Hearing Loss

Insights for Your Hearing Health

Get trusted tips, insights, and hearing health updates from your hearing care team.

Whether you’re exploring solutions for the first time or a long-time hearing aid user, our experts at Colonial Center for Hearing Audiology are here to offer advice and resources to support your journey.

How to Read Your Audiogram at Your Hearing Test

You have just finished your hearing test. The hearing specialist is now coming into the room and provides you with a graph, like the one above, except that it has all of these symbols, colors, and lines. This is supposed to provide you with the exact, mathematically precise properties of your hearing loss, but to

How to Persuade Someone to Get a Hearing Test

We don’t need to tell you the symptoms of hearing loss; you already know them all too well. You have a different type of challenge: persuading someone you care for to get their hearing evaluated and treated. But how are you expected to get through to someone who denies there is even an issue, or

5 Reasons Why People Deny Hearing Loss

It takes the average person with hearing loss 5 to 7 years before pursuing a qualified professional diagnosis, in spite of the reality that the signs and symptoms of hearing loss are apparent to others. But are those with hearing loss merely too stubborn to get help? No, actually, and for a handful of different

What to Expect at Your Hearing Exam

If the unknown generates anxiety, then a trip to the hearing specialist is especially nerve-racking. While nearly all of us have experience with the family doctor and the hometown dentist, the visit to the hearing specialist could be a first. It certainly would be beneficial to have someone elaborate on the process up front, wouldn’t

Exploring a Career in the Hearing Care Profession

While the majority of us keep up to date with our once-a-year physical, dental cleaning, and eye examination, we typically forget to give thought to the well-being of our hearing. And when our hearing does begin to worsen, it arises so gradually that we scarcely notice and neglect to do something about it. It’s this

Avoiding the Biggest Mistake in Treating Your Hearing Loss

Do you remember the Q-Ray Bracelets? You know, the magnetized bracelets that promised to supply instantaneous and significant pain relief from arthritis and other chronic disorders? Well, you won’t see much of that marketing anymore; in 2008, the developers of the Q-Ray Bracelets were legally mandated to return customers a maximum of $87 million thanks

8 Reasons Hearing Loss is More Dangerous Than You Think

Hearing impairment is dangerously sneaky. It creeps up on an individual over the years so slowly you hardly become aware of it , making it all too easy to deny it’s even there. And afterwards, when you finally recognize the signs and symptoms, you shrug it off as troublesome and aggravating because its true effects

Balance Order FAQ

What is a balance disorder? A balance disorder can cause you to feel unsteady, giddy, woozy, or to have a sensation of movement, spinning, or floating. The source for this disorder can be linked to the brain, the nervous system and to an organ in the inner ear called the labyrinth. An important part of

Cochlear Implants FAQ

Now I wake up each morning to the sound of birds A cochlear implant is a small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing. The implant consists of an external portion that sits behind the ear and a second portion that

Current Research into Balance Disorders

Research on balance disorders is ongoing. Recent findings from studies supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) suggest that the vestibular system plays an important role in modulating blood pressure. The information from these studies has potential clinical relevance in understanding and managing orthostatic hypotension (lowered blood pressure related to

Hearing Aid Research News

Researchers are looking at ways to apply new signal processing strategies to the design of hearing aids. Signal processing is the method used to modify normal sound waves into amplified sound that is the best possible match to the remaining hearing for a hearing aid user. NIDCD-funded researchers also are studying how hearing aids can

How the Balance System Works

Movement of fluid in the semicircular canals signals the brain about the direction and speed of head rotation. In other words, it lets the brain know if you are nodding your head up and down or looking right to left. Each semicircular canal has a bulbous end that contains hair cells. Rotation of the head