your eardrum.
But in some rare cases,
it can actually burst your eardrum.
When the eardrum ruptures,
there is a hole in the eardrum
and most likely it will repair itself.
But in rare cases it does not
and an ENT can put a little piece,
it's almost like a piece of parchment paper
that they put on the eardrum
so that the skin develops over it
so that you have a full solid eardrum
to keep your middle ear safe.
So I recommend not traveling when you're too sick,
make sure you see an ear nose and throat physician
before you travel
and see if there's anything they can can do
to make you feel a little bit more comfortable on the plane.
MeerkatSceptre sent in a question asking,
I've lost my hearing so badly
that when my volume is jacked all the way up,
it sounds normal and not loud.
Can you regain hearing?
If this is the case,
I recommend you seeing an audiologist for a hearing test.
There are different kinds of hearing loss
that can be resolved through medication and surgery
and audiologists would be your first step
just to figure out what type of hearing loss it is.
And then we would refer out
to an ear, nose, and throat physician,
they prescribe medications and do the surgery.
AbbyBai19947277 asked,
do cochlear implants give people normal hearing abilities?
Cochlear implant is actually able to bypass
the unhealthy part of the ear
and stimulate the auditory nerve directly.
A cochlear implant does not sound
like what we experienced hearing to sound like.
People who did have normal hearing
and have normal speech and language skills
and then experienced a type of hearing loss
that required a cochlear implant,
they often say that a cochlear implant
sounds very tinny or robotic,
but they do learn to make sense of it
with a lot of speech therapy.
This is not a surgical procedure
that you do it and you're done,
this is something that does require
a lot of follow up with other professionals
and you do wear a part that is on the outside of your head
and a part over the top of your ear
where the microphone is.
You'll oftentimes see a circle attached
with a wire right here on the skull.
It stays there because there's a piece behind the skin
that magnetizes the two together,
that is your processor,
and that's actually gonna stimulate your auditory nerve
and bypass those unhealthy hair cells.
They have come such a long way
and people do incredibly well with them.
Ktilikesbaseball asked,
any local audiologist out there
that can explain the Yanny v. Laurel thing
and why I hear a different name every hour.
This was hysterical when it came out
and I too would go back and forth between hearing them.
What's happening is Yanny
is a higher frequency sounding word
while Laurel is lower frequency
so it just depends
which one your brain decided to listen to
more so the lower frequencies or the higher frequencies.
Karma Paljor wants to know,
is the hearing aid business a big scam?
Unfortunately, our profession
has gotten a little bit of a bad reputation
because of all of these advertisements
you're seeing out there.
There's a lot of misinformation
and it's really hard to sift through
that's why it's really important
to find an audiologist that you trust.
Anything that seems too good to be true
is too good to be true.
But if you find an audiologist that knows what they're doing
and they truly care about improving your life,
nothing scammy about it,
it's actually a really incredible profession to be in.
That's all the questions that we have.
Till next time.
Make sure you protect your ears.
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