Better Hearing Consumer

The cashier at the Safeway checkout was talking animatedly to the customer standing on the other side of the plexiglass shield. The customer kept shaking her head and her hands made movements that said I don’t understand you and, finally, I give up. I’d been in that same position many times since the pandemic started, struggling through masks and shields

This tinnitus thing is the pits. Two days ago, I would have told you there was absolutely no connection between my hiking and my tinnitus. I love hiking and I don’t love my tinnitus. But I’d forgotten the dark power of T (which is what some of us call our tinnitus, and it’s not a term of endearment). Given even

Dear New Year #2022, Hey there! We are the people with hearing loss and tinnitus. You must be excited that it’s your turn to roll out the next 365 days of our lives. But we don’t know what to expect from you! Remember Glinda the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz? She asked Dorothy, “Are you a good witch,

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. Our Readers’ Choices featured this week are the posts

Dear Santa, You probably don’t remember me, but that’s OK, I’ve changed a lot since the first time I wrote to you. I was the Canadian kid with mild to moderate hearing loss but now, I’m the Canadian senior who’s deaf without my hearing devices. Maybe that rings a reindeer bell? To start off, may I say that you are

  How do we, the people with hearing loss, overcome the noisy barriers and reclaim the joy of the season? When the sounds we love become noise and when the people become too many, how can we stay included? If you have hearing loss or tinnitus, I’m sure you’ve read more than one article on how to survive the noisy,

The downside of hearing loss is clear: we don’t hear well, or at all. And that causes barriers in our communication, touching almost every aspect of our lives. But it’s nice to take a break from all that barrier-smashing and recognize that there can be an upside to living with hearing loss. Try taking a moment to reflect how hearing

There are two ways to describe what we hear: sound and noise. Sound is the good stuff and noise is – not so good. And noise can be our external soundscape, or come from within, our internal head noise. What we consider as noise is individual; it’s our unwanted sound, the chaotic background to what we want to hear. If

(Alert! If you don’t think people should be wearing masks – at all – perhaps this article isn’t for you.) It’s been a year and two-thirds since the pandemic became real. 20 months of obsessive hand washing and sanitizing. Of nervous distancing, sheltering at home, making too much food and watching too much Netflix. And then, finally coming out of

People with hearing loss need help. That’s NOT to say we are helpless. But we can’t, simply through our own willpower, hear or communicate better without the input, support and skill of some important sources. There’s nothing wrong with needing and asking for help. In fact, it’s the smart thing to do. The way I hear it, there are four