Tears of Joy The Magic of HEARING
hello everyone
my name is dr raj shekhawat i’m a
clinical audiologist by training
in the past decade and a half i have
worked in countries like india
united states of america singapore new
zealand
england and very soon australia
based on my experience working in
schools
clinics hospitals universities private
practice
there’s one thing i’ve noticed worldwide
and that is people tend to underestimate
the significance of
hearing hearing impairment is invisible
in nature
unlike visual impairment or person with
physical impairment if there are two
people standing
and one of them has hearing loss there
is absolutely no way
purely by looking at them we can predict
who has hearing impairment
the very fact that i’m talking to you
the very fact that i can speak in five
different languages
is purely because of my hearing
when a child is born based on their
hearing ability
they hear a lot and based on that they
learn to speak and they learn a language
not only speech and language development
all the other spheres of our lives are
also dependent on our hearing
the moment we get up from the bed using
an alarm
hearing dependent we get up and we
go to work our commute hearing dependent
our our work life interacting with
colleagues
hearing dependent education attending
lectures interacting with peers
hearing dependent entertainment watching
movies and watching tv and listening to
music
hearing dependent hearing is extremely
extremely
important and everything around us
depends on hearing
in fact hearing can heighten our
emotional encounters too
let me share this very recent encounter
of mine with you all
one of the most strongest emotions
i have ever experienced in my life was
tears of joy
as they say in hindi ke asu
two months back precisely on 30th of
june
9 13 night my wife went into labor
we rushed to the hospital and after
intensive 12 hours of labor
9 29 in the morning on first of july
our son georgios raj was born
i can very vividly remember his head
crowning that his beautiful face coming
and then the whole body and then
he cried
oh boy tears went rolling down my cheeks
it’s so amazing that a cry of a newborn
is capable of evoking such strong
emotions in us however
when i put my audiologist’s hat on i can
probably understand
why that happens to us basically
the auditory area and the emotional area
in our brain
the part of our brain which processes
sounds and the part of the brain which
processes
emotions are linked together
and that is why when we hear a nice
soothing favorite song of ours we
instantly feel relaxed and calm
contrary to that if we hear a sound of a
ambulance or a police siren it evokes
distrusting feelings
that’s because the emotions and hearing
they are connected to each other to
understand this
let’s do an activity together i want you
all to close your eyes
go ahead close your eyes with me now
i want you to think about the most
exciting day of your life till today
relive that day in your mind
go through that day that could be
your day of your wedding the day your
child was born
you want some award you got some good
news
or your time with your loved one just
keep replaying that moment
that day those conversations
in your mind
it’s beautiful isn’t it now
i want you to keep your eyes closed
but this time you are again replaying
that
very same incidence
but there’s a catch and the catch is
this time you can’t hear
anything at all you can’t hear
any conversations any sounds
let it sink in go back
replay that day but this time
you can’t hear a thing
what do you think do you think
your day was as exciting as
it was when you could hear everything
i would leave you to answer that
question to yourself
that signifies the importance of hearing
in our lives let’s talk about our
magical hearing hearing is one of the
first sensory organs to develop
in fact during the very first trimester
of
pregnancy hearing starts developing
by the time the little baby is 16 weeks
old in the mother’s womb
the baby can detect the sound and by the
time the baby is
24 weeks old the baby can sort of start
turning their heads
towards the source of the sound
sound is everywhere in the environment
when a sound is created there are
vibrations which are created
the sound waves which are created in the
environment and when those sound waves
travel
towards our head this part here
we call it pinna the purpose of this
part
is to filter to act as a funnel to
receive the sounds
and then direct the sounds to our ear
canal
when sound waves pass through the ear
canal they reach our
ear drum and they impinge on the eardrum
as a result of that the eardrums
vibrates
and there are three very tiny bones
which are attached to a ear drum
on one side and on the other side
they’re attached to this
snail-shaped spiral structure called
cochlea which is filled with salty water
now that’s the part where real
magic happens almost
on the size of our thumb there are
thousands of hair cells in the cochlea
which converts the vibration energy of
sounds
into electrical impulses and then these
electrical impulses
are carried by a nerve auditory nerve
all the way to human brain where the
sounds
are processed let’s understand
the importance of these hair cells in
our cochlea
although they are magical and they do
this very significant part
of converting the sound impulses into
electrical impulses
they are also very delicate and prone
to damage and once they are damaged
there’s absolutely no way we could
regenerate them in humans
so they are very very precious
let me show you something
these are various colorful pipe cleaners
beautiful colorful ones they represent
our hair cells
okay and my hand here it represent
the sound level or the sound waves now
see carefully
the sound waves are coming and they hit
the hair cells
and the hair cells are processing those
sounds and they’re converting them into
electrical impulses
which then go to the brain okay when the
sound level is
mild to moderate the hair cells are fine
they are dancing around they look
healthy they look fine
however imagine the sounds levels are
really really loud let’s see what
happens then
watch carefully loud sound level comes
and goes like
dang
see what has happened to our hair cells
let’s try and bring them back to where
they were
no one’s damaged damage
for good damage forever
this is extremely extremely important
and
us on the name of entertainment we
expose
ourselves to very very loud noises and
loud sounds
let me give you an example the other day
i was traveling to work
and i was taking a train to my work
going to central london
few meters away there was a lad young
lad sitting with earphones in his ears
and blasting the music
me sitting few meters away could
literally hear
everything i could hear the song i could
hear the beats i could hear the lyrics
when we are putting these earbuds or
headphones and blasting the music
remember we are putting the noise source
very very close to our eardrums
and then putting our hair cells on risk
research shows that the amount of noise
level by which we can be exposed to
and the safety duration for how long
it’s safe for us to be exposed to that
duration
and that research shows that when the
sound intensity is around
85 decibel we could be safely exposed to
that sound levels
for eight hours that sounds like a long
time isn’t it
however listen to this very carefully
every time the sound intensity increases
by just
three decibel the safety duration
reduces to half
which means if the sound intensity
increases from 85
to 88 decibel the safety duration
reduces from eight hours to four hours
and if we do our maths by this time the
sound levels are 115
decibel the safety duration of exposure
is only 30 seconds
i want you to reflect on the times when
we go to
night clubs and parties and functions
and and work the noise levels around
us how loud are those and is it safe for
us
to be exposed to those levels next time
you’re exposing yourself to loud noise i
would want you all to think about these
hair cells
that’s exactly what’s going to happen to
our hair cells
so it’s extremely extremely important to
be very careful
and looking after our hearing
unlike a child who is born with a
permanent hearing loss
there’s nothing much we can do as as
such
we can only identify that hearing loss
as early as possible by doing a newborn
hearing screening
that could happen on the day one the
child is born and we can detect the
hearing loss
and that we can put a management plan in
place asap
contrary to that the noise level
which are there in our environment and
if we get a hearing loss because of them
that’s a purely acquired hearing loss
the hearing loss which can be 100
preventable research shows that
there are 5.2 million people
under the age of 19 years and there are
26 million people above the age of 19
years
who develop hearing loss because of
exposure to noise
permanent hearing loss which can be 100
preventable so
what is the solution well the solution
is
i have created this very cool acronym
called app app apps as in the apps which
we use in day-to-day lives
now what is that app stands for a
stands for awareness and attitude
it’s extremely extremely important for
all of us to be
aware about the dangerous impact of
noise and sounds
on our hearing there are a lot of people
who are not even aware
that unknowingly they are exposing
themselves to
dangerous levels of noise and it can
lead to
permanent hearing loss so a talk like
this
is a tiny attempt to create that
awareness
once we have that awareness there can be
a positive shift in our attitude
that we don’t necessarily have to expose
ourselves to
very loud sounds on the name of
entertainment
p p stands for prevention
now there are two things we can do in
terms of prevention
first reduce the level of sound
if we can for example if we are
listening
through loud music through our
headphones using our phone
we have absolute authority to reduce the
loudness level
isn’t it second if we can’t reduce the
loudness for example if you’ve gone to a
place
where the music is playing and it’s
beyond our control
what we can then do is move away from
the sound
source as we move away from the sound
source the intensity of sound by which
we are exposing ourself
goes down and that way we can save our
hearing
third and the most important thing is
protection
what do we mean by protection i’m sure
you must have seen
all these music sensations like sam
smith and
taylor swift and ariana grande and bruno
mars
whenever they are doing live
performances they always wear musicians
plug in their ears and what those plugs
do is
they not only help them get a feedback
on their singing but they
also help to attenuate or reduce the
noise exposure and save their hearing
so it’s extremely important for us as
well that if we are going to a
very loud concert or if you’re going to
a party which is going to be super duper
loud
please make sure there are some measures
in place
to use hearing protections which can
protect your hearing
i grew up listening to this beautiful
story of aladdin
aladdin the magical lamp the genie
we all know that that magical lamp you
rub it
a genie will appear and then the genie
will fulfill three wishes
exactly the same way we all
have a magical lamp with us and that
magical lamp
is our hearing system if
we rub it in a wrong way
the genie will die and once the genie
will die
all the magic of hearing the fact that
we can
hear birds chirping the fact that we can
hear rustling of
leaves we can hear the voices of our
loved ones
we can hear our newborn baby cry which
will evoke
tears of joy all that magic around us
will disappear in no time so it’s
extremely important
to save our hearing so please be
aware protect and prevent
noise-induced hearing loss don’t let the
genie die
don’t let the magic of hearing disappear
from your lives
thank you so much