Snakes hear through their jaw bone.

March was a somber month for many people around the nation. Here in Colorado, we felt a major blow close to home with the supermarket shooting in Boulder. Our Boulder clinic is just a couple miles from where the shootings took place. Our patients, our employees, friends and families live in and around the community where 10 innocent people lost their lives. We are deeply saddened by this event and our prayers go out to the families of all of the victims. This is another grim reminder of how unfair and fragile life can be. We are with you, Boulder.

Also in March, we learned of another tragedy that hit close to home for those of us in the hearing healthcare industry. Wayne Kent Taylor, CEO of Texas Roadhouse restaurants, has committed suicide after the COVID-19 virus made his tinnitus unbearable. His story is heartbreaking, and our hearts go out to his family during this time.

We all know that COVID-19 can be dangerous. It can be especially devastating for people suffering from Tinnitus. COVID-19 has been shown to make the negative symptoms of tinnitus worse and in some cases, completely unbearable. Tinnitus can be exacerbated by social isolation, and during a pandemic this tendency is more apparent. Tinnitus and COVID-19 together make a recipe for serious depression in many cases. To make things even worse, many people have reported that the COVID-19 vaccine only made their tinnitus worse.

For these reasons, we’ve decided to share a quick video to address the concern of COVID-19 as it relates to a person suffering from tinnitus.

In this month's Staff Spotlight, you'll meet Jamie, one of our Audiology Assistants. Jamie has a background in speech pathology before coming to Hearing HealthCare Centers. Also in this issue, Dr. Kimberly Hart shares some intriguing fun facts about hearing.

Jamie Goitia
Patient Nurture Coordinator
I am a small-town girl from an old, teeny-tiny, almost abandoned, mining town in SE Nevada. We go back many generations from this community and I am cousins with half the county. My grandfather, who was the local medical doctor and the only physician for hours in all directions, delivered me and many of my cousins in his little hospital. His love for his patients and the field of medicine inspired me to want to help people as well and is why I pursued my degree in Speech Language Pathology. I love antique-ing, thrifting, and going to garage sales. I have a West Highland Terrier named Yankee Doodle (age 11) with as much personality, or is it attitude (wink), as me? Although we don’t have children, being Aunt Mamie is the sweetest and most meaningful role I get to play. I cherish those little monsters and the brief moments with them, beyond measure.

We asked Jamie..

What is your favorite meal to cook and why?
My husband is the cook in our family! BUT, I love to bake! I've got an out of control sweet tooth that can easily be persuaded to whip up a bunch of peanut butter cookies or a pumpkin bundt. Baking makes me "feel like home", like I'm back with my grandma in her kitchen baking something special. Baking is ancestral for me and I love to bake as a ritual to honor my ancestors, even giving them offerings..

What is your favorite place of all the places you've travelled?
Hawaii. I love Hawaii! It's the place I meditate to every single day and night: Rustling palms overhead and crashing waves under my sandy feet. The food. The culture. My best memories as a kid are of vacations there with my family.

What's the last great TV show or movie you watched?
The Crown!! I got secretly hooked around Christmas, sneaking down before my husband was up on the weekends and bingeing it over coffee. I got quickly caught up on all the seasons only to now to have wait for the next season! I love it so much.

Learn more about Jamie and our whole team

Hearing is something we do automatically every day and often take for granted. There are many things about hearing that you have never even thought about. Here are some fun facts about our ears, and those of many members of the animal kingdom--enjoy!

1. Fish do not have ears, but they can hear pressure changes through ridges on their body.
2. Sound travels at the speed of 1,130 feet per second, or 770 miles per hour.
3. The speed of light is roughly a million times faster than sound.
4. Sound travels faster through water than air and faster still through steel.
5. Dogs can hear much higher frequencies than humans.
6. Snakes hear through the jaw bone and through a traditional inner ear. In essence, snakes have two distinct hearing mechanisms, which helps them hear and catch prey.
7. Male mosquitoes hear with thousands of tiny hairs growing on their antennae.
8. Mice can hear a frequency range of 1,000 to 91,000 Hz (Hertz, otherwise known as cycles per second), as opposed to humans who can hear from 20Hz to 20,000Hz.
9. Cats can hear about 3 times better than humans largely because they can turn their ears in the direction of the sound.
10. Beavers have flaps that close when they go under water to keep the water out.

1. The middle ear contains the smallest bones in your entire body. The stapes is the smallest of them all. These three bones help transmit sounds to the inner ear. All together, they can fit on a penny.

2. The cochlea is the innermost part of the ear, and is about the size of a pea! It looks similar to a snail shell, in fact, the term ‘cochlea’ is latin for snail shell! If it were unraveled, it would be a mini-tube only about an inch and a quarter long, but it holds 30,000 hair cells responsible for how we hear pitch.

3. Your inner ears are responsible for both hearing and balance, so a disease that affects one system can also have an impact on the other. For example, Meniere’s Disease is characterized by low frequency hearing loss and dizziness.

4. While you’re sleeping, your ears continue to function. They will pick up sounds, but most of them your brain will block out.

5. The sensory neurons responsible for hearing are called hair cells. They are found inside your cochlea in the inner ear. If enough of these cells are damaged or destroyed by the aging process, excessive noise exposure, ototoxic substances, or lack of adequate blood supply, the result is hearing loss. Unfortunately, most hearing loss is irreversible because those hair cells do not grow back once they are damaged.

6. Your ears are self-cleaning. Pores in your ear canal produce earwax (also known as cerumen) tiny hairs called cilia push it out of the ear canal naturally. Although many find earwax gross, it protects the ear from dust, dirt, friction, and many insects.