Did you know?

Some interesting facts about your ears, hearing and hearing aids.

• We hear with our brain not our ears.  The ear is the ‘receiver’ that picks up sound and sends it to the brain.
• Sound waves travel into the ear canal until they reach your eardrum.  The eardrum passes the vibrations through the middle ear bones into the inner ear.  Your inner ear contains more than 20,000 tiny hair cells.  It is those hair cells that change the vibrations into the electrical signals that are sent to the brain through your hearing nerve.
• If any of the thousands of hair cells in your inner ear are damaged  they die and will never grow back so can never send a signal to your brain again.
• Hearing loss is like rust on a car, an unavoidable and natural part of life.  Like rust on your car, it is only a problem if you don’t do anything about it.
• You never stop hearing, even when we sleep our ears continue to work but our brain chooses to ignore the signals.
• Your ears help with balance as well as the hearing process.
• The smallest bone in your body is in your ear, the stirrup bone.
• Noise is one of the most common pollutants.  It is often ignored because it is colourless, odourless and tasteless.  Yet it can have a negative effect on our well-being.
• Sound is measured by decibels (dB).  Audiologists agree that continued exposure to noise over 85dB can cause hearing loss.  Some examples;
  • Lawnmower, truck traffic (90dB)
  • Pneumatic drill (100dB)
  • Loud rock concert, gun muzzle blast, jet engine (115dB)