Hearing

Earwax There to Protect Your Hearing Doctors Say

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Your ears have a reason for producing earwax, primarily to collect dirt, dust and other matter from getting further into your ears. In other words, earwax serves a purpose in protecting your hearing, and doctors at HealthDay News are warning that being too enthusiastic in trying to clean earwax out may result in ear damage.

Overzealousness at ear cleaning can even result in infection, so it’s important to understand that earwax is a substance that’s meant to be in your ears, and it actually aids in your ears’ self-cleaning process, providing protection, lubrication and antibacterial properties.

Known technically as cerumen, it’s produced by glands in your ear canal. Made up mostly of dead skin cells, earwax also contains lysozyme, an antibacterial enzyme, fatty acids, alcohols and cholesterol. Since earwax buildup can be a sign of omega-3 deficiency, you often can solve the problem by simply eating more omega-3s or taking a high-quality animal-based omega-3 supplement like krill oil.

If you have an abnormal buildup of earwax do not use a cotton swab. Rather, try to soften the wax by placing a few drops of olive oil, coconut oil or water in your ear. Then, pour a capful of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide in each ear to flush the wax out. It’s worth noting that using plain sterile water, or a sterile saline solution, to soften earwax works just as well as oil or over-the-counter eardrops.

If you suffer from a more serious impaction, you may need to get the earwax removed by a physician who can manually remove the wax using microsuction, an otoscope or other appropriate instruments.

7 Important Lessons Deaf People Can Teach You About Communication.

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LESSON

I have always thought it would be a blessing if each person could be blind and deaf for a few days during his early adult life. Darkness would make him appreciate sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound. ~Helen Keller ( Blind and Deaf American Author and Educator)

I grew up with wonderful parents who always encouraged my passion for music. I still vividly remember the day when they got me the new shiny sound system. Years later they got me a guitar and paid for my guitar classes. And they never had a chance to hear a sound of what I was listening to, playing and singing. My parents are deaf.

The reality of deaf people is different from other people’s experiences. They have limited abilities to communicate but exactly because of that they seem to know so much more about what effective communication means.

I used to live in a dormitory for deaf families for over 10 years and had a chance to compare 2 worlds: at home, where I saw people communicating using their hands, and outside, where I observed interactions of ‘normal’ people with hearing abilities. I was very blessed to have experienced the best and the worst of both worlds: the world of silence and the world of sounds.

These are some of the things I’ve learned from deaf people about effective communication:

1. Maintain eye contact

How many times did you find yourself checking facebook updates on your iPhone while having a conversation? In the world of deaf people if you stop looking at the person you are talking to, you are literally cutting the conversation. Because the only way you can ‘hear’ what other person is trying to say is to look into their face. This is a great lesson on the importance of being present, focusing on the person who is next to you, staying more connected to that person and receiving.

2. Don’t interrupt, follow the protocol

How many times did you find yourself waiting for someone to finish talking so you can say what you think? When a company of deaf people are having a conversation, it’s not possible for them to have more than one person talking at a time. There is only one way to follow the conversation – to look at the one speaking. This teaches us to respect the right of each individual to speak up and not to be interrupted in the midst of the their self expression.

3. Be straightforward, down to the point and as concise as possible

How often do you communicate your thoughts and needs clearly without trying to make things sound better than they are? In sign language there are 2 ways to say a particular word – you either use the alphabet and show a sign for each letter or you use one sign which stands for the entire word.

The second option is much faster hence convenient. Thus for almost every word there is a specific sign. Can you imagine such a massive amount of information to memorize? Not only you have to learn how to write and pronounce the word but also a specific sign that represents it. The nature of sign language requires you to be as specific as possible and use as few words as needed to convey your message. That’s an essential lesson to learn as so often we are reluctant to be direct and clear in what we think, want and feel.

4. If you don’t understand something, ask

How often are you reluctant to ask a question when something is unclear to you? Or to clarify what your loved one meant rather than making an assumption? We do it out of fear of being misunderstood, rejected or even humiliated. Each deaf person has their own style of using sign language. So it’s normal to ask a meaning of a specific unfamiliar sign. There is nothing wrong in not knowing or understanding something. If that happens, just ask.

5. Cut yourself from distractions

The world around us is extremely noisy. We have tons of devices, social medias, traditional medias which in their attempt to inform, entertain, update and educate, produce an overwhelming informational noise around us. We hear, see and feel. We are so used to being surrounded by that noise that we lose our ability to be focused and present. When we are having a conversation. When we are working. When we are cooking. When we are creating something. We are constantly attacked and distracted by that informational noise. I remember watching my father making furniture. He would always be so focused and immersed in the moment of creating, it would seem like nothing in the world could disturb him. Learn to be present – as simple as that.

6. Be expressive and articulate

There are so many ways we can play with our voice when we talk: pace, tone, volume. All this gives us plenty of ways to express our emotions, feelings and attitude when we talk about the particular subject. But how often do we allow ourselves to be expressive? Sometimes so called social norms restrict us from laughing too loud, from raising our voice when we are excited or crying in front of others. Because it’s an inappropriate thing to do. Deaf people are very articulate by nature. Their facial expressions and gestures can mesmerize you with their intensity and artistry. They don’t really care how others may see them. They just express what they feel without actually hiding or softening their emotions.

7. Observe, learn and get extra information from what you see and feel

Just imagine how many tiny yet important details we usually miss in our daily interactions with others? When you cannot hear you become more attentive to things happening around you. You learn to notice even the smallest things, you learn to experience the world around you through all those insignificant details which in a bigger picture play their crucial role. And more importantly, you learn to appreciate them.

Source: purpose Fairy

 

Meteors Don’t Strike Twice.

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Without precedent or warning, a loud boom sounding like a major piece of artillery frightens your normally quiet neighborhood. Houses shake and dishes rattle. The jolt is singular, percussive — and ominous. Later the TV news reports that the boom was heard over many miles, but nothing exploded. No supersonic aircraft flew by. Someone saw yellow light in the sky.

Residents of New York’s Rockland and Westchester Counties, not far from New York City, experienced this in March 2009. It could have been a rare, beach ball sized meteor that disintegrated before it hit the ground. Meteors are certainly supersonic and have been known to make loud sonic booms. A bounty hunter offered $10,000 for a piece of the meteorite.

But the meteor theory blew up a couple days later. Another loud boom in the same area jolted people awake at 5:15 am. Nanuet resident Keith Wallenstein said of the second boom. “The house was shaking. It sounded like someone had flown an F-16 over the house. If it was thunder, it had to be right on the house. [But] I know a bunch of people who heard it within 3 to 4 or 5 miles away.”

By now you may be thinking the military was up to something after all. They’d be mum about it, wouldn’t they?

In James Fenimore Cooper’s day there were no supersonic aircraft. As he recounted in 1850:

The ‘Lake Gun’ is a mystery. It is a sound resembling the explosion of a heavy piece of artillery, that can be accounted for by none of the known laws of nature. The report is deep, hollow, distant, and imposing. The lake seems to be speaking to the surrounding hills, which send back the echoes of its voice in accurate reply. No satisfactory theory has ever been broached to explain these noises. Conjectures have been hazarded about chasms, and the escape of compressed air by the sudden admission of water; but all this is talking at random, and has probably no foundation in truth. The most that can be said is, that such sounds are heard, though at long intervals, and that no one as yet has succeeded in ascertaining their cause.

Cooper was talking about Lake Seneca, one of the Finger Lakes in upper New York State. The Lake Gun was the name given to the booms by local settlers. The Native Americans said it was their god talking.

Moodus, Connecticut is another hot spot for loud booms, and other noises too. The Native Americans there called the area Machemodus, or Place-of-Noises, and warned the early settlers about them. The Moodus noises ceased in the 1980’s but sprang back to life in 2011. In 1979 Boston College’s Weston Observatory set up seismometers and measured Moodus quakes producing pops or bangs more than a hundred times too small for people to feel, some as low as minus 2 on the Richter scale. The geologists found that the source of the quakes is in hard bedrock only 1500 meters deep under Moodus, very shallow for an earthquake. They offered no explanation for the sound.

Quakes hundreds or thousands times more powerful occur elsewhere yet are nearly silent. More powerful quakes, ones that start to do damage do make noise, but more like rolling rumbles, not singular explosions. Why should some quakes produce percussive booms so efficiently?

The booms are not caused by an explosion nor any material object moving supersonically. Instead they are launched by the world’s largest loudspeaker: the ground or surface all around you, especially if it is hard bedrock or water (water is actually very stiff-try compressing it!).

This is apparently controversial. A website devoted to the Guns of Barisol, India, on the northern shore of the Bay of Bengal, another place of bewildering sonic booms, tries to inoculate readers against the microquake explanation of the booms: “You may read . . . that the Guns of Barisal are supposed to be caused by earth movements too feeble to be felt. Earthquakes can make noises, but not when no movements are felt….” Actually this statement is quite false: small quakes can produce loud booms.

Oddly, the surface does not need to move very far nor very fast to launch exceedingly loud sound resembling cannon fire or a sonic boom. What it does need is a lot of acceleration. But how can something have huge acceleration, yet not wind up moving very far or very fast?

The answer is the acceleration must be very brief. Suppose the ground accelerates at 1000 G’s straight up before recoiling and reversing direction, all in 1000th of a second. (The Tesla Roadster, capable of 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds, accelerates 1000 times less at under 1 G) If the ground or water surface does that, its speed is never more than a modest 1 meter per second, and it will move less than a millimeter! But one heck of a loud boom will be launched if large surface areas do that.

Acceleration is the agent of sound production. An accelerating surface “surprises” the air next to it and launches a pressure wave moving at the speed of sound, even though the surface and the air itself never comes close to moving that fast. When your fingernail touches a desktop, you hear an audible clack. The surface of the desk clearly never moves very far, and the desktop certainly doesn’t move any faster than your fingernail was moving, but the sudden contact of desk with fingernail causes a significant (many G’s ) but short lived acceleration of the desktop, which launches the sound.

A sudden breaking of a large piece of rock under great tension sends out a sharp compression wave moving fast in the rock — like a sound wave, only in rock. When the wave reaches the surface, the surface is very suddenly pushed up over a large area- a huge but short lived acceleration — and a boom in born.

Sharp waves traveling in rock tend to quickly round off, so the pulse and the acceleration will be reduced unless the quake is very close to the surface, as it is in Moodus, and presumably under Rockland and Westchester Counties, Seneca Lake, etc. A Richter 1 quake is plenty to launch an ear splitting boom if it occurs close to the surface, yet at Richter 1, the geologists won’t dignify the quake with a mention.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com