Listen and Learn - 10-19-24

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, and welcome to listen and learn. This is
where you find out more about your health and hearing.
We want you to keep it at its very best,
and thanks to Concept by IW Hearing Centers, we're going
to do that today. Of course. Oh what a gorgeous,
gorgeous fall day. Kat Klower Hearing instrument specialist with Concept
is here. Don't you really want to do this from

(00:20):
the patio?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
I do. We've had such a lovely fall and it's
just been nice and I can't believe we're more than
halfway through October. And of course you know today I'm
going to want to talk about how important important October
is and who are.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hearing absolutely Now, before we dive into our topic today,
let me just remind you about the promo. Every week
we have a slightly different promo, and so here's what's
happening today. It's two hundred and fifty dollars off per
device on any series package and twenty four months no
interest financing with approved credit. Now to qualify for that promo,

(01:02):
you've got to call contact However you do it online
or on the phone Concept by Iwharing Centers and get
a free hearing screening scheduled, just get it on your calendar.
And yes, those hearing screenings are completely complementary from concept
by Iowah Hearing Centers, So do that today before you
forget eight seven seven six three to thirty six ninety

(01:28):
or go to their website Iowa Hearing dot com. All right,
kad Klower, tell me why is October so important for
our hearing?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well? October is National Audiology Awareness Month and really it's
comes around every year to remind the public to protect
their hearing. So today we're going to go over some
audiology awareness facts and then we're going to go over

(01:57):
some facts and miss the hearing a lot so that
people can learn about hearing and why it's important to
overall health and quality of life. They say that there's
about twenty nine million adults in the US that could
benefit from the use of hearing aids. So we really

(02:19):
need to get this message out because that's a lot
of people and that number is just growing, especially as
our population is weighted towards that baby boomer's generation and
they are aging, retiring, getting into their later years. Research

(02:39):
suggests that sound therapies can help alleviate anxiety, and nature
based sounds specifically can help reduce anxiety and agitation. I
thought this was kind of a fun fact that they're
putting out for audiology awareness months, because we tend to
talk about causes of hearing loss how to treat hearing loss.

(03:03):
But you know, they're also recognizing there are other therapies
we can do to help relax and you know, there's
different apps you can put on your phone, different sound
machines that you can get, So just remember that might
be a good solution if you have trouble or relaxing,

(03:23):
or have any anxiety. That can be a helpful therapy.
And hearing loss is associated with social isolation, depression, cognitive decline,
and other negative health outcomes, and it adversely affects one's
quality of life. So that's why, you know, it's important

(03:45):
to urge the public to be aware of the importance
of good hearing and really the best way to do
that is to make an appointment today to get your
hearing checked. And when we say to again your hearing check,
we're not talking about getting it checked today, We're talking
about getting it on the calendar, whether it's the remainder

(04:09):
of the month or into November. You just want to
make the appointment so that's done. Hearing is one of
the most important aspects of our health. It connects us
to people, it keeps us vital in our workplace as
we age, and when left untreated, it's associated with other
health issues. And the important thing to remember about getting

(04:33):
your hearing checked is that it's recommended to get that
baseline at age forty and not doing it at age seventy. Okay,
we need to get our baseline early and then monitor
it by getting it rechecked every five years. Because hearing
loss is important to treat sooner as opposed to later.

(04:57):
It's better to get ahead of the issue and not
behind it. And of course at Concept we do make
it easy. We always offer that complimentary hearing evaluation all
year long, not just during Audiology Awareness Month. And we
have a number of locations across the state of Iowa.

(05:17):
We are located from central Iowa over to eastern Iowa
along the Mississippi. I'm going to quickly run through our clinics.
We have a clinic in Aims, Cedar, Rapids, Clinton, Corraville, Davenport, Dubuque, Grenelle, Marshalltown, Oscaloosa, Hella,

(05:40):
pleasant Hill, Waterloo, and West Moine, so we make it easy.
Just pick up that phone and give us a call
by one o'clock to get that on your schedule.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah, eight seven seven six three two thirty six ninety.
That is the number four Concept of Iowa Hearing, So
it's eight seven seven six three two thirty six ninety.
You can also schedule that complimentary hearing exam online if
it's easier. Iowa Hearing dot Com is their website. That's
Iowa Hearing dot Com. The promo that you qualify for,

(06:14):
as we were alluding to, two hundred and fifty dollars
off per device on any series package and twenty four
months no interest financing with approved credit. You do have
to make sure you get a hold of Concept or
leave them a message or whatever. Make sure you're calling
for that hearing screening by one o'clock today and have

(06:35):
it on your calendar before it gets away from you.
Can be so easy to forget those kinds of things.
Concept by Iowa Hearing Centers. Hearing instrument specialist Kat Clower
is with us again today. We've been talking about October
being Audiology Awareness Month. I love the little facts that
you give Kat. I want to throw one out there
for you because I thought this was so interesting. Researchers

(06:59):
did some research john Well, So they were talking about
the habits that we can have to live longer lives,
like until one hundred if you want to do that here,
you know, like some of the things they were talking
about was, you know, moving more, you know, just those
kinds of things. But the biggest thing on their list
was where hearing aids if necessary.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
I love that, and I you know, it's becoming more
in the news. I feel like, you know, I've been
talking about this and reading research studies since about twenty
and twelve, so I love that now it's really becoming
more mainstream and it's getting out there. And I know

(07:40):
this year I do a lot of reading and I
read a book called Outlive. I think there's a little
bit more to the title than that. The author was
doctor Peter Attia, and he really addresses things like some
major health conditions that affect people as a age, like strokes,

(08:01):
heart attacks, cancer, and dementia. And in the dementia portion
of his book, he brings up the Achieved Study, which
is a study I've referenced a number of times, and
it basically gets into how it can really change cognitive
effects by treating hearing loss. So yes, you know, we

(08:26):
know that treating hearing loss reduce our risk for falls,
and we know that falls is, you know, unfortunately one
of the most common fatal injuries people have. So you know,
when you talk about living longer, you know, if you
have hearing loss, you need to be wearing hearing aids.

(08:48):
And there was a study published by the Lancet Commission
on Dementia Prevention and they cite about eleven modifiable risk
factors for dementia, and we know in the United States,
treating hearing loss is number one. And the other thing
to remember is that dementia typically starts many years before

(09:11):
it's recognized. And when I say that sentence, I also
think hearing loss starts many years before it's recognized, and
untreated hearing loss can impact the brain and cognitive health.
And that's why it is now recommended to get that

(09:31):
baseline at age forty in every five years because it's
not just our hearing that we're treating, it's our overall health.
And if you want to age healthfully and live longer,
it is an important key in that overall health. And

(09:54):
with it being Audiology Awareness Month. I also want to
take a little moment and define some audiology terms that
I use in the show and keep people educated so
that they know what they mean, because they're probably like, Kat,
what's she talking about? Okay? So I know in a

(10:18):
lot of the studies with risk of falls and hearing loss,
I talk about hearing loss and that loss is equated
to the amount of decibel loss and adacibel is a
unit of expressing the relative loudness of sound. And when

(10:39):
I talk about the hearing test, the result of the
hearing test is called the audiogram. It's an essentially a
chart which is grafted the results of the hearing test
and on one side it has the intensity levels or
the decibel levels listed on one axis and on the

(11:02):
horizontal axis is the frequencies at which we hear, and
we typically the frequencies will go from low frequency to
high frequency because we don't hear every sound at one pitch.
You know, for example, men tend to speak in a

(11:22):
lower range, meaning low to mid frequencies. Women and children
tend to speak in a higher range meaning mid mid,
high to high frequencies. And you know, we hear different
sounds in different areas traffic is a very low frequency sound,

(11:43):
almost more of a vibrational sound, and then something like
the micro microwave beeping is a high frequency sound. So
we test all those frequencies, and of course at concept
I will hear. We always go over those results with you.
We explain the results so that you understand where you are.

(12:07):
We're always going to take the appropriate action. So let's
say you come in and you have no loss, we're
going to recommend you come back in and X amount
of years for a retest. If we find you have
something called a conductive loss, meaning there's a component of
the hearing loss that's coming from your middle ear, we're

(12:29):
going to make a referral to an ear, nose, and
throat doctor to ensure that if there's anything medically correctible
that can be done, that's looked into, and if you
truly have what we call sensial neural hearing loss, we're
going to recommend hearing devices because that's how you treat

(12:50):
that type of loss. And we're going to make a
recommendation based on your hearing loss, based on your scores
on our speech noise testing, and based on your lifestyle.
And we're also going to explain why we're making that recommendation.
So a great thing to do, an informative thing to do,

(13:13):
and all you need to do is pick up the
phone and call us by one o'clock today.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Knowledge is power. You can make a good decision when
you have good information. That's why Concept by Iowa Hearing
Centers offer is that free hearing exam so you can
find out where you're at. Eight seven seven six three
two thirty six ninety. That's the number to call Concept
by Iowa Hearing Centers for that free exam eight seven

(13:39):
seven six three two thirty six ninety. You could even
schedule online. Iowa Hearing dot com is their website again,
Iowa Hearing dot com. Once you get scheduled by one
o'clock today, then you qualify for the promo two hundred
and fifty dollars off per device on any series package
and twenty four months no interest financing with approved credit. Again,

(14:03):
if you call by one o'clock today or get online
and get that complementary hearing exam scheduled. Okay, that's all
you need to do. Concept by Iowa Hearing Centers. Hearing
instrument specialist Cat Klower is along and Yeah, knowledge is powercat.
It's why I enjoyed going through my hearing screening two

(14:24):
different times with you over at concept. It's great, it's
great knowledge and you explain everything.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeap. We want to make sure that we're educating and
informing and also that's what we're doing today on Listen
and Learn. So now we're going to go over some
facts and this of hearing loss. And I'm going to
start with a fact and I kind of alluded to
this a little bit earlier. Adult onset of hearing loss
can occur so gradually that it might be difficult to identify.

(14:55):
In quiet situations. There may be no difficulty at all
communicating or understanding. And many people with hearing loss do
not realize that their hearing can be better than it is.
And you know, the thing with hearing loss, typically it
happened slowly and gradually, and you don't notice those changes.

(15:17):
You don't know what you're not hearing. If you're not
hearing something, you're not aware of it. It often takes
somebody around you to kind of point that out. But
I want to go over some common symptoms that indicate
the need for an audiological evaluation or a hearing test

(15:40):
perceiving that people mumble, and I had a lady come
in this last week and she's like, you know, everything's muffled.
I feel like everybody's mumbling. We did the hearing test
and then you know, I went over the result with

(16:00):
her and I was able to show her that most
of her speech sounds, and particularly all of the consonants
and speech were out of her range when she did
not have treated hearing loss. So it just gives you
that sensation that you don't have clarity. You know, she

(16:21):
can hear people. It's not like we go from hearing
to not hearing. You have those areas in between. So
perceiving that people mumble is definitely a sign of hearing loss.
Frequently asking people to repeat what they've said that again
is another sign. And I would almost say the opposite

(16:44):
of that can be a sign as well. Maybe people
tend to ask people to repeat themselves and then eventually
get frustrated, so then they don't participate. They kind of
pull back and withdraw, and I really don't want that,
so I would say, you know, are you pulling back?

(17:04):
Are you isolating again? Another sign of hearing loss? Do
you have difficulty following conversations in restaurants and in other
noisy places. Do you turn up the volume on the
television or radio to levels that are annoying to our
people in the household and that's a good sign. It

(17:27):
could be a sign, okay, do you have trouble understanding
voices in houses of worship or other public gatherings? Difficulty
understanding people when that you can't see their face. This
was a big, big thing when we were masking in
twenty twenty. I had a lot of people come in

(17:50):
because they realized when people wore a mask, they a
of sudden felt like they couldn't hear now. So it
does make a difference when you get those visual clue
us and speech. Do you get impatient or irritated or
frustrated during conversations? Are you straining to hear conversations? Occasionally

(18:12):
I'll have somebody, I'll meet them for the first time,
and we're across the desk from one another, and I
see them leaning forward, or I see them leading with
their right ear or left ear, and I'll make the comment,
you know, do you feel like one ear is worse
than the other, or do you feel like, you know,
if they're leaning with the right I'll be like, do

(18:32):
you think your right ear is better? And they're kind
of like, how do you know? But they're not even
conscious that they're doing it, because it just becomes a
daily habit. The other sign of hearing loss is, of
course tonightas hearing ringing or buzzing, cicada's, locusts, or other
noises in your head, because often tonight's is a symptom

(18:56):
of a high frequency hearing loss. So any of this
sounds like this could be you or somebody you know,
because I always say it's a great idea to come together,
like find a friend, a family member and come together
to get your hearing tested. And you just need to
pick up the phone or book online by one o'clock today.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
The website four concept by Iowa Hearing Centers is Iowa
Hearing dot com. That's Iowa Hearing dot com. Or the
phone number you can dial eight seven seven six three
two thirty six ninety. That's eight seven seven six three
two thirty six ninety. Either way, do it by one
o'clock today. Make sure you're trying to reach out and

(19:38):
contact them so you can schedule that complimentary hearing exam
by one o'clock today because the promo you qualify for
is two hundred and fifty dollars off per device on
any series package and twenty four months no interest financing
with approved credit. But again you need to reach out
by one o'clock today so you can get that on

(19:59):
your calend. Of course, I'm October being Audiology Awareness Month.
It's perfect timing that we're talking with Kat klower hearing
instrument specialist from Concept by Iowa Hearing Centers. I know
people do resist Kat. They resist it because they think
that wearing hearing aids is going to make them feel old.
I know I did the same thing with my glasses.

(20:20):
I'm like, no, I'm not going to do it. But
hearing is even more important to make sure that we
are because that's a brain function, even more than our eyesight.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yes, it's so important to all aspects of our health,
and it is something that I think people don't want
to dress. They don't think about it. This last week
I had a gentleman come in. I don't remember how
he was, I'm going to say he was in his
late sixties. The reason why he picked up the phone

(20:53):
and came in is because his wife was telling him
he should get his hearing checked. And he came in
and actually his hearing was fine, and I explained his
hearing loss to him. I recommended he come back in
four years and get his hearing checked at that time.
But I also said to him, has your wife ever

(21:15):
been tested? And he was kind of surprised by what
I had said. But I'm like, if you know she's
aged forty or older, you know, or has not been
tested in the last five years, she should really get
the spaceline too, and you know, encourage her. It's complimentary
to come in and get it done, and then the
next time around you could both come together and get

(21:38):
checked again. So it's just a really easy thing to do.
And I'm going to go over a myth here, Okay,
hearing loss is just in an inconvenience you can learn
to tolerate. And I think for so many years people
really felt this way. They felt, you know, I live alone.

(22:00):
I can crank the TV louder. You know, I can
make people sit in front of me. I can use
speakerphone on my phone. You know, I'll find ways to
get by. But getting by in that way is going
to compromise our overall health. It's going to compromise our balance,

(22:21):
it's going to compromise our cognitive issues, it's going to
compromise our connections to our friends and family. So even
mild hearing loss can have a negative impact on quality
of life. Long term outcomes improve when hearing is treated early,
which reinforces the importance of seeking advice when hearing difficulties

(22:46):
or problems are first noticed. We know that the longer
someone goes with hearing loss, it doesn't treat their hearing loss.
They suffer from what we call auditory depperence. So what
happens is if you're not hearing at a normal level,
you start to lose your word understanding, and unfortunately, that's

(23:11):
something we cannot give back. Now, if someone comes in,
they treat their hearing loss, they wear their hearing devices consistently,
their word understanding is going to maintain at a good
level as they continue to age. So I'm going to
put a stipulation here. Treating hearing loss is treating it

(23:36):
with hearing devices and wearing the hearing devices. People who
purchase hearing aids and put them in a drawer of
your mind and don't use them, that is not treating
hearing loss and a concept by Iowa Hearing Centers. I
think that's the big difference. We're here to help and

(23:56):
we're here to support you after you make that disci
decision to treat your hearing loss. So we're always going
to make sure that you're wearing them appropriately, you're wearing
them long enough, we're making adjustments for you. And then
we always offer our forty five day trial. So in

(24:17):
that forty five days you feel like, hey, things are
not better, you're not happy with the results, you can
return them and we will give you all your money
back because we're here to help and not to hinder.
And again, it's just an easy process to come in

(24:37):
and get your hearing checked. And here is another myth.
Mild hearing loss will always stay mild. No, our hearing
does not stay the same. I can tell you I
definitely don't hear like I did when I was twenty
years old. I can remember being a student at the

(25:02):
University of Iowa. I maybe remember being on the dance
floor and having got conversation with six of my friends
in front of a speaker and actually being able to
have a conversation. And now it's a few years later,
and if I'm out with my friends, I'm like, hey,

(25:22):
can we move away from papers? I'm a conversation. So
you know, bottom line, things don't stay the same over time,
and if you have a mild loss, it's going to
hopefully slowly get worse as time changes. So that's why

(25:45):
when someone comes in for hearing evaluation and maybe they're
normal or mild, we're going to make the recommendation or
put you on the schedule to come back an X
amount of years so that it can be addressed again.
So it's just an important thing for overall health and aging,
and we make it easy. It's complementary. Pick up that

(26:09):
phone and calls by one o'clock.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Number is eight seven seven six three two thirty six ninety.
That's eight seven seven six three two thirty six ninety
for concept by Iowa Hearing Centers. Iowa Hearing dot com
is their website. That's Iowa Hearing dot com. Either way,
whether it's online or by phone, call, get online schedule

(26:32):
that hearing exam. It's completely complementary before one o'clock today,
so you can qualify for the promo two hundred and
fifty dollars off per device on any Series Package and
twenty four months no interest financing with approved credit. Kat
Klower are Hearing Instrument Specialist with Concept by Iowah Hearing Centers.

(26:53):
Thanks for being here today. It's always so informative and
we definitely want to get this done before October is out.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah. Everyone, enjoy your Saturday, enjoy your fall. It seems
like it's going too quickly, so thank you for listening today.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
Listen and Learn is brought to you by Concept by
i We're Hearing Centers on WOC