Today we bring you some recent hearing health news that inspires plus an important reminder of why hearing health is so important.

Pursing Her Dream Job

People Magazine recently featured a story about Nicole Lopez, a military veteran with a dream to be a federal law enforcement agent. Nicole has moderate hearing loss in her left year, but she hasn’t let that stop her. She entered the military initially through an ROTC program that granted her a waiver for her hearing loss and later excelled in her role within military policing when deployed to Cuba, Iraq and later Afghanistan. Given her military experience pursuing a role at the FBI made perfect sense, but initially her hearing loss prevented her from gaining entry into the FBI academy. Four years later and a lot of persistence and paperwork, her dream came true as she was accepted and entered the academy – even achieving the highest GPA in her class. Today, Nicole works as an FBI agent and also shares her time to help promote law enforcement careers to young girls.

Another Reason to Be Proactive About Your Hearing Health

Physicians’ Weekly covered a recent study by Geriatrics & Gerontology International. The study found that older people with hearing loss had more limitations on their outdoor activities, more memory loss and mental distress. This article is a great reminder that early hearing loss detection is key to minimizing the long term effects of poor hearing.

The Pursuit of Quieter Hand Dryers

USA Today featured a story about a young girl working to protect children’s ears. Nora Keegan, a Canadian teenager, often noticed that her ears hurt after using bathroom hand dryers and that many kids would try to plug their ears or avoid hand dryers entirely. She embarked on project to capture the true decibel levels of hand dryers and tested dryers across her hometown. Her study found that often dryers exceeded their published decibel levels. Her study receive recognition and was even published in Canada’s leading journal on children’s health.