Tag: speech understanding

• Season for Self-Care & Socializing

  ‘Tis the season for self-care & socializing. This is a common time for flare-ups if you have tinnitus or hyperacusis. I’ve gathered together some coping strategies, soundscapes, and tips on how…

  

• Coping Tools for Hyperacusis & Tinnitus

  There are so many videos out there promising instant relief to tinnitus, and they just aren’t real. In this video, I info share about what coping tools actually work and…

  

• Digital Tech Dangers: Screen Time & Personal Listening

  My latest Safe Sound Science with Granny Jan series is on the Dangers of screen time for children and teens at home and school. Now on YouTube and TikTok, I…

  

• Environmental Noise Risk Quiz

  How much do you know about the rising public health emergency from preventable noise pollution? Check your knowledge with this quick quiz.

  

• Over The Counter Hearing Aid Resource Centre

  Quiet cheers to Speech-Language Audiology Canada for adding an Over the Counter Hearing Aid Resource Centre to their website. While these products can help improve access to hearing healthcare, SAC…

  

• Granny Jan now on the YouTube

  I’m going really high tech. You’ve listened to simulated tinnitus and noise-induced hearing loss on my SoundCloud. (If not, check it out! Scare yourself. Scare friends and loved ones.) But…

  

• Rethinking Care for Hyperacusis

  My latest article in Tinnitus Today (Spring 2025) is titled When the patient becomes the clinician: Rethinking care for sound hypersensitivity. In this post, I’m giving a short overview and…

  

• Tinnitus & Hearing Loss Simulations

  Image by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash. What does it sound like to have tinnitus caused by loud music or noise exposure? I’ve put together a short SoundCloud playlist of noise-induced…

  

• Screen Time and Health Risks in Children and Teens

  I am a co-author of a new study, along with lead author Julie Cullen, on the impact of digital technologies on health and wellbeing of children and adolescents. Our study…

  

• Safer Personal Listening Guidelines

  If ears bled from unsafe personal listening with headphones or earbuds, maybe there would be mandatory manufacturing safety standards to better protect public health. Imagine riding a 10 speed bike,…

  

• Teaching Children and Teens about Safer Personal Listening

  There are many causes of early childhood or teen onset hearing loss, tinnitus, and/or hyperacusis (decreased sound tolerance). Unlike other causes, early noise damage to hearing health is entirely preventable.…

  

• Gaming Could be a Contributing Factor to Hearing Loss and Tinnitus

  Dangerously misleading “safe” listening information is shared in a recent article in the British Medical Journal that found gaming could lead to hearing loss and tinnitus. Risks included gaming at…

  

• This is Your Brain on Noise

  It is generally accepted that loud and very loud noise exposures can cause hearing loss. When I first read Dr. J.J. Eggermont’s book Noise and the Brain, I was horrified.…

  

• Call to Action: SoundPrint’s Find Your Quiet Place Challenge

  I’m partnering with SoundPrint, a hearing health app, to promote hearing health awareness this October. I don’t represent an organization. I’m just one person. But every person counts when it…

  

• If Ears Bled from Everyday Noise Exposures

  The image for this post was a graphic for a hearing health shock campaign I planned in 2017. I wanted to raise awareness about noise risk from common everyday sound…

  

• The Health Impact of Environmental Noise

  [Originally published at silencity.com in 2019; noise risk decibels revised April 14, 2022] Environmental noise is damaging and inflicts unwanted sounds into everyday life. In 1984, Gordon Hempton, The Sound…

  

• Personal Listening Systems are Likely Unsafe at Any Sound

  I was excited to have a second paper published in The Hearing Journal, co-authored with Dr. Daniel Fink of The Quiet Coalition. We’re trying to raise awareness about personal listening…

  

• The Danger in Headphones

  I was honoured to be included in the Hearing Health Foundation Summer 2021 Entertainment issue. My article is on the danger in headphones (and earbuds).  It includes tips on how…

  

• Too Loud: Nonoccupational Noise Exposure Causes Hearing Loss

  In July, my colleague Dr. Daniel Fink and I had two papers accepted for publication in Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics. Both papers are open access and free to share.…

  

• When Hearing Aids Don’t Work

  [Revised January 19, 2024. Originally published December 17, 2020 at silencity.com.] Many people with hearing difficulties delay getting help because they’re told hearing aids don’t work. But in my experience,…

  

• Safer Personal Listening

  With personal listening, it has never been easier to listen to music or audio content whenever and wherever people want. But…science shows personal listening is associated with permanent progressive hearing…

  

• Crowdsourced Sound Level Meter Apps

  Anyone can use crowdsourced Sound Level Meter (SLM) apps to help measure and map public noise pollution. Some free apps only work in certain countries, but I’ve tried to pick…

  

• Social Hearing Protection

  Websites, media and other sources say use ear protection if you’re in damaging high level environmental noise whether that’s mowing the lawn, going to a concert or stadium event, or…