Southern California Ear, Nose & Throat Southern California Ear, Nose & Throat
Nasal polyps are a fairly common condition, and many people don’t know they exist if they are small. They are benign growths, usually tear-dropped shaped, that line your nasal cavity or sinuses. If they begin to affect breathing or cause other issues, your doctor may recommend nasal polyp surgery.
Hearing is one of our five valuable senses and if suddenly you couldn’t hear sounds or voices clearly, you would obviously be upset. You notice others with hearing aids and now you wonder if that will be you soon. Let’s investigate why you might be experiencing muffled hearing.
Sleep apnea is also known as obstructive sleep apnea or OSA. This common condition presents a problem while sleeping since patients cannot breathe in enough oxygen. In practical terms, it is a sleep disorder where breathing repeatedly stops during sleep. Most people associate snoring with OSA, but that is not really the problem; it is just a symptom. OSA needs to be treated, so how does an ENT specialist treat sleep apnea?
Continue reading “How Does An ENT Specialist Treat Sleep Apnea?”
Half the population snores at some point in their life, and 40 – 45% of adult men and 24 – 30% of women snore regularly. It may be annoying to your sleep partner, and you may wake up with a dry mouth, but is it dangerous to snore? Actually, it can be.
Let’s learn how snoring and sleep apnea impact your health.
Continue reading “How Snoring And Sleep Apnea Impact Your Health”
The symptoms of a sinus infection are known to many of us. Headaches and having pressure and pain behind our cheekbones and around our eyes are but a few of them. Most of the time these sinus infections go away with proper home care. When they don’t go away or keep coming back, here is the recommendation for when to see a specialist for recurrent sinus infections.
Continue reading “When To See A Specialist For Recurrent Sinus Infections”
During this time of year it can be difficult to distinguish between having just a cold or seasonal allergies. With the fears of COVID-19, this dilemma becomes even more important, and can be quite frightening with the wrong information. Let’s unpack the symptoms of just a cold, seasonal allergies or COVID-19, and when to be concerned. Continue reading “Just A Cold, Seasonal Allergies, Or COVID-19?”
Whether for business or for fun, travel is an important part of our lives. However, for more than 20 million people in the U.S. with hearing loss, travel can be difficult. The good news is that with a little preparation and some common-sense precautions, travel can be a lot easier.
Here is a checklist of things you can do that will make the whole experience smoother and help avoid unnecessary problems.
Have Your Hearing Aids Checked Before You Leave. Before leaving on any trip, make sure your hearing aids are working properly. Have them checked by a hearing care professional and ask for a referral to hearing professionals in the areas where you’ll be staying.
If flying on an airplane is not your favorite experience, taking a bus or train may be the best way to travel. Trains are the faster way to get to your destination. Amtrak requires passengers with hearing loss to purchase their tickets 14 days ahead of schedule. Amtrak offers discounts to those with disabilities as well as one additional travel companion. Special room accommodations can also be made for those with wheelchairs or limiting disabilities.
Once you are on your way, there are some things you can do to make the trip more enjoyable and less stressful.
Road trips are great opportunities to explore new places and savor new experiences. And traveling by car is a great time to talk with your travel companions or relax as the scenery goes by. But car travel poses special challenges for hearing aid wearers. Here are some tips to help keep you safe on the road.
Traveling can be one of life’s greatest experiences. With a little planning and prudent preparation, it can also be safe and trouble-free.
Happy trails!
Have you ever wondered what makes hearing work? It’s actually quite a complicated process involving several different kinds of body parts. Here’s a quick description of how they all work together so that you can hear what’s going on around you.
The ear has three main parts (see Figure 1):
Figure 1. Anatomy of the ear
As you can see in Figure 1, the outer ear opens into the ear canal. The eardrum (tympanum) separates the ear canal from the middle ear. The middle ear contains three small bones that help amplify the sound and transfer it to the inner ear. These three bones (ossicles), are the malleus, the incus, and the stapes. They are also referred to as the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup because of their shapes.
The inner ear contains the cochlea, which changes sound into neurological signals, and the cochlear nerve, which takes sound to the brain.
Here’s how it all works together (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. How sound waves move through the ear
It all seems like something you would see in a cartoon, but it works. And it works very well. But an interruption of the normal process at any stage along the way can interfere with your ability to hear properly. That’s why it’s important to take care of your ears and seek professional help if you think there is a problem. In most cases, the sooner you recognize a problem, the more likely it can be resolved.
The ear is a delicate and intricate system that includes the skin of the ear canal and the eardrum. Most of the time, our ears take care of themselves, and common efforts to keep the ears clean may actually damage our ability to hear. So special care should be given to protect this part of our bodies. The most important thing you can do is to never stick a Q-Tip or any other object in your ears.
Hearing loss is the most common birth disorder among American children. Approximately 3 out of 1,000 children in the United States are born deaf or hard-of-hearing. This is important because studies have shown that early correction of hearing loss is crucial to the development of speech, language, cognitive, and psychosocial abilities. Treatment is most successful if hearing loss is identified within the first few months of life. Unfortunately, 25% of children born with serious hearing loss are not diagnosed until they are 14 months old. Continue reading “Hearing Screening for Children”