Some Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids are Effective

by Dr Alex Jimenez DC, APRN, FNP-BC, CFMP, IFMCP | Anti Aging

A handful of over-the-counter “personal sound amplification products” fared as well as an expensive hearing aid in helping people pick up more words in conversation, researchers report.

While the study took place in a sound booth, “in this controlled environment, some of these devices helped people with mild to moderate hearing loss as well as a hearing aid,” said study author Nicholas Reed. He is an audiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in Baltimore.

An estimated 16 percent of Americans have trouble hearing, and the U.S. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders estimates that almost 30 million people could benefit from hearing aids.

But hearing aids can cost thousands of dollars, and Medicare doesn’t cover them, the researchers noted.

“Hearing aids are regulated medical devices and should all be able to aid someone with hearing loss,” Reed said. “While not all hearing aids are the same, they should all be able to meet this minimum requirement of making sound louder at appropriate frequencies and with minimal distortion.”

In contrast, personal sound amplification products, available at stores and online, aren’t regulated and can’t be marketed as hearing aids. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says they’re supposed to be used by people without hearing problems to help them hear distant sounds. The devices fit in or around the ear and make use of Bluetooth technology.

People do use the devices as hearing aids, however, said Todd Ricketts, vice chair of graduate studies with the department of hearing and speech sciences at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. But these products tend to be less technologically advanced than hearing aids, although some offer advanced features.

Should you go out and buy one of the amplification devices instead of getting a hearing aid from a hearing specialist? Some audiologists will refuse to fit you for one, and the U.S. government doesn’t consider them appropriate for people with hearing loss.

For the study, researchers recruited 42 patients at a university audiology clinic who had mild to moderate hearing loss. Two-thirds were women, and their average age was 72.

In a sound booth, the participants listened to sentences with “speech babble noise” in the background. The participants tried to understand what was said without any hearing assistance; while using a hearing aid (costing $1,910); and while using personal sound amplification products bought online and at a pharmacy (one was $30, and the others cost between $270 and $350).

The researchers measured the average accuracy — the percentage of the time that the participants understood the sentences. It was 77 percent without a hearing aid, 88 percent with the hearing aid, and 81 to 87 percent with four of the amplification devices (Sound World Solutions CS50+, Soundhawk, Etymotic Bean and Tweak Focus).

“The results suggest that the devices are technologically and objectively capable of improving speech understanding in persons with hearing loss,” Reed said.

A fifth amplification device, the $30 MSA 30X Sound Amplifier, scored the worst, with an average accuracy level of 65 percent, the researchers reported. Reed said the device caused distortion.

Reed added that the findings suggest that both hearing aids and the amplification devices should be regulated and available over-the-counter. In that case, he said, “the FDA would set technical standards for all of these devices.”

For now, he said, adults with mild to moderate hearing loss may want to consider using one of the devices and consult an audiologist if needed to adjust it.

Ricketts cautioned that “the downside of just trying these or ordering them is that they may not be appropriate. People aren’t very good at self-diagnosing how much hearing loss they have.”

That’s where an audiologist could be helpful, he said, but some won’t sell these devices.

The study was published in the July 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Chocolate is Good for Your Brain

by Dr Alex Jimenez DC, APRN, FNP-BC, CFMP, IFMCP | Anti Aging

Is your idea of a balanced diet chocolate in both hands? If so, you may be onto something — at least as far as your brain is concerned, according to a recent review published in Frontiers in Nutrition. Cocoa beans, it found, are a rich source of flavanols, a class of compounds that has neuroprotective effects.

Italian researchers studied available literature on the effects of cocoa flavanols on the brain — what happens to your brain in the hours immediately following eating cocoa, and what happens when you eat a cocoa flavanol enriched diet for a prolonged period of time.

They discovered that most randomized controlled trials found that cocoa flavanols had a beneficial effect on cognitive performance. Participants showed enhancements in working memory performance and improved visual information processing after having had cocoa flavanols.

For women, eating cocoa after a night of total sleep deprivation actually counteracted the cognitive impairment that such a night brings about. The results are promising for people who suffer from chronic sleep deprivation or work shifts.

The effects of relatively long-term ingestion of cocoa flavanols, ranging from five days to three months, has generally been investigated in elderly individuals. For them, cognitive performance was improved by a daily intake of cocoa flavanols.

In the elderly, factors such as attention, processing speed, working memory, and verbal fluency were greatly affected, and were most pronounced in older adults with mild cognitive impairments.

“This result suggests the potential of cocoa flavanols to protect cognition in vulnerable populations over time by improving cognitive performance,” said authors Valentina Socci and Michele Ferrara from the University of L’Aquila in Italy.  

“If you look at the underlying mechanism, the cocoa flavanols have beneficial effects for cardiovascular health and can increase cerebral blood volume in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus,” they said. “This structure is particularly affected by aging and therefore the potential source of age-related memory decline in humans.”

So should we eat chocolate every day to improve our brains? “Regular intake of cocoa and chocolate could indeed provide beneficial effects on cognitive functioning over time,” said the authors.

“There are, however, potential side effects of eating cocoa and chocolate,” they warned. “Those are generally linked to the caloric value of chocolate, some inherent chemical compounds of the cocoa plant such as caffeine and theobromine, and a variety of additives we add to chocolate such as sugar or milk.”

Nonetheless, the scientists practice their results: “Dark chocolate is a rich source of flavanols. So we always eat some dark chocolate. Every day.”

Recent studies have found that chocolate has additional benefits. British researchers found that magnesium, an essential nutrient found in dark chocolate, helps cells keep track of the natural cycles of day and night.

Need an energy boost? Dark chocolate containing at least 60 percent cacao beans can enhance your energy levels in the afternoon. Volunteers at the University of Northern Arizona University ate dark chocolate or a placebo product, then did thinking and memory activities while undergoing EKGs of their brains. Those who ate the chocolate were more alert.