The ear is extremely sensitive and able to detect the softest sounds.
Gently rustling leaves, the buzz of a mosquito, a first raindrop hitting the pavement, music wafting from another room.
How does the ear work? And what's happening when it malfunctions?
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In a nutshell: We are able to hear when our ears convert the vibrations of a sound wave in the air into signals that our brains interpret as sound. Our ears are divided into three parts, the external ear, the middle ear and the inner ear. Sound waves, traveling at a speed of approximately 740 miles per hour, enter the ears and are funneled through the ear opening, down the ear canal to the eardrum (or tympanic membrane). The sound waves strike the eardrum, causing it to vibrate. These movements of the tympanic membrane are transmitted across the three middle ear bones (hammer or malleus, anvil or incus and the stirrup or stapes), which act as a transformer, changing sound vibrations in the air into fluid waves in the inner ear. The fluid waves bend delicate nerve endings (hair cells) in the cochlea, creating electrical impulses. These electrical impulses are then transmitted by the hearing nerve (cochlear nerve) to the brain, where they are interpreted as understandable sounds.
Hearing & the Brain
- Hearing and language perception share an intricately intertwined relationship within the brain. In essence, we hear with our brains -- not simply our ears.
- The left hemisphere (via the right ear primarily) involves mainly abstract logical and technical interpretation of language.
- The right hemisphere (via the left ear primarily) interprets the non-verbal meaning of communication; more attuned to the emotional and conceptional, the right hemisphere reads into language communication and how a message was meant to be received rather than getting lost in the logic of it all.
- Furthermore, the brain uses the sounds from both the left and the right ears to determine distance and direction of sounds.
- Our brain hemispheres, although functionally biased, work together through innumerable cerebral roads and connections. Each hemisphere plays a special part in the reception, selection and perception of the uncountable stimuli that bombards us each millisecond of our lives.
- This interconnectedness between our cerebral hemispheres - and therefore our left and rights ears - is precisely the reasoning behind fitting both ears with hearing aids. By combining both hemispheric interpretations of a single communication, we are capable of extracting significantly greater meaning out of everyday communication.
- This right/left concept is not a cut and dried process and there are exceptions, of course, to recommending binaural hearing instruments. To learn more about fitting binaural hearing aids, please visit the Straight Answers section of our website.
The Importance of Earwax & Keratin
Earwax or cerumen is made up of keratin (similar in chemistry to human hair), oils and cholesterol and is produced by glands in the outer ear canal. Earwax serves a number of very important protective functions including:
- Shielding the ear canal from bacteria, fungus, yeast, water and debris.
- Helping maintain proper pH and overall external ear health.
- Serving as a protective layer over the skin of the ear canal, without which the ear canal would be completely susceptible to invasion, injury and / or disease.
What Does This Mean?
- The sad truth is that through modern day personal care habits -- including the use of cotton swabs, boric acid ear drops and scratching with various objects -- keratin and earwax get short shrift.
- Properly functioning ears are self cleaning. The tissue near the outside of our ear canals grows outward from the eardrum, much like a conveyor belt, "dragging" the keratin out in a process called "tissue desquamation." At the end of a 3 months period, a piece of sand on the eardrum will move its way out and end up in the bowl (or concha) of your outer ear for easy removal by fingertip.
- When the keratin is scraped out with a cotton swab or any other object, it exposes the sensitive tissue and several nerve reflexes causing chronic irritation.
- Furthermore, this scraping motion disturbs the delicate balance between the substances making up earwax, inhibiting its function in maintaining proper pH and antiseptic properties that keep the ears healthy.
- A healthy keratin layer is critical for ear health and the proper fitting and wearing of hearing aids. At DigiCare, we recommend and personally use the non-prescription solution Miracell Botanicals to nourish the ears' keratin layer.
- Drop the cotton swab! Our very best advice is to let your ears be, leaving objects of all kinds out of your sensitive ears.
- If you think you are experiencing problems due to excess earwax, please call or email to schedule a free ear exam and hearing test at one of our 4 DigiCare locations.
Learn Even More:
- Now that you understand the basics of how our ears work, let's tackle the next question. Learn more about what happens when our sense of hearing malfunctions in our Hearing Loss section.
