S03_E05 - Listen up! We're talking to an Audiologist...

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Healthy Matters podcast with Dr. David Hilden , primary care physician and acute care hospitalist at Hennepin Healthcare in downtown Minneapolis, where we cover the latest in health, healthcare and what matters to you. And now here's our host, Dr. David Hilden.

Speaker 2: 0:19

Hey everybody, it's Dr. David Hilden and welcome to episode five of the Healthy Matters podcast. You'll remember in a recent episode in season two, we covered the topic of your eyes and vision problems with Dr. Kevin Engel. So in this episode, we're gonna move along to another one of your senses, hearing, hearing loss, and all things related to your ears. Today we're lucky to be joined by an expert on this topic, Dr. Janet Hanssen. She is a doctor of audiology at Hennepin Healthcare here with me in downtown Minneapolis. So she is indeed a specialist on the ears. Janet, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 3: 0:51

Great to be here. Thank you. So good

Speaker 2: 0:53

To have you here. Let's start the show at a little bit differently, with a little bit of fun, and then we'll jump into the more serious stuff about hearing loss. Okay? Yes. Talk about ear wax . Why do we have ear wax ?

Speaker 3: 1:03

Of course Wax. Everyone loves to talk about wax, ear wax or as we call it cerumen . It's a waxy substance that's found in your ear canal. But lemme tell you something right away. It's not gross, it's not dirty. We all have it and we have it for a reason.

Speaker 2: 1:20

It some people might say, yes, it is indeed gross. Oh true . It has a certain oo factor. True .

Speaker 3: 1:24

Doesn't it? True ? Yeah, it is . It's one of those people apologize. I look in their ear. Oh sorry I didn't clean my ears today. They're probably gross.

Speaker 2: 1:30

Okay, so why do we have it? It,

Speaker 3: 1:31

It can be a protective agent. It keeps your ear canal lubricated. Lots of people come to me because they have itchy ears. They say, oh my ears drive me crazy. I have to take a Q-tip and I have to rub , rub , rub in there to make 'em not itch. That dries out your ear canal that strips the canal of the wax. And guess what makes the itching worse? So we should not be using Q-tips. In fact, on the back of the Q-tip box, fine print at the bottom it says, do not put these in your ears. Nobody knows that. They don't probably want you to know that. But it's a disclaimer so that they don't get in trouble when you hurt yourself with

Speaker 2: 2:04

Them. It really says that on the box.

Speaker 3: 2:06

Yes. I even looked that 'cause I have Q-tips. Yes. Confession. Audiologist has to do ,

Speaker 2: 2:10

You put 'em in your ears.

Speaker 3: 2:11

I do not put 'em in my ears.

Speaker 2: 2:12

I would be like massively disappointed if you told me you put those in

Speaker 3: 2:15

Your ears. I know I have to talk the talk. Right? You really

Speaker 2: 2:17

Do. So, so no cotton swabs in your ears, right ? That's a fair, fair first recommendation. And

Speaker 3: 2:23

It's a really bad habit to break. I used to do it before I went to school for audiology. It was a habit, right? People take a shower, they think they get out, I gotta swab my ears to dry 'em out. And it's hard to stop once you are used to doing that. But the ear will naturally clean itself if we leave it alone.

Speaker 2: 2:39

Okay? So I did have one patient put a Q-tip through their eardrum after the shower situation. Yes . They're, you know, they're doing their merry little way . Yes . Slipped a teeny bit and donk it . Went through the traumatic

Speaker 3: 2:49

Memory and that is one of the worst pains you are ever gonna feel. There's so many little pain receptors as we go down the ear canal approaching the eardrum. So if you even get close to the eardrum, much less pop, it is gonna be extremely painful. Things might ooze out. Blood is certainly gonna come out and people call us, they're an , it's an emergency, right? Or they go to the emergency room 'cause they have blood coming out of their ear.

Speaker 2: 3:10

Yeah. So don't be doing that. So what , what do you tell to people though? That it's all in there and I can't hear, right?

Speaker 3: 3:16

How do I get it out? Number one is you need someone to look in there first and you can't really look in your own ear. Right? Is it wax? Is it something else stuck in your ear? So I recommend you go to your primary care provider or make an appointment with your local ENT ear, nose, and throat physician. They're my colleagues. They will look in there not only with an otoscope, but they have like a special kind of microscope for looking in your ears. It's much safer to have it removed in a clinic. Now after it gets removed, some providers will ask you to please use some eardrops on occasion to kind of help keep the wax soft so that it'll come out on its own. Maybe when you take a shower. One disclaimer, if you have a perforated eardrum, you don't wanna get water in your ear to flush wax out or anything. But otherwise, the most of us, we just, by bathing and showering like normal, the wax will kind of flush out if it's feeling plugged up, have someone peek in there and see if they can remove it for you. And then ask them for my ears, what should I be doing? We've

Speaker 2: 4:08

Tackled ear wax right off the bat. I will tell you right now that there are oodles of people who have that exact same question. So thanks for covering earwax. Of course. Now let's move on to hearing loss. Yes. How common is hearing loss?

Speaker 3: 4:21

Oh, it's very common Worldwide. It's 1.5 billion people

Speaker 2: 4:26

With a B. With a

Speaker 3: 4:27

B. Yeah . That's 20% of the population, which is a lot. That's a very common condition for us to have in the United States. Over 60 million Americans over the age of 12 have hearing loss. And then of course people say, oh, is it just an old person thing, right? As I get older I'm gonna get hearing loss. The simple to answer to that is yes, as we get older, our hearing does typically change for most of us starting in our sixties . By about age 65, about 30% of people will have hearing loss. By the time you're 75, about 40% will have hearing loss. Lots of things cause it, we could probably get into that in a little bit here, but it's one of the most common conditions that people will report either to their primary provider or they'll ask, can I go to a specialist? Can I go see an audiologist? I'm having trouble with my hearing.

Speaker 2: 5:11

What are the common causes? Now I I, I think a lot of people have thought of some, yeah , I served in the military and I shot firearms. Right? Or in my case I went to a lot of Bruce Springsteen concerts. Some what are, what are the causes?

Speaker 3: 5:23

Yes . So let's start with adults 'cause that's probably most of our listeners. So chronic health conditions that you might not always think about are associated with hearing loss. Diabetes, hypertension, so high blood pressure, high cholesterol, kidney disease, and other cardiovascular conditions. So we look at people's health history in addition to saying, I have trouble hearing. We either ask them or we look at their health history to see if they have any of these chronic health conditions that we know, hmm , they're gonna maybe be a little bit more likely to have Hearing loss smoking is a risk factor for hearing loss. 'cause smoking can lead to some of those other health conditions that I just mentioned. Aging, we've talked about that a little bit. You know, everything kind of changes over time, including some of the inner ear mechanisms. They change noise exposure. That can be work related . You know, people that work in a factory or assembly or, I see lots of people that said, oh I worked in a steel mill machine shop. All those very loud things. But also all some of us do recreational loud things. We might go hunting, we might go target shooting, we listen to loud music, we go to concerts using power tools. How many of us are weekend warriors and doing the DIY stuff in our house with saws and drills and things like that. Are those

Speaker 2: 6:31

Short term things problematic? It

Speaker 3: 6:33

Can be

Speaker 2: 6:34

Leaf blowers, snowblowers, they're loud,

Speaker 3: 6:36

Very loud. I don't even like listening to 'em from a couple, you know, houses away. They can be temporary. But if you do it repeatedly without hearing protection, things can kind of add up. Working where we work, we see lots of patients that have experienced some sort of trauma. So like a motor vehicle crash, a bike accident, any kind of head trauma. There's the risk for hearing loss, especially if you hit that side of your head. That can be genetic. So it can run in families, right? We see people all the time. We always ask, do your parents, brothers or sisters, aunts or uncle, anybody else have hearing loss? O sclerosis is a middle ear condition. And in the middle ear there's three teeny tiny little bones. And if those bones, particularly the last one, the stapes , if that gets stiff and doesn't vibrate well enough, we can get a condition called otosclerosis more common in women, especially women maybe starting around age 30 and up. Um ,

Speaker 2: 7:25

And , and those are the smallest bones in your body.

Speaker 3: 7:27

They are, they love, they're frequent in the crossword clues for the , what's the smallest bones in your ears. And they might rattle them off.

Speaker 2: 7:33

Staes go with staes .

Speaker 3: 7:35

Staes always a good answer, right? Hammer, anvil and stirrup kind of are the common terms.

Speaker 2: 7:39

S-T-A-P-E-S. There's good, see this is a high value podcast. Get to get , I know Im help you get crossword answers .

Speaker 3: 7:44

New York time clues right here. Perfect. Yeah. Viral infections. Yes. We are still talk about covid . During when the pandemic started, we started seeing people come in with sudden hearing loss. And we, one new question we now ask them is, have you recently had covid tested positive for covid? 'cause viruses, any kind of virus really can attack the inner ear and ototoxic medications is one. So ototoxic just means, you know, harmful to the inner ear, our inner ear, some chemotherapy drugs and other very strong antibiotics can cause hearing loss. Now I'll flip over to children can be congenital. We have newborn hearing screening at every hospital pretty much across the nation. So we find hearing loss at very young ages for babies that don't pass in the nursery can be some sort of birth trauma or complication that occurred during either pregnancy or the birth itself. Kids ear infections, right? As a primary care provider, especially pediatrics, I'm sure that's like one of the top things that kids come in for like

Speaker 2: 8:40

All the time.

Speaker 3: 8:40

Ear infection, my kids up all night, they got a fever pulling on their ears. Do they have an ear infection? Kids we see also for trauma, you know, bicycle accidents or things like that. And then meningitis. That's a much more serious infection that they can get. But that can definitely cause hearing loss.

Speaker 2: 8:56

So all these causes of hearing loss, there are certain types of hearing loss, right? Some of them people have heard conductive, some people have heard neural. Yep . What are the types?

Speaker 3: 9:05

So there's three main types of hearing loss or conditions. The most common is sensory neural. Sensory organ would be your cochlea, your inner ear and neural meaning your , your hearing nerve. And we sort of lump those terms together and that's the kind that, you know, as we get older, we get, it can be congenital, it can be caused by noise exposure or viruses, those types of things. Conductive hearing loss are not the inner ear, they're the outer ear and what we call your middle ear. So if you were born without an external ear, a pinna , you're gonna have a conductive hearing loss. If you don't have an ear canal, if something's wrong with the eardrum or the middle ear area where those little bones are, the staes , like we mentioned before, that's gonna cause a conductive hearing loss, childhood ear infections, fluid in that middle ear area.

Speaker 2: 9:50

So conductive is just the sound waves don't get to the nerves.

Speaker 3: 9:54

They are kind of dampen by the time they get to the nerve. That's

Speaker 2: 9:57

What sound is

Speaker 3: 9:58

A wave. Yeah , right. It is a sound wave, right? Like water. And then the last type of hearing loss is called a mixed hearing loss. It's basically a sensory neural loss and a conductive loss. The person has a little bit of both. So let's say somebody's 75 and they have your typical presbycusis, old age type of hearing loss. And

Speaker 2: 10:14

Then how do I know if I have typical presbycusis?

Speaker 3: 10:17

Oh, we'll get to that in a second. Okay. <laugh> I'll, I promise. 'cause I definitely wanna talk about it. 'cause that's, that's a very most common thing we probably see people for. So let's say we have old age presbycusis hearing loss, but then we get an ear infection and we get fluid in the middle ear, or I get wax in the ear, right? And that causes a little more hearing loss. So it's kind of a combination of hearing losses.

Speaker 2: 10:35

Got it. What is threshold shift?

Speaker 3: 10:38

First of all, your hearing thresholds are the very softest levels that you can hear. For pure tones, it's a basically a , a single tone or frequency. The softest level that you can hear. All those are called your hearing audiometric thresholds. A threshold shift will mean a change in your hearing. And usually by shift we mean it gets worse. So like for someone that works in a factory, they are a lot of times by OSHA mandated to get a hearing test every year or every six months, whatever their manufacturer requires for their job. And if they, one year their hearing looks a little worse, that is called a threshold shift. And they have to take that very seriously because it could be a workman's comp situation. If they acquired hearing loss on the job in clinic threshold shift, we might measure, like you get an ear infection, your hearing threshold shift worse, the ear infection gets treated, goes away, and then your hearing gets better again.

Speaker 2: 11:28

Okay. So threshold shift is a change. What is tinnitus?

Speaker 3: 11:32

Tinnitus. We say tinnitus. Some people say tinnitus, they're

Speaker 2: 11:36

Wrong. <laugh>.

Speaker 3: 11:37

Okay, I'm kidding. I'll go with you. I'm kidding. So tinnitus is a ringing, a buzzing, a chirping, a hissing, a wind sound. People describe it differently, but basically it's something that they hear one ear or both. Or they'll say, you know, it's not really in my ears, but it's like my head head is buzzing. I feel like my head is just buzzing. And it usually gets us a referral to audiology. If you mentioned to your primary care doctor , Hey Dr. Hilden , I got this buzzing in my ear probably

Speaker 2: 12:02

I'm sending them to you.

Speaker 3: 12:03

You're , they're coming to audiology aren't they? Yes , totally. So it's a very common thing that we see for the most common thing it's associated with is hearing loss, which is why you get sent to audiology. Right? Let's do a hearing test.

Speaker 2: 12:12

So is there anything you can do about it?

Speaker 3: 12:14

Well try to prevent hearing loss if you can. Right? If you work around noise or you're a weakened warrior with your saw drill, whatever we are hearing protection. If you go to concerts where hearing protection, if you are a connoisseur of concerts and you don't wanna wear the little, you know, disposable type ones, we can make you custom earplugs that are musician quality earplugs with filters in them so that you can protect your hearing at concerts and it will , the sound quality is better. Really?

Speaker 2: 12:40

That's super cool.

Speaker 3: 12:41

Yeah, the regular foam ones disposables, they cut the high frequencies or high pitches more. So usually music musicians or people that really like music don't like the sound quality and don't wanna wear them

Speaker 2: 12:51

And they fall out

Speaker 3: 12:51

All the time, you know , and they don't fit right. So a custom one will take an impression of your ear and then they come in different decibel reduction levels and so people can choose, you know, they may get different ones that they wear in different environments.

Speaker 2: 13:02

Okay, so noise exposure can lead to tines . What other causes? Well,

Speaker 3: 13:06

Sometimes it's simple things like you have wax in your ear or you have an ear infection or something like that. So we always look for the obvious, the low hanging fruit and take care of those things for you first. If you have hearing loss. And if we treat the hearing loss with hearing aids, wearing the hearing aids, many people say, you know, when I got my hearing aids in , I don't notice the ringing in my ears as much. It's still there when I take it out at night to charge them or whatever. It's still there, but they don't, they're not as bothered by it. So treating the hearing loss, whatever that means medically with an amplification or whatever it might be,

Speaker 2: 13:35

Is it always irreversible or can sometimes continue to go away?

Speaker 3: 13:39

Sometimes it can go away. So if it's an infection or wax in your ear, it can go away. Some people say, oh I used to have tinnitus. Yeah it bothered me for like two, three years and then it just stopped. We don't really know what happens in those cases. But lucky for them, there's different programs we can send people to or refer them to that they do something called tinnitus retraining. There are clinics that specialize in that. There are masking devices that sometimes are used uh , to sort of help cover up the tinnitus if you have a hearing loss and you wear hearing aids, I mentioned that's a nice way to help you with that. Some people go to behavioral health to work on what's called cognitive behavioral therapy. Especially if they also have anxiety about their tinnitus or if they suffer from anxiety or depression. It can be really helpful. I have tinnitus bilaterally for about seven years. It's constant. It bothered me a lot when it first started and I knew what it was and I knew kind of the things to do to to kind of work it up and and figure out is there anything else wrong? But I felt much more empathy for my patients that come in with it because I experience it myself and I am now accustomed to it. If I stop and think about it, it's there. But if I'm busy it doesn't bother me as much as it did when it first started.

Speaker 2: 14:44

So I think we've earned a short break now . When we come back we're gonna talk about treatment options, future technologies and what you can do. If you are experiencing hearing loss, stay with us. We'll be right back

Speaker 4: 14:56

When Hennepin Healthcare says we are here for life. They mean here for you, your life and all that it brings. Hennepin Healthcare has a hospital HCMC and a network of clinics both downtown and across the West Metro. They provide all the primary care and specialty care you would expect to find. But did you know they also have services like acupuncture and chiropractic care available at many of their primary care clinics and at their integrative health clinic in downtown Minneapolis. Learn more@hennepinhealthcare.org. Hennepin Healthcare is here for you and here for life.

Speaker 2: 15:33

And we're back talking to Dr. Janet Hanssen about hearing loss. So with tinnitus, is there anything else people can do that make it worse?

Speaker 3: 15:41

Yeah, sometimes things in our diet, we all like our coffee, but too much coffee can kind of ramp up your tinnitus. Also salt, A lot of the ENTs and audiologists will ask the patient, how much salt do you use in your diet? Tell me what your typical dinner is like. Things like that. Alcohol. Alcohol is a thing we should be asking people when they come in if they have tinnitus because anything that kind of affects our system can make the tinnitus worse. I don't know if those alone would cause it, but they certainly can make it worse. If you have it.

Speaker 2: 16:07

You're, you're on fight . Those are fighting words. If you're talking about caffeine, dear

Speaker 3: 16:11

Dad , I know taking away somebody's cocktail and their coffee

Speaker 2: 16:13

And their caffeine, you're , you're like, Dr . Buzzkill

Speaker 3: 16:16

Buzzkill. What

Speaker 2: 16:16

About aspirin?

Speaker 3: 16:17

That is one. Yes. But I feel like people use that so much less now. Now the baby aspirin that your cardiologist has told you to take, that's not a problem. But when we used to use it more for pain and people would be on it kind of long term definitely can cause tinnitus. Yes.

Speaker 2: 16:31

What are the early signs of hearing loss?

Speaker 3: 16:34

So the most common things that people notice right away can be tinnitus, but more likely they come in and say, you know what, everybody mumbles. I don't know what's going on. I can't understand what people are saying. I have to turn the TV up. Those news reporters don't speak as clearly as they used to. Difficulty hearing in background noise. Right? People like to go to restaurants, all of a sudden they don't enjoy going out with their families anymore 'cause they can't follow the dialogue or they feel kind of left out. They'll have difficulty on the phone. They might start avoiding using the phone. They need the TV louder than they used to, which might annoy their spouse or significant other and that can cause some conflict. And then they might just notice tinnitus and not even realize that they have a hearing loss

Speaker 2: 17:12

All the time. I have couples coming in. Oh yeah , usually I maybe a little older adults and one of them says that he doesn't hear me anymore. Right.

Speaker 3: 17:19

And then they laugh and say, oh I just don't, is it listening or hearing? You

Speaker 2: 17:22

Know , they always say that . Oh , it's selective hearing loss. Yeah , elective hearing loss . You know , and it always becomes a little joke about marital harmony and all that. But

Speaker 3: 17:28

Yes . And I do sometimes feel like I'm, I'm in that position to try to keep the peace . Right. I get they go, both get to be right. Janet,

Speaker 2: 17:34

Walk us through if you would please the most prevalent treatment options that are available for hearing loss.

Speaker 3: 17:40

So if it's a common type of hearing loss, sensory neuro where there's no medical treatment, we're not gonna refer you onto ENT to have them kind of look at things, then we're gonna talk about hearing aids or some form of amplification. There's lots of information out there about hearing aids. You can even buy them online. Right About a year ago a law was passed that there's now over the counter devices. And when I see patients, if they are a candidate for that, especially if they're interested, I will tell them yes or no. 'cause over the counter will not work for everybody. And what I don't want people to do is to go that route when if it's not gonna be helpful to them.

Speaker 2: 18:14

I wanna delve into that more because I am seeing that just in the past year , um, it used to be I always sent everybody to you. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> quite literally. I sent everybody to Dr. Hanson . Um , and, and you did an assessment and some of them got hearing aids and some did not. But now you can buy 'em online, right? Who should consider Yes . Buying them online. So

Speaker 3: 18:32

Over the counter hearing aids are designed for people to , that have mild to moderate hearing loss. The problem is if you don't go to an audiologist, how do you know if you have a mild to moderate hearing loss? Many people kind of underestimate how much hearing difficulty they're really having. So I say just come to audiology, have an assessment and we'll tell you how much hearing loss you have and if you are a candidate for that, especially if you're interested and you started looking into it, we will help steer you in the right direction. And

Speaker 2: 18:59

Briefly, what do you do when someone comes in? You just cin of a soundproof room. Yes . And and play little sounds. What do you do?

Speaker 3: 19:04

Yes . So they go in a what's called a sound booth or a sound treated room. It's probably the quietest room you're ever gonna be in. And we put some different versions of headphones on you. Some go in your ear, some over your ear. We see what you're hearing thresholds are. What's the softest level you can hear it . All those different beeps, both ears. We test your hearing the normal way we hear, which is sound going through your ear canal and through the rest of the channel we test by bone conduction, which confuses people 'cause I take things out of their ears and say, and now I'm gonna do this other test with a headband. But we can hear through our skull bones as well. We check your middle ear with some other specialized testing and then we do some speech testing. So I'm not a speech pathologist but we look at, when I say words to you, can you understand me with no context And how well do you do It helps me predict how well you're gonna do with hearing aids.

Speaker 2: 19:49

So you've talked about the over-the-counter hearing aids for mild to moderate hearing loss. What if it's more severe than that? How has hearing a technology advanced?

Speaker 3: 19:59

Right. So if you have more hearing loss than that, then we'll steer you toward maybe something a little more prescription based where either we or wherever you'd like to go can take an impression of your ear. Something's gonna be more customized for your ear. The way it fits and also the way it's programmed or sound. Technology has changed a lot. I've been an audiologist for 30 years from where I started to where I am now. It's a good thing. I like computers and good thing I like technology. They are much more automatic. It used to be you had a volume to turn it up and down and that was about it now .

Speaker 2: 20:28

And they squeaked and they looked AK looked like a victrola. Big thing coming outta your

Speaker 3: 20:32

Ear . Right ? They were big and people come in. I don't want it to look like my grandma's hearing a , we all love our grandma but we don't wanna wear her hearing aid. Right, right. So these many of them are smaller, they're more cosmetically appealing. Not everybody can wear them. But again your audiologist will tell you if that's appropriate for you or not. They have Bluetooth compatibility. So I pair your hearing aids with your cell phone for you to stream movies, music, phone calls. Okay.

Speaker 2: 20:54

So that's awesome.

Speaker 3: 20:55

It is awesome. They are, you know, people say, oh they're like Bluetooth receivers. I'm like, they are Exactly. But they're customized for your hearing loss so it's gonna sound better 'cause it's programmed for the pitches that you need. So people say music sounds better. They can understand better on the phone for the very first time. Maybe they go back to calling their grandkids 'cause they can actually hear and understand what they're saying. That is wonderful. That's quality of life right there. That

Speaker 2: 21:16

Is terrific. Other than hearing aids, what other assistive devices are there for people with hearing loss? There's

Speaker 3: 21:22

A lot of things. So if you only have trouble on the phone, that's the only place you do, then there's certain kind of phones that will help you. Some of them have caption on it . So just like captioning we can have on our tv, we can have that on the phone. Some of those have amplifiers where you can turn it up and down and even maybe adjust the pitch or tone a little bit. There are other things for like alarm clocks. If it's your alarm clock is not waking you up. There are ones that are literally called sonic boom alarm clocks or little thing that goes under the mattress and it vibrates the mattress.

Speaker 2: 21:51

It literally knocks you out of the bed onto the floor. It

Speaker 3: 21:54

Like kick you outta bed, get up on the third try . Don't hit snooze three times. You'll find out what happens. Most

Speaker 2: 21:58

People sonic boom is their bed partners hitting them over the head.

Speaker 3: 22:01

There's also special kinds of smoke detectors. There's things for your doorbell, there's a lot of things out there. Assistive listening devices too. Doesn't have to be a hearing aid. If you're not ready for that, maybe a microphone that somebody can wear and you wear a headset. Those kinds of things are out there.

Speaker 2: 22:15

Lots of really cool and helpful things for people with hearing loss. So there's lots of treatments and assessments and emerging technologies to help people out with their hearing loss. But I can imagine there's also a psychological impact of hearing loss. Um , you know. So what is some advice that you might give to your patients and families to help deal with hearing loss? Yeah,

Speaker 3: 22:34

You're exactly right. Hearing loss can lead to socialization. People start giving up the things that they used to like to do, whether it's with their family, with their friends, they used to play cards or bridge or something like that. And they start slowly kind of getting rid of those things from their life. They don't wanna go out to dinner. They'd maybe even decline going to a wedding 'cause it's just too difficult to have a conversation. So people need to know that help is out there and the earlier they come in to get the help, the better. When they're first noticing problems, they should come in and have an assessment. No one's gonna force them to get hearing aids. We'll let you know if you're a candidate. But just to know that yes, you are having difficulty, it's affirming. We can give them some coping strategies right there on the spot and they will learn how to advocate for themselves a little bit better or for their family member or their loved one that's has hearing loss.

Speaker 2: 23:21

So Dr. Hanson, you have a magic wand. Wave it. What would you like to change? One thing that you would like to change about what people are doing relative to their hearing? Uh,

Speaker 3: 23:30

I would love to see young people protecting their hearing. I think kids, teenagers these days know more about that. I think that they've learned a little bit about it at school. There's um, technology in their smartphones to sort of limit how loud things are and to realize that this is the ears that you get and you're gonna use 'em your whole life. So that's one thing. Second thing, I wish we would come up with a way to help people better with their tinnitus. We talked about it earlier, it's very bothersome to many, many people. I know that research is being done on pharmaceutical options for the et . So one day if that gets figured out, there's gonna be a whole bunch of people in line wanting to try that. And then just to know that help is available, whether it's me as your audiologist, if if it's online, finding a support group. That way people that are going through similar experiences , um, and just don't be afraid to ask for help.

Speaker 2: 24:19

So are there any resources that you can recommend to people if they wanna learn more?

Speaker 3: 24:23

Yes, I would recommend two of our national academies. So the American Academy of Audiology. You can Google that, go right looking for it . You'll find things for consumers on there. And also American Speech Hearing Language Association that's a little bit bigger. We call it Asha . So I am a member of both of those. And both of them will have great things on there about hearing loss, tinnitus, hearing aids. It'll be there.

Speaker 2: 24:46

And we will put a link to those two websites in the show notes. Thanks for being here. It's always great to talk to you about hearing. Yeah,

Speaker 3: 24:52

Thank you very much. My pleasure.

Speaker 2: 24:53

It's been great having you on the show. And listeners, thank you for joining us. We've been talking with Dr. Janet Hanson, an audiologist at Hennepin Healthcare in downtown Minneapolis. I hope you'll join us for our next episode. And in the meantime, be healthy. Take care of your hearing and be well.

Speaker 1: 25:09

Thanks for listening to the Healthy Matters podcast with Dr. David Hilden . To find out more about the Healthy Matters podcast or browse the archive, visit healthy matters.org. Got a question or a comment for the show, email us at Healthy matters@hcme.org or call 6 1 2 8 7 3 talk. There's also a link in the show notes. The Healthy Matters Podcast is made possible by Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and engineered and produced by John Lucas At Highball Executive producers are Jonathan , CTO and Christine Hill . Please remember, we can only give general medical advice during this program, and every case is unique. We urge you to consult with your physician if you have a more serious or pressing health concern. Until next time, be healthy and be well.