On Feb 1, the first episode of Dan Hewson’s new show ‘Coffee & Audiology’ went live.
What is ‘Coffee & Audiology?’
Well, the premise of this new show is simple; Dan Hewson, one of Arizona’s leading hearing care experts, answers one of your questions about hearing loss, hearing aids, and/or audiology.
It aims to address the many myths and misconceptions that stand in many people’s way from achieving better hearing.
With so much confusion and so many conflicting opinions, Dan’s focus on prioritizing education will give you the information that you need to make the best decision for you or a loved one.
“Why coffee? I hear you ask? Well, Dan is obsessed with Coffee.
- His favorite band? AC/DeCaf
- His favorite movie? The Polar Espresso
- You get the idea (and we’ve run out of puns!).
In this episode, the question asked was:
Question #1 – When I am trying to determine the best hearing aids for me, what are some of the things to be aware of?
== Prefer to Read than Watch? Here are the Transcripts for You ==
The first question is, “When I am trying to determine what hearing aids are best for me, what are some of the things that I need to be aware of?”
My answer may surprise you because I want to focus on the education.
Those that have hearing challenges – generally speaking – will come in the office saying, “Hey, I’m having trouble hearing,” because usually, the studies have shown us it takes at least seven to 10 years before we even realize that we have any hearings loss.
We really want to look at the deeper issues other than the one-dimensional issue of hearing loss. Often, we are so focused on the issues of hearing that we forget about the implications that it has on the way that the brain is actually working.
The biggest problem that I find that people have with their hearing loss is they actually talk about, “I’m having difficulties understanding my wife, understanding my husband,” and so forth.
This means that the issue really is clarity,” I can hear him, but I don’t understand.” So, if somebody comes in where our focus is to really focus on the processing of the auditory part of the brain, it’s actually called the auditory cortex.
The real focus is to understand when an individual hears something, are they able to make sense of the words?
For example, if somebody has hearing loss and gets hearing aids, if we fit them with hearing aids and improve their hearing, but they still can’t hear any background noise, there’s so much that we haven’t done, we still have a lot of work to do.
When they do the testing in background noise, the technology needs to be higher because the hearing aids need to do more for the person instead of just turning the volume up.
Technology is critically important. When you get hearing aids, you get hearing aids for two reasons.
- One of them is to make the volume louder.
- Number two is to improve how the brain is processing information and give that clarity and definition that people need.
We need to focus on the intelligibility of speech as opposed to just making things louder.
Thanks a latte for joining me (another pun!)
You can watch episode #2 here!
