Hearing Loss with Sound Intolerance

Untreated hearing loss under-stimulates auditory neural pathways resulting in hearing loss with sound intolerance. Sadly, hearing loss increases the risk of emotional and behavioral difficulties in children and teens. Likewise, adults experience emotional and social difficulties.

Is Hearing Loss Affecting You?

Your Moore Auditory-Visual Questionnaire Report shares intensity of behavioral difficulties related to specific areas of concern improving communication with Cheri, professionals, doctors, and therapists.

Need Help?

Cheri Moore helps children and adults with hearing loss and sound intolerance strengthen their hearing system resulting in an easier transition into hearing aids. In addition, Cheri completes observation activities to learn about your visual processing skills.

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It is an honor to work with Cheri Moore on her journey with auditory integration therapy.  She has shown a consistent desire to go above and beyond in every aspect of her practice and training.  Cheri’s quest for greater understanding and her thirst for knowledge are demonstrated daily.  It is a pleasure to work with a professional who is so eager to learn and apply new information to help her clients reach their best possible outcomes.

Kathy J Harvey-Jones, MsEd, Audiology, BC-HIS

Through this video, learn how hearing loss affects your balance, memory, conversational skills, and even your vision.

Sound Sensitivities, Ear Pain

When your auditory neural system is weak, loud sounds cause a painful feeling in the ear. Because weak auditory pathways fail to stimulate a nerve that fires the middle ear’s stapedius muscle. Consequently, loud sounds cause physical pain in the ear. Yes, there is actual knife-like pain in the ears.

The stapedius muscle’s job is to protect the cochlea from harmful levels of sound. Specifically, by pulling a tiny bone called the incus away from the cochlea. When there are safe levels of sound, the tiny incus bone taps on the cochlea sending sound energy to the brain.    

Behaviors are clues. When the stapedius muscle fails to stop harmful levels of sound, individuals become anxious. Especially when they walk into stores, malls, and eateries. Why? They never know when a sound will hurt their ear. Continuous stress behaviors result in another domino effect, an imbalance of stress hormones within the brain.

Hearing aids improve sound tolerance

Hearing Loss with Sound Intolerance

Auditory Integration Training improves sound tolerance helping clients more easily adjust to wearing hearing aids.  Understandably, clients with sound intolerance resist the idea of wearing hearing aids. Today, hearing aids are more like sound adjustors.  Because phone apps pair up with your cell phone allowing you to adjust sounds around you.  For example, you can turn down competing sounds around you. At the same time, you can turn up the volume of sound directly in front of you improving your ability to hear the person talking.

Negative Impact on Motor Skills

Suprisingly, a study completed by Frank Lin at John Hopkins’ Univ. School of Medicine in 2012, found that participants with a mild 25 dB hearing loss were three times more likely to have fallen in the past.  Astonishingly, the risk of falling increased almost one and a half times for every ten-decibel increase in hearing loss.

  • SPEECH — Lip, tongue, and cheek movement need auditory stimulation.
  • BALANCE & MOTOR PLANNING comes from the inner ear’s vestibular system coordinating head, neck, and eye movements needed for depth perception.

After Cheri started working with adults with hearing loss, she consistently checked their ability to keep vision single and clear. Suprisingly, all adults fatigued while reading.  Using a brock string with four beads, these clients experienced vision that blurred and doubled at near or far. Intrigued, Cheri gave them a full auditory integration training program. Once again using the brock string, these clients shared that vision stayed clear and single. Consequently, almost all clients started consistently wearing hearing aids.

Take action, complete a Moore Auditory-Visual Questionnaire. Then, contact Cheri Moore. If you know you have hearing loss and need financial help, Cheri can help connect you with nonprofit organizations that help with the cost of hearing aids.

Poor Emotional Health

Research shows that preschoolers, children, and teens with hearing loss have an increased risk of developing emotional distress and behavioral difficulties. Likewise, researchers at John Hopkins found that adults with untreated hearing loss are at an increased risk of developing depression and social isolation. When it becomes too difficult to enjoy group conversation, the person with hearing loss withdraws. Despondent, the person feels left out. Unfortunately, isolation occurs at home and away from home.

  • Anger, frustration
  • Communication difficulties
  • Feelings of isolation, choice to isolate
  • Depression, hopeless
  • Listening difficulties resulting in poor job and academic performance
A young girl looking sad while getting a hug.
Having fun playing catch while listening to Berard Auditory Integration Training due to hearing loss.

First, Berard Auditory Integration Training strengthens your hearing system improving sound tolerance. Then, Auditory Neurocognitive Training improves memory, auditory processing speed, and listening skills. Overall, all ages experience improved emotional health. 

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Decreasing Cognitive Skills

John Hopkins completed a longitudinal study tracking the effects of aging. When compared to participants without hearing loss, researchers found that participants with hearing loss suffered from dementia at a higher rate. Alarmingly, the onset and progression of dementia was more rapid in participants who refused to wear hearing aids. Encouragingly, the progression of dementia slowed after participants started wearing hearing aids. When a hearing test shows a mild hearing loss, Cheri strongly recommends hearing aids. If you already have sound intolerance, work with Cheri to complete an auditory integration training program. Thus far, all clients Cheri has worked with are successfully wearing their hearing aids.

In summary, the risk of developing dementia is

  • Two times more likely when participants had mild hearing loss
  • Three times more likely when participants had moderate hearing loss
  • Five times more likely when participants had severe hearing loss.

Hearing Aids Maintain One’s Quality of Life

Yes, hearing aids are expensive. However, your quality of life depends on good cognitive functions. Thus, hearing aids are worth the cost. In fact, your independence, social life, and success at work depends on your hearing. Hearing aids, when properly fit and consistently worn, maintain stimulation to your brain needed for:

  • Short-term memory
  • Enjoying conversations in all environments
  • Integrating sounds with sights promoting motor planning, balance
  • Maintaining speech fluency, word retrieval  

Researchers found that pushing sound stimulation with hearing aids to the brain slowed the decline of memory difficulties by 75 percent.

three blue gears with white text

How Does Hearing Loss Affect Behavior?

As I worked with young and older people, I began to realize there are numerous, similar effects of hearing loss upon behaviors for all ages. For example, hearing loss can affect your ability to look in the right direction in response to a sound. If a child fails to look, many call it an attention deficit. If an adult fails to look, we assume they are ignoring us. Meanwhile, if an older adult fails to look, most of us think they simply failed to hear.

5 Surprising Reasons Hearing Loss Begins

Hearing loss is not deafness. Hearing loss occurs on a spectrum: mild, moderate, severe, and every decibel in between which is why you may be surprised to learn about 5 reasons why hearing loss can begin.

Listening Habits Affect the Safety of Earbud and Headphone Usage

Most of us assume that what is sold must be safe. Surely the volume on my listening device is safe with and without headphones. However, researchers found that volume is just part of the issue. Have you ever asked yourself, “What safety precautions should I take when I use headphones and earbuds?” Why do I ask?

Unknown Hearing Loss

Year after year, I saw my son gradually fall behind in reading comprehension. He never liked to read even though he passed his phonetics reading program and successfully decoded words, read sentences, and then whole paragraphs. After each annual achievement test, I saw his reading comprehension scores fall further and further behind.

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FDA Statement On AIT

"Auditory Integration Training remediateds impairments in auditory discrimination (sound sensitivity and auditory distortion) associated with Autism, Learning Disabilities, and related disorders - ADD, ADHD, CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Deficits), SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder), Dyslexia."

 

Need Help?

Cheri Moore helps children and adults improve their ability to respond and maintain progress after auditory integration training using medically-based testing to guide intervention.