5 tipson how to adjust to your new hearing aids Wear them, even when you don’t want to — It’s important that you wear your hearing aids every day so you’ll be comfortable with them in all situations and every environment. Some environments are tough to adjust to with hearing aids, but this just makes it all the more important for you to wear your hearing aids all the time. Allowing your brain and ears to learn how to work together again will only be possible if they have consistent exposure. Wearing your hearing aids infrequently will keep your ears and brain from connecting correctly again, make adjust- ing to sounds harder and will slow down your ability to focus and adjust to multiple voices and sounds. Open mind, positive outlook — You’ll get much more out of your hearing aids when you go into them with an open mind and a positive focus. Try to keep in mind all the quality-of-life benefits they provide when adjustments get hard and keep your mind open to the fact that nothing is perfect and adjustments might need to be made. Follow these five tips to help yourself start hearing better with hearing aids: 1) 3) 4) 5) 2) Learn all you can about your hearing loss — The more you know about your limits, the easier it is to surpass them. Check out our blog for information regarding hearing loss, hearing aids, hearing aid features, tips for cleaning, using, adjusting and more to help yourself adjust quickly and easily. Set realistic expectations — Nothing cures hearing loss, but hearing aids can truly help you regain much of what you’re currently missing. There is no 100% fix, but be sure to set yourself realistic expectations such as hearing better in one-on-one conversations, understanding speech better in noisy environments and other reasonable goals. Be patient — Like riding a bike, hearing aids take time to master. But once you do, wearing your hearing aids will be second nature. Zerena SoundClip-A THE MADE-FOR-ALL SMARTPHONES* SOLUTION HAS ARRIVED Bernafon’s new premium hearing instrument family, Zerena responds instantaneously and seamlessly to dynamic, fast- changing environments. The SoundClip-A is a versatile accessory for boundless** sound streaming and “made for all phones” hands-free phone conversations to both ears. It is compatible with Android™ , iPhone® and many other 2.4 GHz standard Bluetooth® audio devices. bernafon.ca 1-800-265-8250 *For more information on compatibility, please visit Please visit www.bernafon.ca/products/accessories/app-compatibility **Seamless and boundless refer to device behavior. The word‘Tinnitus’is derived from the Latin word ‘tinnire’, meaning‘to tinkle’or‘ring like a bell’. The sounds heard can range from a humming to a high-pitched ringing or a roar. The vast majority of those with Tinnitus are told that there is no medical cure and no medication to treat it. In Canada, about 5 million people have a form of it. Interestingly, research studies conducted with loudness matching experiments, have shown that the loudness of an individual’s Tinnitus is usually only 5 decibels above their hearing threshold during the test. Despite that, the effect on many peoples’ lives ranges beyond being only mildly annoying to severe enough to have a chronic impact upon their quality of life: the inability to concentrate, sleep disorders, anxiety, and depression. Causes of Tinnitus can range from the simple, like cerumen (hardened ear wax) lodging against the tympanic membrane (ear drum) to the complex, an imbalance between neurons carrying auditory information from the tiny hair cells of the cochlea (the spiral-shaped cavity forming a division of the internal ear) to the brain and back again. Antibiotics and high doses of aspirin can also aggravate Tinnitus. It is important for physicians to rule out a VIII cranial nerve tumour as well. Those with Noise-Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) quite often experience a high-pitched ringing due to the damage to their cochlea hair cells, resulting in high-frequency, treble hearing loss. Those with Meniere’s disease of the inner ear may report a roaring Tinnitus. One’s physician may find it pulsatile in quality, vascular in origin. But people with super-sensi- tive hearing may suffer as well. Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT), an audiologic treatment encompassing the ear and the brain, has emerged as an effective method of treating Tinnitus. Using a desensitization approach, the patient uses environmental sound, or ear-level sound generators (with or without incorporated hearing aids) to partially mask their Tinnitus, so they can still hear their Tinnitus but are less aware of it. Counselling is an important part of TRT, helping the patient to accept that the ob- jective is not to eliminate the Tinnitus but rather to minimize the perception of it by training the brain to treat the sound as meaningless, not something to be feared or dreaded. For patients with hearing loss and Tinnitus, the good news is that ‘combination devices’ have been developed. These digital hearing aids have been specifically designed with programs that produce various types of masking noises. Tinnitus:  It’s all in your head. D R T E D V E N E M A For more information on Tinnitus check out these helpful resources. Tinnitus Association of Canada 22 Ellis Park Road; Toronto, ON M6S 2V4 P. 416.762.1490 www.kadis.com/ta/tinnitus/htm Canadian Hearing Society in Toronto 271 Spadina Rd; Toronto, ON M5R 2V3 P. 416.964.9595 www.chs.ca hs.ca Watch the Video Series Dr Ted Venema Audiologist/Teaching Professor NEXT GENERATION OF HEARING CARE | 12