{"id":2946,"date":"2014-09-12T15:30:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T15:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/50.63.138.122\/~ahs\/?p=2946"},"modified":"2022-06-07T12:40:39","modified_gmt":"2022-06-07T19:40:39","slug":"how-to-prevent-auditory-deprivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arizonahearing.com\/how-to-prevent-auditory-deprivation\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Prevent Auditory Deprivation"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is Auditory Deprivation?<\/h2>\n

\u201c<\/em>Wear your hearing aids or your brain will rust!\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>(Robert Martin, PhD, Hearing Journal, <\/em>January 2004)<\/p>\n

When I first read this 10 years ago, I thought it was funny at first. But, after thinking about it, it\u2019s true. If you need hearing aids and you don\u2019t wear them, YOUR BRAIN WILL RUST!<\/strong> It\u2019s called Auditory Deprivation<\/strong> \u2013 when the brain gradually loses some of its abilty to process information from the unaided ear(s) due to continued lack of auditory stimulation.<\/em><\/p>\n

The most common causes for auditory deprivation are:
\n<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. When a person needs hearing aids and chooses not to purchase or wear them. According to Dr. Mark Welch (an Ear, Nose and Throat physician),\u201cWhen the hearing nerves and the areas of the brain responsible for hearing are deprived of sound, they atrophy, or weaken.\u201d<\/li>\n
  2. Using only one hearing aid when there\u00a0is actually hearing loss in BOTH ears. This basically deprives the unaided ear of sound. Oftentimes when the second hearing aid is finally purchased, that ear will have \u201cforgotten\u201d how to listen and may have difficulty adapting to sound. Many years ago, a study was done on veterans returning from combat who had hearing loss due to exposure to loud noises in the war. These veterans all had hearing loss in both ears but were fit with only one hearing aid. Years later, these same veterans had their hearing retested. The study showed the ear that was aided still understood words very well, but the unaided ears often\u00a0had difficulty understanding speech.<\/li>\n
  3. Improper fitting and tuning of hearing aids. At Arizona Hearing Specialists, we pride ourselves in having the experience and equipment to make sure your hearing aids are properly \u201ctuned\u201d for your hearing loss. We believe your hearing aids are only as good as your hearing healthcare provider. If\u00a0your hearing aids are not programmed correctly for your hearing loss, you may\u00a0be depriving your ear(s) of sound!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    The human body works best on a \u201cuse it or lose it\u201d basis. Our body\u2019s systems\u00a0\u2014 skeletal, muscular, sensory etc.\u00a0\u2014 will\u00a0atrophy or weaken the longer they go unused. Let\u2019s say you like to go dancing every Saturday night. What do you think would happen if you stayed in bed Sunday\u00a0through Friday? How well do you think your legs will do on Saturday night? It doesn\u2019t matter how badly you WANT to dance, it will be more difficult because\u00a0you have not been exercising your legs.\u00a0Your ears need exercise as well, just like your legs. If you have hearing loss,\u00a0wearing hearing aids\u00a0is like \u201cexercising\u201d your hearing and brain. And, just like dancing, practice makes perfect. The more you wear your hearing aids and stimulate the auditory system\u00a0the better your brain gets at recognizing sounds.<\/p>\n

    Prevention is the best cure<\/h2>\n

    What\u2019s the best treatment for auditory deprivation? Avoid it in the first place.\u00a0Your audiologist can\u00a0do a thorough hearing evaluation to see what sounds you\u00a0are not hearing.\u00a0Then you can\u00a0discuss a plan\u00a0to make sure you are\u00a0hearing your best. If hearing aids are needed,\u00a0it is\u00a0important to work with an audiologist who\u00a0is committed to the process of selecting the right instruments for your specific situation\u2026and then program them correctly!\u00a0Finally, it is very important for YOU to be committed to wearing the instruments so that your ears are not deprived\u00a0of sound.<\/p>\n

    In other words\u2026if you need hearing aids, wear them OR YOUR BRAIN WILL RUST!!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    What is Auditory Deprivation? \u201cWear your hearing aids or your brain will rust!\u201d\u00a0(Robert Martin, PhD, Hearing Journal, January 2004) When I first read this 10 years ago, I thought it was funny at first. But, after thinking about it, it\u2019s true. If you need hearing aids and you don\u2019t wear them, YOUR BRAIN WILL RUST!…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2947,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"How to Prevent Auditory Deprivation | AHS","_seopress_titles_desc":"It\u2019s called Auditory Deprivation when the brain gradually loses some of its abilty to process information from the unaided ear(s) due to continued lack of auditory stimulation","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hearing-loss-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arizonahearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arizonahearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arizonahearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arizonahearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arizonahearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arizonahearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7760,"href":"https:\/\/arizonahearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2946\/revisions\/7760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arizonahearing.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arizonahearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arizonahearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arizonahearing.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}