THE WHY
Virtually everyone has some hearing difficulty at some point in their life. We have all been in noisy social situations and have had to revert to lip reading. This happens to everyone - young and old - but tends to get gradually worse as we age.
And then there are the situations where everyone has some trouble. We have all experienced watching our favourite movie, TV, or radio show, and we slouch down and put our head on our couch or bed pillow. This makes watching TV and listening to the radio rather comfortable, but at the same time, we find that we don’t hear quite as well.
When our head is propped up against a pillow, we lose the natural ability to hear in that one ear, and like listening to anything with one ear plugged up, sound becomes slightly quieter and more muffled sounding. Couple this with an age related hearing loss which affects most people to some extent over the age of 50, and this comfortable laying position becomes less comfortable because of the effort that now has to be spent to hear clearly. And while a person is laying down on one ear they can easily miss important sounds such as the door bell, telephone, smoke and CO2 detectors and any perimeter noise.
The “acoustic pillow” addresses these problems and not only resolves the problem of a person laying down plugging up one ear, but actually enhances sound acoustically - without batteries or electronics- that can increase the loudness by almost 200%.
People who use the acoustic pillow will be able to hear their favourite TV and radio programs with added clarity while still being able to hear important environmental alerting sounds.
Marshall Chasin, AuD., Doctor of Audiology
Recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal
Editor in Chief, Canadian Audiologist
HEARING LOSS STUDIES
Over 5% of the world’s population - 360 million people - has disabling hearing loss (328 million adults and 32 million children).
About 30 percent of Americans - 100 million - report some degree of hearing loss. At age 65, 50 percent of seniors have hearing loss. These are cases that were diagnosed, how many do we not know about?
In a recent survey their was a 9% increase in hearing loss with just a 4.5% population growth. This is a growing problem that just continues to get worse.
Hearing loss is a major public health issue that is the third most common physical condition after arthritis and heart disease.
SLEEPING POSITIONS STUDY
Professor Chris Idzikowski, one of Britain’s leading sleep experts, has identified that their are six different sleeping positions. 75% of the world’s population sleep on their side. Studies show that everyone who sleeps on their side with an ear on the pillow creates hearing impairment. The average person may experience a decrease of 6 decibels to their hearing.