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Prime Times Coping with hearing loss Doctor will discuss the subject Feb. 14 in Medford By John Darling It�s normal after 55 to start losing some hearing. It�s also normal to deny it, blame others for mumbling and to put off getting a hearing test or hearing aid for years. "The reason is simple � people think hearing aids look �old,� and no one wants to look old," said Dr. Jeffrey Rice, a Medford audiologist. "So people avoid treatment for an average of seven years." Rice will speak on causes and treatments of hearing loss at 1 p.m. Feb. 14 at Rogue Valley Medical Center�s Smullin Center. It�s free and open to the public. Hearing loss ranks with arthritis, heart disease and hypertension as one of the most common health problems of the elderly. It�s estimated a third of people over 60 and half over 85 have hearing problems, some of them so severe that they withdraw from social situations rather than put up with the frustration and embarrassment of not being able to hear people, Rice said. How to help someone with a hearing loss Charlene MacKenzie of Dogs for the Deaf, a Rogue Valley organization that provides hearing-ear dogs for deaf people, suggests the following tips for helping a person with hearing loss cope in everyday life: Eat at a round table, where faces and lips can be read and the hearing-impaired person is farthest from noise sources. Face the person, enunciate and speak slower, not louder. Use facial and hand gestures to flesh out meaning. Stay patient, relax, reword your statement and include the person in conversations. Be open about it. Ask if they can hear you. Ask if there�s anything you can do to help. Remind children and sales people to speak clearly for the person. "That�s the No. 1 warning sign � that you or a loved one start withdrawing from things you used to like to do because it�s too much effort to figure out what people are saying." This is aggravated, Rice said, when others interpret hearing loss as lack of intelligence, lack of interest or onset of Alzheimer�s disease. Retired doctor James Patterson, 82, first noticed hearing loss at 60 when he could no longer hear the turn signal clicking on his car. He also had trouble hearing higher sounds, such as female voices, and hearing inside restaurants, where ambient noise crowded out the voices he wanted to hear. But it was another five years before he got help � hearing aids on both ears, with the microphone-amplifier behind the ear. "When I put the hearing aid on for the first time, it was like a whole new vista opened up," he said. "I could hear birds singing and realized I hadn�t even noticed they�d been gone. It was very pleasant." Oddly, when people see you have a hearing aid, they make a special effort to speak more clearly, Patterson said. "I�ve even heard of older folks who put on a dummy hearing aid so people will enunciate better." It�s hard to tell when you have hearing loss, Rice said, because medium and low sounds remain at the same volume, while higher sounds just aren�t as noticeable. "Nothing may seem wrong, but you�re missing a piece of the puzzle. This makes it easy to just blame others for not speaking up." Hearing aids cost between $700 and $3,000 and, because of chip miniaturization, are getting smaller all the time, said Rice. "The industry focuses on cosmetic appeal and on tiny hearing aids, perhaps to the disservice of patients, because that doesn�t mean they function better. Each patient is different and some may be able to wear a small one, but some may not." Hearing loss can�t be restored, but once people get past the aesthetic or age-related concerns, Rice said, hearing aids can significantly improve quality of life. To self-diagnose for hearing loss, Rice suggests: Sit down and rub your shoes together. You should be able to hear it. Can you hear a watch ticking next to your ear? Make the faucet drip. Can you hear it? Have you, in the past week, wished anyone would stop mumbling? When you have the TV at a comfortable level, do others think it�s loud? Converse in a car with windows up, then roll them down. Can you still converse? Switch the phone from ear to ear. Is it harder to hear on either side? Converse face-to-face with someone, then do it with eyes closed. Do you hear less? If so, you�re depending on lip-reading to fill in missing sounds. Patterson has come up with his own unique hearing test � trying to understand British sit-coms on public television. "Maybe it�s the accent or the speed they talk, but several people and I have found they�re the hardest to hear." Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.