If you’ve read any of the articles or excerpts on All Ears Cambodia, a charity I’ve been working with over the past six years, you’ll know we’re supporting a great cause. Whilst quite an undertaking for our small business to change a thousand lives, it reminds us of the essence of why we do what we do each day, enabling us to assist more people to a fuller participation in life. Whilst some aspects of this post are a little confronting, the intention is to highlight some of the nuances of what we do there, my recent visit and how your contribution is so important.
Two million Cambodians live with disabling hearing loss; it is estimated that 85 percent of those live in abject poverty and there’s essentially no pension. All Ears Cambodia are essentially the largest force for Audiology in the country. Not only do the hearing aids you help us send get put to good use, I’m honoured to be one of their visiting lecturers. During five years working in Asia, I saw a range of charitable causes; most were ineffective in the long run as the work we do requires sustained patient care over the long term. All Ears Cambodia are the real deal and are in it for the long haul with a great team of local staff.
The devastating Cambodian genocide by the Khmer Rouge, the Communist force in power between 1975 and 1979 has, to this day, left very visible scars across this once peaceful nation. Unlike other genocides in which only specific ethnic groups are singled out for execution, the Cambodian genocide would target doctors, teachers, educated people, the sick, children and even babies. On a personal note, my family friends, ethnic Vietnamese Cambodians, fled the country after their brother was shot during the upheaval, purely based on his race. With the help of my grandfather, they set up home and a productive orchard in rural Victoria. They, their children and grandchildren have become valued members of the local community, always generous with boxes of fruit and amazing spring rolls and still grateful for their new lives some forty years later.
The Cambodian genocide lacked an international investigation, most likely due to the USA’s recent loss in the Vietnam War and reluctance to engage with the region. The film The Killing Fields was released in 1984 and brought international attention to part of the devastation that happened during that horrific four years. I won’t go into detail about the unspeakable acts that happened there and will only mention the at-gunpoint evacuation of the city of Phnom Penh in 1975. All three million people – lawyers, businessmen, babies, even hospital patients – were forced out hundreds of kilometres into the countryside to work the land. Most had been subject to upheaval, fear and loss in the preceding years associated with the nearby Vietnam War. In the harrowing process of evacuation and forced rural labour, around a quarter of the population died. Per capita, it was the most severe human catastrophe in modern times.
Most of the patients we help in Cambodia endured this process and most have lived in abject poverty since. I can’t think of a group of people I’d rather support.
At the clinic, I had the privilege of teaching 11 eager-to-learn Audiologists, four of whom I first taught as students six years ago. They indicated that most of their patients had histories of severe infections that generally add 30-50 percent of additional hearing loss on top of age and noise related issues; leprosy and landmine injuries are also not uncommon.
Overwhelmingly, as there is essentially no pension in Cambodia, most were dependent on hearing aids supplied by the charity to hold down a job for survival for themselves and provide appropriate care and safety for their grandchildren.
It’s an absolute pleasure teaching there. The Audiologists are eager to learn, they ask good questions and don’t want you to leave! I had previously worked full time in Asia for five years and trained dozens of clinicians over that time. That experience has been invaluable in tailoring the advice and guidance to the All Ears Cambodia team.
If you or someone you know has pre-loved hearing aids, please drop them off or send them in – they will be put to good use. If you refer someone you care about, as part of our ‘Change Two Lives’ program, we send new devices on your behalf. Our goal is to change one thousand lives by the end of 2025. There are more details at www.neuaudio.com.au/all-ears-cambodia. Indeed, if you’d like to make a direct donation you can do this via the following link: www.allearscambodia.org/donate/index.html
Thanks Again
Andrew
#Audiologist #HearingLoss #HearingAid #AllEarsCambodia #NeuAudio
Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a keynote presentation in Sydney by Professor Frank Lin of John Hopkins University. He led the research team that published ground-breaking research in 2011 which, for the first time, showed the clear links between untreated hearing loss and dementia.
If you’ve been to one of my seminars or read my book Catching the Mind Robber – A Summary, you may be familiar with some of his work. It was really helpful to learn more of the background to his research including some of the nuances of what has been published and what new research is in the pipeline. I also found fascinating his findings in related areas such as untreated hearing loss and depression.
According to Professor Lin, projections estimate that the prevalence of dementia is expected to double every 20 years, to the point that one in every thirty Americans will have dementia by 2050. That’s one in thirty of the total population. What sparked much of the work and focused interest on dementia and untreated hearing loss was discovering that hearing impairment is independently associated with a 30-40% rate of accelerated cognitive decline.
Two major independent studies found that a 25dB (roughly 25%) shift in hearing levels was equivalent to nearly seven years of ageing on cognitive scores in older adults. Hence, a 50dB shift would, on average according to the studies, result in an increase in cognitive age of around 14 years. This would give a 59-year-old person the cognitive abilities of a 73-year-old. This is quite significant and very concerning. The two studies repeated independently yielded, essentially, identical results.
Between 1990-1994, 639 participants (aged 39-90 years) entered an intensive study on ageing. None had dementia at the start of the 12-year longitudinal study. Using a rigid definition of dementia, following annual checks over a 12-year period, subjects had a 200%, 300% or 500% increased risk for dementia depending on whether their hearing loss was mild, moderate, or severe, respectively. In cases of hearing loss, they also found up to a 40% loss of matter in the areas of the brain associated with speech, language, memory and attention. Similar results have been observed elsewhere which is further evidence to suggest that taking action early on hearing loss is advisable.
Professor Lin’s current work is focused on the impact that consistent hearing aid use has on the slowing and/or reversal of cognitive decline. This major study won’t be published until 2022/2023.
A recent study using functional MRI showed structural and functional changes in the brain following 12 months’ full-time hearing aid use. Another showed that hearing aid owners experienced a 75% reduction in dementia risk. It is anticipated that Professor Lin’s research will support this growing body of evidence linking hearing and brain health.
Whilst it could be easy to feel discouraged about hearing loss and its link with dementia, I would urge readers to feel particularly encouraged about the positivity of treating hearing loss early.
#BrainHealth #HearingLoss #CognitiveDecline #Audiologist #hearingaid#hearingaid #tinnitus#tinnitus #brisbane#brisbane #melbourne#melbourne #dementia#dementia
Do you ever feel like you’re not quite receiving all the messages you should be? People are talking to you but you’re not hearing them? Or maybe you’re watching TV and zoning out and then, when the programme is finished, you have no idea what you just watched? Similarly, you may have noticed that other people frequently comment that you don’t pay attention when they talk.
Mild hearing loss is something that often goes unnoticed – or at least unacknowledged – for a long time before a person takes action. It’s often such a gradual decline that it’s only after a couple of years that you might take stock of your situation and think: “Geez, maybe I’m not hearing properly.”
It reminds me of the old fable, The Emperor’s New Clothes. The jolly old Emperor is spun a fib, that the clothes the two weavers have made for him are made from the world’s finest fabric ever to grace the form of an important dignitary, but that only those of equal status are able to see them. The weavers, great scam artists of their day, simply made no clothes at all but employed theatrics to dress the Emperor with great assurance, pretending to fasten his invisible buttons, straighten his glorious invisible coat and correct his invisible lapels.
In reality, the weavers were out to make a grand fool of the Emperor and sent him out to greet his public in nothing but his undergarments. The Emperor, blissfully unaware, feels immensely proud of his spectacular outfit. He walks through the streets completely oblivious to the titters and sniggers of the crowd. All his loyal subjects know he is parading close to naked, but no one is brave enough to tell him. Some simply don’t want to offend him, others are fearful of what might happen to them if they do and still others think the whole affair is nothing more than a huge laugh.
What if you’re travelling through life in blissful ignorance? What if you don’t really know the extent of your hearing loss? Being such a gradual decline, it can be an issue that doesn’t bother you on a daily basis. And you don’t meet the same people every day either. One day, you might engage with the checkout operator and she has to repeat herself a couple of times. Later that same day, you might bump into an old friend who tells you what’s going on in his life but in the evening, when you go home and tell your spouse, you can barely remember what he said. A few days later, you’re having a meeting with a client in a noisy café and you notice that you’re reading his lips instead of listening to what he’s saying. “Hmm,” you think, and the penny starts to drop. You make a mental note: “We should meet in a quieter environment next time.” Meanwhile, the client has gone away wondering if you’re entirely interested in doing business with him. Of course, he doesn’t say anything to you and you’re none the wiser that he’s considering choosing someone else.
No one wants to appear rude and tell you: “Hey, I think you’re hard of hearing.” Certainly, it would be confronting if someone who is not close to you told you so. Even if a family member tries to gently let you know that they’ve noticed you zoning out instead of listening, it can be a difficult thing to process.
One of my patients is a 51-year-old businesswoman who noticed she was lip-reading instead of properly listening. At client meetings, she would watch the other person’s mouth instead of maintaining eye contact. “I found myself doing it more and more and it was embarrassing after a while,” she says. “Eye contact is so important in communication yet there I was, looking as though I wasn’t listening, and the truth was, I was listening extra hard!”
After being treating her hearing loss, my patient has discovered that communication is now easier and she can now even take notes while listening, and not have to keep her vision fixed on the person’s face. “I knew I’d been having problems hearing but I didn’t equate it to ‘hearing loss’ as such,” she explains. “I thought I was too young for hearing loss and certainly too young for hearing aids! But now that I have them and looking back, I feel as though I was really not a part of the same world everyone else was in.”
The Emperor in the fable fell victim to the invisible clothes scam because he was incredibly vain and was susceptible to his scammers’ ploys. In someone who is suffering from hearing loss, vanity is often not the issue, sometimes it’s purely a lack of awareness. It’s not your fault that you’re not aware of your hearing loss. The wonderful thing is that hearing loss can be treated; you can shake off those ‘invisible clothes’ and get back in the world and hear what everyone else is hearing.
#HearingAid #Audiologist #HearingTest #Tinnitus #CognitiveDecline #Dementia #Alzheimers
#AuditoryDeprivation #SocialIsolation #Loneliness
