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From KQED.

Welcome to Forum.

I'm Grace Wan, in for Alexis Madrigal. We live in a noisy world. We jam

headphones on our ears to rock out to our favorite songs. We go to concerts, movies, and

sporting events where the sound is so loud, we feel it not only in our ears, but also in our

bodies. And our hearing is paying the price. By the age of 70,

two-thirds of Americans will suffer from some form of hearing loss, and the condition is on the

rise for folks aged 18 to 34. In fact, hearing loss is the third most common chronic health

condition in the United States. Cutting Edge research is focused on arresting

hearing loss, and in the meantime, we have hearing aids, which people often choose not to wear

because of stigma, cost, or discomfort. Hearing aids can cost as little as $89 and as much as $6,000.

To tell us more about hearing loss and hearing aids, we're joined by an all-star panel.

We've got Nicholas S. Reed. He's an adjunct professor at both John Hopkins School of Public Health and NYU Medical School.

Reed is an audiologist and an epidemiologist. Welcome to forum, Nick.

Thanks for having me.

We also have Dr. Konstantino Stankovic. She's an ear and skull-based surgeon at Stanford. She chairs the head and neck surgery department and is an auditory neuroscientist. Welcome to the show, Dr. Stankovic. Thank you for having me. Yes. So I wanted to start out, Nick, by talking about the different types of hearing loss. There's lots of different kinds. But what happens when we lose hearing as we age?

...