Throughout your lifetime, you are likely to experience temporary hearing difficulties. Behaviors accepted as aging could be related to your hearing. When babies, preschoolers, and children experience poor ear, nose, and throat health, they experience hearing difficulties negatively affecting their behaviors. Likewise, age-related permanent hearing loss leads to difficulties that affect much more than your hearing. I can imagine many of your responses, No way! I am protecting my hearing. Or, I know I already have hearing loss. If so, do you know that you still need to protect your hearing?

The effects of hearing loss are more difficult than you can imagine. Dr. Berard was diagnosed with hearing loss at a young age. He became determined to not lose his hearing resulting in the creation of Berard Auditory Integration Training which has now blessed the lives of countless people all over the world. Dr. Berard continued to hear the sweet voices of his loved ones until the day he passed away in his 90s. I am unable to overstate the importance of protecting your hearing, even if you already have hearing loss difficulties.

Brain Development & Maintenance

Typical and hidden hearing difficulties negatively affect auditory processing skills like listening, talking, and remembering. Thus, you subconsciously develop behaviors that help you cope. From birth through age 26, strong sound energy helps develop the brain.

In contrast, aging adults need a strong hearing system to maintain brain development.

Think of hearing aids a sound adjusters! 

Five Reasons You Are Likely to Experience Hearing Difficulties

1. Ongoing or past poor ear, nose, and throat health

We do not remember our years as infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. During those early years, a short neck, enlarged adenoids, and reactions to foods increase the risk of suffering from poor ear, nose, or throat health. Did you know that food allergies and sensitivities continue to affect your Eustachian tubes contributing to hearing difficulties? Poor ear, nose, and throat health weakens our hearing system. In fact, the causes of a weakened hearing system are numerous. At any stage in life, a weakness in our hearing system affects much more than our ability to listen in all environments.

Do sounds tolerated by others cause you discomfort? 

2. Aging: Age-Related Hearing Difficulties

In older people hearing loss can remain unknown because age-related hearing loss occurs so gradually that changes in behaviors are accepted as aging. Sadly, avoiding hearing aids increases the risk of falling. Also, it increases the risk of early-onset dementia. Wearing hearing aids slows down the progress of dementia. Even more encouraging, researchers found that wearing hearing aids before there are any memory difficulties delays the onset of dementia. Before you can remember, you must be able to easily hear.

Do you find yourself avoiding conversation in noisy places? 

3. Headphones & Earbuds: Induced Hearing Difficulties

When headphones or earbuds are worn by children, researchers were surprised that the brain’s ability to change increased research participants’ risk of developing a Auditory Processing Difficulties and hearing loss. Hearing difficulties affect your ability to remember, because your brain is too busy filling in missed sounds or blocking noise that seems too loud.

When I shared the information in the video with my research professor, she laughingly shared that I just ruined her workout. She wore earbuds while exercising. That very day she checked her listening volume. Oh no, the volume was set too high! That is when she checked out the best phone armbands for listening while exercising.

Can other people hear your music or podcast while you are wearing earbuds or headphones?

In teens and adults, researchers found that headphone listening habits changed the brain’s response to sounds resulting in auditory processing difficulties.

It is not “if” you will develop hearing loss,
but when will your hearing loss begin. 

Cheri Moore

4. Lack of Wearing Hearing Protection: Noise-Related Hearing Loss

Do you know when to protect your hearing? This chart shows you when to protect your hearing. You can decrease your risk of developing hearing difficulties. Yard tools, work-related exposure, and entertainment all contribute to noise-related hearing loss. 

I often hear my adult clients, ages 30 years and older, emotionally share how they wished they had understood the importance of protecting their hearing. Now, you can understand.

Do you protect your ears?

5. Brain and Neck Injury

Sound gets to the brain’s auditory processing center through the skull bones, through the middle ear, and through auditory neural highways. During my work with concussion clients, I have repeatedly found a mixture of different types of medical issues negatively impacting the strength of sound energy traveling along auditory neural pathways to their brain and along their cranial skull bones. Weak sound energy stimulation from the inner ear along auditory neural pathways to the brain contributes to sound intolerance, difficulties listening with comprehension, and thus poor memory. Consequently, there is an increased risk of learning difficulties at work or school and emotional distress.

Behavioral Characteristics Associated with Hearing Difficulties

I spent years asking questions, working with clients of all ages, reading research studies, and discussing cases with a retired audiologist. Slowly I began to understand the meaning behind behaviors, emotional distress, and academic difficulties often rooted in hearing difficulties and visual processing difficulties.

Now, professionals like myself, doctors, therapists, parents, teachers, and the individual more fully understand the intensity and frequency of behavioral difficulties shared on your Moore Auditory Visual Questionnaire Report. Moderate and significant concerns help me advocate for hearing tests not completed during a typical hearing evaluation.  

A Moore Auditory-Visual Questionnaire Example:

When you agree that while listening the person is unable to maintain a conversation when the environment changes from quiet to noisy on the MAvQ Questionnaire, follow-up questions pop up. Mark all that apply. 

Does the person:

• Make the environment quiet
• Continue the conversation
• Stop talking
• Leave
• Yell, becomes upset
• Stop talking and just listen
• Take over the conversation, does most of the talking

How often? (choices are provided)

The report categorizes behaviors associated with auditory processing deficits, sound intolerance, unknown hearing loss, and visual processing difficulties. Behavioral responses like stopping talking, leaving, and getting angry every day indicate the intensity of concerns. 

Even when the cause of hearing loss remains unknown, behavioral characteristics provide clues. Past clients’ Moore Auditory-Visual Questionnaire Reports share behavioral characteristics supporting their need for additional hearing tests. The question is do you need hearing aids to maintain strong stimulation to the brain helping you maintain the benefits of Auditory Integration Training?

I work with you each step of the way preparing you for appointments with specialists and helping you implement medically-based recommendations.