Robert Traynor

Robert M. Traynor, Ed.D., is a hearing industry consultant, trainer, professor, conference speaker, practice manager and author. He is a founding member of HHTM and had previously written a regular weekly column for the site for many years. He has decades of experience teaching courses and training clinicians within the field of audiology with specific emphasis in hearing and tinnitus rehabilitation. He serves as Adjunct Faculty in Audiology at the University of Florida, University of Northern Colorado, University of Colorado and The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

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Reader’s Choice 2014: A Cure for Badly Protruding/Prominent Ears

Dear Readers: During this holiday season, the editors at Hearing Health & Technology Matters (HHTM) are taking some time off. However, we are not leaving you without anything to read on our blog this week. Instead, we are publishing a special holiday edition filled with what we call our Readers’ Choices. HHTM has had more than half a million page

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Should I use Q-Tips to Clean my Ears?

Those of us who do clinic each week often have to answer the question for our patients, “Are Q-Tips really that bad?” This week’s Hearing International discussion investigates that question. The current thought is that most attempts to clean the ears by using cotton swabs only result in pushing the wax further into the ear canal. Wax is not formed in the

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Ebola and Hearing Loss

You would have to have been asleep over the past few months not to know there is a terrible Ebola virus epidemic raging in West Africa. While the disease is mainly in Africa currently, with people’s travel habits these days, it could soon be in many countries. The current outbreak in Africa began in March 2014 and is the largest, most complex Ebola

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The World Series Connection

Who’da Thunk it? The Kansas City Royals in the World Series! Of course, they are playing the San Francisco Giants and the series is going on as this is posted on October 28, 2014. At Hearing International we had a baseball post a few weeks ago about Dummy Hoy, a deaf player instrumental in the development of the sign language used

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Reflexology for Deafness: Fact or Fiction? Part II

Last week at Hearing International we reviewed the history of Reflexology. While the procedure has been around since ancient times, until recently there has been minimal research data on whether it works for various disorders, and specifically the auditory system. I became concerned about this area due to the testimonial published by Acorn (2014). The author suggests that she used Reflexology to cure a

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Reflexology for Deafness: Fact or Fiction? Part 1

In the past, Hearing International has reviewed Chiropractic, Acupuncture, Homeopathic Medicine and other unconventional treatments for hearing impairment. An investigation of another bizarre treatment for hearing impairment begins about 4000 BC in ancient Egypt, where hieroglyphic reliefs on the walls of the Sixth Dynasty Tomb of Ankmahor at Saqquara near Cairo. This tomb is known as the Physicians’ Tomb due to the array of medical images

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Louise: A Hearing Child of Deaf Parents

Young Robert’s father was a Baptist minister in Arab, Alabama, a poor, primitive, fundamentalist place, and he used his deaf son frequently in his sermons around a circuit to illustrate the wrath and mercy of God. Young Robert said, “I couldn’t understand, but people in the congregations would cry and they told me I would hear when I went to heaven.” Of

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Hearing and Barotrauma in Sea Turtles

Sea turtles can be found all over the world. In some parts of the world looking for Sea Turtles is part of a vacation and the sighting of these creatures is the highlight of a day at the beach or in shallow water. Most species of sea turtles prefer tropical or subtropical waters, although some species can be found in

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Hearing Aid Stigma – Revisited

According to a leading Wall Street firm, Bernstein, low penetration rate and reimbursements for hearing aids are the key trends providing sufficient opportunity for further growth in the hearing aid industry. On the development front, the advent of wireless, Bluetooth and FM technology are among the recent major innovations in this industry. As audiologists know, the growth of this market is driven

The Connection of Hearing Instruments and Dementia

Lately, there has been a lot of “hype” about the use of amplification and Dementia. At least in the US, the ads hocking hearing instruments from many of the manufacturer-owned, hearing aid sales operations lead patients to believe that if they purchase hearing instruments they will cure dementia, and even Alzheimer’s Disease. Too bad that this is not true as it would be an easy treatment