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This is Lindsay Smith Rogers. As we get older, our hearing declines and can impact many

dimensions of our health.

In today's episode, Dr. Frank Lynn, director of the Cochlear Center for Hearing in Public Health,

talks about your hearing number, a measurement of the softest speech a person can hear,

and how a new app can help you figure this out. We also discuss what you can do once you know your hearing number,

and why there's still so much stigma around hearing loss. Let's listen. Dr. Franklin, thank you so much for being here

on public health on call. Thanks for having me, Lindsay. So today we're going to talk about hearing loss.

So where do you start? So hearing or the flip side of hearing loss, right? I think it's something we all

take for granted, right? It's one of the sort of the five senses that our brain depends on, right? And the amazing thing about hearing is as much as we rely on for everything we do, for communicate, talking, hearing a car coming the road. It's something that declines for everybody as we get older. And that's because interest compared to other sense in the body, other systems of the body, the inner ear called the cochlear, it can't regenerate. So everybody, no matter what you do, no matter who you are, no matter what you even try to do in terms of hearing protection, everybody's hearing will slowly bit by bit decline over your lifetime. So I think in the past it's always been who are taken for granted. It's like, oh, just grandma or my mom having hearing loss and it doesn't really matter. But I think increased over the last 10, 15 years, is born out that's actually not quite true because it's so fundamental to the brain. We understand that hearing declines for all of us to some degree. It actually impacts our health. And how does it impact our health? So I think the big thing is if you look at the data. So I think empirically, so, you know, other hat I wear besides being a public health scientist, I'm actually an E&T surgeon. So I see patients who have hearing problems coming up for issues. And it's something I think you talked to any clinician. They're like, oh, yeah, it affects social function. It affects how people think. They get tired. Their kids complain. They're not like their usual selves. They don't seem to be as quick as they used to be. But that was never really borne out by evidence because no one had ever really done, literally the research, just asking, you know, purely from epidemiologic perspective, really basic, hearing or hearing loss is your exposure. And you look at outcomes like cognitive and brain function, brain aging, brain structural changes, falls. It's a very basic question. But no one to really ask those questions until about a decade ago. Because I think it was always like, again, just, oh, it's hearing loss doesn't really matter. It's just like getting some white hair. So we actually began that research about 10, 15 years ago with many other groups around the world, just people began sort of crossing silos. People thinking about hearing, didn't think about the sort of other stuff about aging and health. People started about aging and health. Didn't think much about hearing. But if you actually look at that data, you see that hearing loss or hearing is arguably the single largest risk factor for dementia

at the population level because there's how common hearing losses and how strong the relationship

is. But you also see relationship between hearing and falls, between risk of social isolation

and loneliness, all these things that I think for all of us as any of us just get older, we care about.

And increase, I think it's the important thing about that, too, it's not just, there's always a notion as a correlation or causation, right? And correlation wouldn't be very interesting. It's just like saying, like, white hair is linked with dementia. Sure it is, but it doesn't really matter. Increase of where I understand it's not just correlation, that, like, is causation for how hearing affects the brain in terms of how much harder the brain has to work and or it leads

the faster rates of brain

atrophy and or through just the loss of sort of social connectedness that's incredibly important

for maintaining our health as we get older. So what do you do about it? So I think in the past it was

always like we had this wonderful evidence that hearing was important. And then recently, actually, after almost a decade of work with funding from the National on Aging, we actually had a trial, a randomized trial that tested if you treat hearing loss in older adults, do you in fact make a difference? Do you, for example, reduce things like cognitive decline? Lo and behold, after many, many years of funding, after this thousand person randomized trial carried out through the United States, we actually know the answer to that now, namely for older adults at risk of cognitive client. If you actually address and you treat your hearing, it actually reduces the rate of loss of thinking memory abilities, but almost 50%. So it's not insignificant. So there's wonderful evidence. That's great. But a big issue in the past then was, I think all of us probably know hearing aids are really expensive. The average cost in the states used to be about $4,000, which amazingly, that means for the average American, it could be your third largest material purchase life after a house and a car, which is just absurd, right? We have changed that. So over a period of many years, working with the National Academies of Medicine, working with Congress, working in the White House. We got a law passed seven years ago now that re-regulated hearing aids, that went to effect just two years ago. So hearing aids, for the first time ever now, in the U.S. is the first country in the world to have a regulated market over-counter hearing aids, it's driving innovation and, I would say, accessibility at scale. Case in point, Apple, one of those valuable companies in the world, they have just announced as of two months ago and it went to effect just a month ago, AirPods pros can do your hearing test and they can serve as hearing aids, and AirPods pros pros, I think, are $200. So it's increasingly, it's driving innovation with the right type of

regulations. So that's great. So now we have wonderful evidence that hearing matters. A treating

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