Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 19:03:26 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: William Leigh Subject: Re: Hearing Aid Advice MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Marcia, Usually person's in the later years lose hearing in the high frequency range. I believe this condition is referred to as Presbecusis....(spelling?????) This loss is usually related to the inability of the hair cells on the organ of Coriti to return to an upright position. These hair cells act like transmitters and discharge either an electrical or chemical or perhaps both. This charge is then sent to the Heschel's Gyrus (spelling??) in the brain. If I recall correctly these hair cells are pretty specific in function so that if a given hair cell malfunctions then the corresponding frequency can not be heard. Sort of like a door that has been shut and there are no other doors that will take you where you need to go. Without these hair cells working properly finding the right hearing aid that will work ie actually amplify the frequencies you need to hear, is rather difficult. Finding a hearing aid that works for you is nothing at all like finding a prescription for eye glasses. For the most part people can adjust to a new eye glass prescription relatively quickly. I am extremely myopic and still within a few hours I can usually adjust to new glasses. Although I will soon need bifocals which may be another ball game. Hearing aids are much more difficult and take a very proactive role on the part of the consumer and the audiologist. You need to really tweak the settings and learn how to use the device optimely. This is a fairly long process. Hopefully you have a great Audiologist who is willing to work with you until you both find the right settings and the right device. I would think that birding would be especially difficult because many bird songs involve fairly high frequencies.......like the last notes of the song of a Blackburnian Warlber etc. Those frequencies are frequently the first to go. Medical science being what it is there may be changes in technology which could dramatically improve your chances. The info related above is stuff I picked up in some grad level audiology classes several years back. Hopefully technology has improved. I should issue a disclaimer here ......this is not my field and I am not an audiologist etc .........this is just my recollection from some classes I took way back when.....etc. Good luck, William Leigh Leightern@aol.com In a message dated 6/11/00 9:57:51 AM Pacific Daylight Time, Marciaen@AOL.COM writes: > Subj: [MDOSPREY] Hearing Aid Advice