i'm audiologist dr emily taylor and i'll be answering your twitter questions today this is hearing support [Music] all right lexa marexa wants to know how do ears work please send help this is a model of the ear let's bring it here right here you see the pinna this is the large part of your ear that is for funneling sound waves into your ear canal so when the sound wave enters your ear canal it's going to make it down to your eardrum which is going to vibrate your eardrum back and forth behind the eardrum it is an air-filled chamber called your middle ear right here are the three smallest bones in your body called your ossicles when the eardrum moves back and forth it is moving the ossicular chain back and forth as well that chain actually amplifies the vibrations and sends it into the inner ear which you can see here it's called your cochlea inside the cochlea it is fluid filled which is really important to know which stimulates different hair cells that are tonotopically organized which means they all are responsible for different frequencies and then from the hair cell it's going to send electrical signals up your auditory nerve and send it to the brain where we process sound and understand it acts 20 is asking ear infection what am i a child so yes there is a higher incident rate of ear infections among children but we do see them in adults as well the most common you would see is an outer ear infection which right here on my little model there are a few different reasons but it's typically from a buildup of bacteria in your ear swimmer's ear is what they are commonly calling it which is just when you've got a lot of moist water in your ear canal that just gets left there and that's a breeding ground for bacteria so it is important to keep your ears dry like just taking a towel to your ear and drying it off also putting your ear down letting the water run out naturally or putting your blow dryer on a very low setting and just blowing it near your ear wither and see sweet what the is ear candling and why would you pay for it don't pay for it it's a hoax this is a really dangerous thing that's going around on the internet what it is is you're lighting a candle coming out of your ear which some people believe creates a vortex which can suction out your earwax at the end of that procedure you look in the candle and people see stuff that's actually just parts of the candle that you're seeing that is not the actual debris coming out of your ear some interesting videos to watch would be when they put one in the ear and then right next to it they put one in a cup and you see the same things inside of the candling also it does not get hot enough to actually create suction and you're lighting a fire by your head so that to me just already sounds like a bad idea so don't waste your money on it don't buy it and don't let your friends do it to you next question is from j.l rumer is apple's conversation boost essentially making the airpod a hearing aid if so i'm sold on it apple does have this conversation boost feature what it's doing is basically giving you a directional microphone so that you hear directly in front of you and then trying to cut back on the sound around you some of the reviews say it sounds a little unnatural because you're actually not sure how loud the background noise is other people find it really helpful it definitely can make speech coming from in front of you a lot clearer and louder if you find it helpful go ahead and use it there's no downside to it apple's conversation boost is different from a hearing aid a hearing aid itself we would program it to your hearing loss and just give you back the frequencies you are missing where this does not take into account your hearing loss nowadays some hearing aids don't use the directional microphones anymore hearing aids do have two microphones that is how we do better in background noise but it's not just pointing a signal right in front of you because you want to hear all around you so that's a big distinction between the two stimi sky sent in the question how do hearing aids work i mean if you have a drop in specific frequencies do they amplify specifically these frequencies or just make everything louder that is such a good question a lot of times you'll see these really inexpensive hearing aids advertised online those are just amplifiers they are making everything louder but unfortunately loudness does not equal clarity so that is why a hearing aid is so much more sophisticated it's not just making things louder or trying to make things sound clear and natural so a hearing aid has a few different parts to it this is an example of a hearing aid some of the main components are in this back piece which sit behind your ear in this tiny packaging there is a very sophisticated chip some of the chips actually have what's called a deep neural network that has 20 million sound samples stored on it so that when you hear a sound the hearing aid can actually put it on a map and figure out what it is like a bird chirping or a tea kettle going off there's also microphones on board which sends the signal to an amplifier which then it's produced in the speaker directly into your ear canal some really cool things about hearing aids today is that they are bluetooth compatible so you can stream audio from your cell phones and different devices but a really important thing to remember is a hearing aid it's not canceling the background noise it's just trying to adjust the signal to noise ratio so that what's important like the speech signal is gonna come above the background noise so you can actually hear it without having to work hard question from frankenmonster what is the purpose of ear wax it does this world no good there are a few purposes to it it's actually quite important to have it first of all we have glands in our ear canal they produce the earwax earwax is antimicrobial so it can prevent infections in your ear it can also hydrate the skin if you didn't have that your ear might be itchy or dry another reason we have earwax is to prevent debris from getting all the way down to your eardrum so earwax is really important to have people are always thinking it's like the enemy but we produce it on purpose and your ear actually self-cleans say that back to me it self cleans people are obsessed with putting things in their ears right now you should not put anything in your ears to clean them i do recommend an at-home video otoscope these are about 35 it connects to your smartphone it's super easy to use and you just take it and look inside your ear while looking on your smartphone and you can clearly see if there is earwax or not but sometimes these come with little tools to get it out with i don't recommend using the tools there are safer ways to remove it at home or you could go see a professional like an ear nose and throat physician or an audiologist bad light skin asked if q-tips can damage your ear canal or pushes the earwax back how the are we supposed to clean our ears first of all q-tips they are the enemy they are not helping us they even say on the box do not put in your ears q-tips what they're really doing is just pushing any wax you have deeper into the ear where it's much more sensitive and it would make it a lot harder for me to take it out of your ears i recommend not using any objects blindly in your ears the safest way to remove earwax would be to use wax softening drops dbox is a popular brand and i recommend using it multiple times a day for a few days in a row and using warm water flushes in between this should be the most effective way but if you don't feel comfortable doing it at home or you've tried it for a few days and it is not working i do recommend seeing a professional like an audiologist or an ear nose and throat physician brauno sweet b writes nephew what's a decibel my dad a tenth of a bell obviously a decibel is a way to measure the intensity of a sound we can use it to measure loudness so with an audiogram that's a test showing how soft you can hear we can tell you what decibel level you can hear at for each frequency this question is from maybe mickey why would i wear earplugs to a concert i want halsey to damage my ears i mean don't we all but the truth is we need to be protecting our hearing going to a concert could be dangerous depending on the decibel level of the concert a recommendation i have is to download a decibel meter they are free on the app store and then you can actually monitor how loud it is if you are listening to something 80 decibels you can only safely do that for eight hours but once you go all the way up to 100 decibels you can only be there for 10 minutes without possibly causing any sort of damage to your hearing and even going up to 110 decibels technically you can only be in that for safely one minute and concerts are well over a hundred decibels one of the biggest side effects from noise exposure would be hearing loss as well as tinnitus our inner ear has thousands of hair cells and i'm not just talking about hair fibers these are sensory hair cells they can become weak or break and we cannot regenerate them so for example acoustic trauma or repeated noise exposure they will affect those hair cells and cause damage to them and we can't regenerate them so it's really important that we protect them because we have one shot at it all right bf knowles is asking that hearing test where you sit in a booth and listen to beeps the are they testing for my ability to hear my wife when she said under her breath so a hearing test consists of a lot of different parts the first part would be otoscopy where we look in your ears and check for any debris wax anything blocking the eardrum the next test would be tympanometry where we move your eardrum back and forth we're checking the pressure in your ears the volume of your ear canal and how well your eardrum vibrates back and forth now what you are referring to is the beep test we are presenting different beeps at different frequencies and we're trying to find the softest sound that you can hear this is how we measure hearing loss i'd say the number one complaint people have when they come into my office is that they have trouble hearing in background noise this is a very common complaint everybody has trouble hearing in background noise but what we do in the office is we measure it's called a test called the quicksin and we can measure what signal to noise ratio your brain needs to understand well in background noise so the average listener who does well in background noise only needs a zero to two decibel advantage over the background noise sometimes in the office we'll find that some people have a 20 decibel signal to noise ratio meaning let's say the background noise was at 60 decibels someone would have to speak to them at 80 decibels so that much difference over the background noise for them to understand clearly this question's from bao wilson i said what causes tinnitus so there are a few causes of tinnitus and first and foremost tinnitus is a sound that you are hearing inside of your ear nobody else can hear it around you so it can sound like a buzzing a ringing some people say it's like cicadas in your ear and some of the causes of tinnitus the first one would be noise exposure some other causes of tinnitus are infections as well as stress and anxiety and fatigue there are technically no treatments for tinnitus that's probably the number one question i get asked online my first question is have you had a hearing test because if you do have hearing loss hearing aids are an amazing way to mask the sound of your tinnitus i have fit hearing aids on people who have had tinnitus in their ears for 20 years and they put the hearing aids on and they said for the first time in decades they have silence which is a really powerful thing the next question is from emma warner how do our ears affect our balance a lot of people are unaware that our balance organ is actually located in the inner ear that is what you see right here these are our semicircular canals they actually detect gravity and movement and that's what keeps us upright and keeps us balanced vertigo is when you experience a room spinning sensation there are a few different causes for that meniere's disease is a disease that does have vertigo accompanied with it head trauma sometimes we see positional vertigo which would mean if you turned your head in one direction that would bring on dizziness but if you turned your head the other way no dizziness the dizziness that happens with movement what is happening there is we have little calcium carbonate crystals in our semicircular canals that are lodged meaning they are stationary they can become dislodged and when they are free-floating it is hard to detect gravity which will cause vertigo or room-spinning dizziness there is a maneuver that i recommend having a professional do don't look on youtube and do it yourself definitely more effective if you see a physical therapist who specializes in vertigo or an ear nose and throat physician or an audiologist that specializes in vestibular issues the next question is from manny edwards what is the highest frequency you can hear not humans in general but you in general humans have the ability to hear from 20 hertz all the way up to 20 000 hertz it's hard to know how high i personally can hear because your standard audio test only goes up to 8 000 hertz there are some high frequency testing at other facilities a common thing we see in the clinic is hearing loss due to aging which is called presbycusis this typically looks just like a high frequency hearing loss we all do tend to lose our high frequencies first that is the most common configuration of a hearing loss that i'll see in the office and that's because how the ear is set up our cochlea is snail shaped and the bass sounds which are lower frequency they get less attention than the high frequency hair cells so we do see damage to our hair cells more so in the high frequencies we have a question from kelly lek uh can my eardrum bursts on a plane my right ear is blocked from sickness and the plane pressure as we descend is causing extremely sharp pain yes your eardrum can burst on a plane especially when you're having a sinus infection or negative pressure in your ear the sudden change when you're in an airplane it's very fast which is why a lot of us feel popping that's actually your eustachian tube trying to regulate atmospheric pressure to the pressure behind your eardrum but in some rare cases it can actually burst your eardrum when the eardrum ruptures there is a hole in the eardrum and most likely it will repair itself but in rare cases it does not and an ent can put a little piece it's almost like a piece of parchment paper that they put on the eardrum so that the skin develops over it so that you have a full solid eardrum to keep your middle ear safe so i recommend not traveling when you're too sick make sure you see an ear nose and throat physician before you travel and see if there's anything they can do to make you feel a little bit more comfortable on the plane meerkat skeptry sent in a question asking i've lost my hearing so badly that when my volume is jacked all the way up it sounds normal and not loud can you regain hearing if this is the case i recommend you seeing an audiologist for a hearing test there are different kinds of hearing loss that can be resolved through medication and surgery an audiologist would be your first step just to figure out what type of hearing loss it is and then we would refer out to an ear nose and throat physician they prescribe medications and do the surgery avibai 9947277 asked do cochlear implants give people normal hearing abilities a cochlear implant is actually able to bypass the unhealthy part of the ear and stimulate the auditory nerve directly a cochlear implant does not sound like what we experience hearing to sound like people who did have normal hearing and had normal speech and language skills and then experienced a type of hearing loss that required a cochlear implant they often say that a cochlear implant sounds very tinny or robotic but they do learn to make sense of it with a lot of speech therapy this is not a surgical procedure that you do it and you're done this is something that does require a lot of follow-up with other professionals and you do wear a part that is on the outside of your head and a part over the top of your ear where the microphone is you'll oftentimes see a circle attached with a wire right here on the skull it stays there because there's a piece behind the skin that magnetizes the two together that is your processor and that's actually going to stimulate your auditory nerve and bypass those unhealthy hair cells they have come such a long way and people do incredibly well with them katie likes baseball asked any local audiologist out there that can explain the yanny versus laurel thing and why i hear a different name every hour this was hysterical when it came out and i too would go back and forth between hearing them what's happening is yani is a higher frequency sounding word where laurel is lower frequency so it just depends which one your brain decided to listen to more so the lower frequencies or the higher frequencies kalma baljore wants to know is the hearing aid business a big scam unfortunately our profession has gotten a little bit of a bad reputation because of all of these advertisements you're seeing out there there's a lot of misinformation and it's really hard to sift through that's why it's really important to find an audiologist that you trust anything that seems too good to be true is too good to be true but if you find an audiologist that knows what they're doing and they truly care about improving your life nothing scammy about it it's actually a really incredible profession to be in that's all the questions that we have till next time make sure you protect your ears you