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>> Thank you for watching HealthLine on PBS Fort Wayne.

My name is Mark Evans.

Your host normally here I also share the hosting duties with Jennifer Blomquist who is not here this evening but I won't be talking about a very important subject that affects just about everyone and we're talking about hearing concerns in the special especially I should say hearing losses affect on health and well-being.

>> That's what we'll talk about tonight with our special guest Ted Blanford.

Good to see you, Ted.

Thank you for having me.

It's been about a year since we've seen you here on what's been several years several years as a matter of fact.

>> But it's great to see you and we always have a great show because it's an interesting topic when we talk about hearing concerns and our phone lines usually light up and the telephone number of course is on your screen at (969) to seven to zero or you can stick 866- in front of that for long distance.

>> But we'll be taking your calls and for the next half an hour and since we are not commercial TV, we're public television, we won't step down for any commercials.

So just stay with us for the entire half if you can.

>> So Ted, let's go ahead and talk about in fact I want to make sure we talk about what you do.

You're a hearing specialist and an audio parasitologist.

Yes.

OK, I know audio parasitologist is would you explain to the audience just in case Stato is a little bit of a tongue twister and it basically we break down the word as we're taking down what's prostheses of the of the hearing hearing aids or hearing instruments specific and that's what we specialize in as an audio parasitologists we help people here with a prosthesis.

>> OK, just like if you had an arm amputated you'd have exactly right.

But we're talking about hearing aids and prosthesis for the ears.

>> OK, now I know that you've got some graphics.

I always love it when guys bring graphics but we want to see how we actually hear what how the brain works in that.

>> Well, that's a great question because we just think these things in the sides of our head just gather things and that's what we hear with it.

>> There's more to that we hear with our brain and the pathway to the brain is very specific and very important to understand when we speak there's pressure in the air and it goes through our ear to the ear canal to to the middle ear where there's bones and the bones actually help increase the gain or the volume of a person's voice or the sound that you're hearing and that takes it to the middle ear or the inner ear and sends it to the brain and the brain receives that signal as an electrical impulse and that electrical impulse becomes our hearing.

>> In fact, the smallest bone in your body is in your is as it's called the hammer.

Well, yes, the Malleus Malleus yes.

And incased Malleus I think is in the stapes.

>> Yes.

Those are the three or the the hammer anvil and stirrup.

>> Oh that's right yeah.

From my old health class.

That's right to grade school I remember that now it's all coming back to me.

All right.

So we figure that out and you know I've seen here lately and I think it's a wonderful thing and this is not your specialty but the cochlear implants for folks who obviously the prosthesis can't help or it's a very it's a very different prosthesis but it is a very it's it's part of the repertoire of help basically what the what that cochlear implant does it bypasses the bones we were just discussing it goes straight into the inner ear where the nerve centers are and that's where that electrical impulse is being loaded up to be sent to the brain and that is where the cochlear implant would would help with that.

>> OK, I've got a call coming in right now but I want you to answer this question while we're preparing that.

>> How common is hearing loss and who who does it affect the most?

>> Well, it affects everyone really.

It's not a it's not a it's not a respecter of age but it's the most common patients that are seen in a in a hearing specialist's office or an audiologist office is every one in five patients.

Over sixty five people over 65 suffer with hearing loss at some point and enough it would interfere with life .

>> That's quite a bit and those are the ones that are reporting oh so I would imagine even with a mild hearing loss it does interfere with life .

>> In the later on the show we're going to talk about those who just can't get a grip on the fact that they might have hearing problems or realize it because it's a time issue.

>> It really is and it's sometimes it's a sneaky little thing.

>> Yeah.

All right.

Well, let's go to it looks like line five came in with a call.

I don't know who it's from but they're asking is it normal for your ears to pop when you swallow?

>> Actually, yes, it is normal because that is the regulation of the pressure of air between your middle ear and the outside ear and your ear is trying to regulate that pressure between and you have a tube called station tube that allows that to go to the air to come in and out and when you do swallow it either opens up and relieves pressure or it tightens up and increases pressure to be able to balance that out.

And that's what the popping sound is.

>> OK, and now let's talk about some of the most common concerns.

Why do people come to a hearing specialist?

>> Well, for the most part it is sometimes the wife saying that selective hearing is getting in the way of their relationship relationships the old selective hearing thing.

>> But oftentimes and the most common is I hear but I don't understand or I'm missing out on so much in life that I I wonder if it's if it's a hearing loss or am I having other issues.

>> How would that become a revelation to you?

How would you know that generally it's family and friends that are pointing things out OK. >> Oh you didn't hear that when she was exactly or or I hear a lot of times I don't answer questions a lot of times where I stay out of conversations most of the time because I'm afraid that the what I'm hearing I can't really verify if it's what I really think it is.

>> Yes.

I sometimes see the in answer to a question that isn't quite right or things like this and those are real concerns.

>> I don't know that's kind of it is kind of funny but the family's tight knit families and spouses, they do giggle about it at times but they also know how important it is that it's becoming more and more of a problem.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> I would imagine and you know, there are a lot of occupations me being and one in broadcasting for gosh over well over forty years and wearing headsets and a studio volume goes up more and more the longer you're in the business and I know Ted that I have some hearing issues and you mentioned a couple of those and but the environmental that has something to do with that.

We're talking about the causes of your hearing loss and we were getting into the genetics as well as environmental, right?

>> Well, yeah.

Loud sounds and the environment plays a big, big role genetics, environment medications, health issues, childhood diseases.

>> These are all pieces of the pie and or pieces to the puzzle you put together and figure out exactly what is really happening with your hearing.

But environment to loud sounds, factory workers, law enforcement, first responders, military, those occupations that are around around a lot of loud noises at a sustained rate have a tendency to have a deeper hearing loss in specific areas and now depending on where those noises come from also we'll give you a shape of a very specific shape of a hearing loss.

You can recognize based on their occupation and things like this in an environment.

>> What about our military people, the soldiers coming back after hearing all that the loud combustion of those rockets and so forth?

>> It's the number one injury for our service members coming home from a operational theater.

I can see that.

Yeah, hearing loss and tinnitus are are the two the two highest rates of injury that we that we experience.

>> Well, I want to talk about tinnitus.

That's definitely got to be spotlighted this evening.

We do have a call coming in from Jack Jack's asking I think this is going to be an excellent question because it was on the agenda tonight, Ted.

But he's asking if you have untreated hearing loss, can this cause dementia now cause it's a very, very specific work.

But the Johns Hopkins University study from I believe it's nineteen eighty seven when it started by the way is a fantastic question that has indicated that a untreated or undertreated mild to moderate to severe hearing loss you have a two hundred to five hundred percent increased risk of dementia.

What that means is if you have a propensity or you have a family history of dementia you're you just increase by two , three, four, five fold of contracting that.

>> What's the relation though?

Good question.

I said in the beginning we hear with our brain yeah.

If we take away stimulus to the brain just as if we were to take away exercise to our muscles it atrophies it doesn't get it doesn't have the exercise doesn't keep the build our brain does the same thing we rely on our on our brain the hippocampus especially in the memory area to be completely active as much as possible when it's not used that portion of the brain shrinks, that portion of the brain changes and increased increased dose boldness and less activity makes the brain shrink and memory also fades and there's an element of depression that is involved in this in isolation.

>> There we go.

Embarrassment.

There's a lot that goes on when you are not feeling comfortable in your own skin because you're afraid that you are not hearing what you think you're hearing or you're afraid to make yourself feel foolish by not answering a question properly you take yourself away from the people that love you the most and you do feel the effects and it's it's very, very real.

>> It's very real well and we want to talk about the reality of losing your hearing and how important it is and that's why we're focusing on that tonight and we are talking to Ted Blanford who is a hearing specialist and audio parasitologist and it's great to have him here on the show tonight and some questions are rolling in, Heidi.

In fact, he's going to Segway to my next question as she goes What causes tinnitus and how do you pronounce is that the right way to pronounce it?

>> Tinnitus.

Tinnitus.

Okay, you can call it Bob if you'd like.

I would call tonight.

>> Tonight is just the most common tinnitus and there's reasons why tinnitus and tinnitus are two different pronunciations and those are all the medical terms we can have on a different show.

>> OK, I feel that there might be some Latin coming there is OK all right.

>> But what the cause is is the damage to the hair cells inside the inner ear and we were talking about how we hear the bones send in the middle ear, send the signal to the inner ear in the inner ear has nerve endings and I always do this in the graphics on the on the television right now those are what we call hair cells.

Each one of those stalks that you see would send a signal to the brain when the ones that are damaged if you look at the upper left hand corner, those are damaged, they're leaning over, they're being broken and they're not they're not giving a proper signal.

They give a random they give a random electrical impulse to the brain.

Well, their brain the brain has to take that electrical impulse and do something with it and it makes it sound it's like a pothole in a smooth road.

There's something there's a bump in that part on that road and it's not getting a pure signal to the brain.

So the brain's got to do something with that jostle and it's going to make a noise.

It can be one of 50 different types of sounds.

>> Oh really not just a high pitch but you can hear I it could be a wash.

It could be a rush.

It could be a buzz.

It could be a ring.

It could be nice sounds a lot of people say these sound like cicadas or my mom would say June bugs I didn't have the heart to tell her the June bugs don't make any I didn't think they did.

>> That's OK.

So well so so you have that and I guess the point I'm trying to make is the luckily in our twenty first century we have the technology to help dissolve that tinnitus problem.

>> Correct?

I mean it's not going to cure it or make it go away but is there a way to even get out?

>> How does that work?

We can manage it to be very careful with because there is no cure for tinnitus.

Right.

And there's no way to make it completely go away because there's damage to those nerve endings and they're going to do their job and they're going to try to send a signal to the brain what we do is we treat it with that.

We're able to manage it with hearing instruments with special with special programing inside the hearing aids themselves and we fill in those potholes, if you will, with proper hearing if there's a hearing loss, 90 percent of people that experience tinnitus also have a hearing loss.

So we're going to fill in that space with proper sound, the real ambient sound.

So the nerve ending is full again and sends a proper signal to the brain or we have a secondary sound that matches so the brain has a competing sound.

It will look for the competing sound and not the tinnitus and it will be soothed you give the brain the chance to relax and the signal isn't going to be as disruptive.

>> Yeah, I've heard people who have had that try to sleep and just drive some crazy.

>> It is very difficult is there and there have been some tragic results on some very, very severe tinnitus.

>> Hate to hear that we'll get back to tinnitus in just a second.

Fred is asking calling in.

Thank you for your call, Fred looks like he wants to be on the air so we'll go ahead and have him let him have the floor.

>> Go ahead, Fred.

OK, can you hear me?

>> Yes, we can go ahead with your question.

OK, I wear hearing aids and I'm typical male I think in that I'm Fred.

Just listen to your telephone.

We have a little delay.

Listen to your telephone, not your TV.

>> OK, OK.

I have a typical male high frequency hearing loss.

>> OK?

And my trouble is when I'm with in an environment where there's a lot of other things going on conversations in a restaurant yeah.

Etc.

I have trouble and I'm wondering is there anything that can be done or science developing anything selective hearing?

>> I think that's a wonderful question really Fred.

That's a great question now yes.

The technology and hearing and hearing aids has been advancing since I started hearing hearing instruments twenty three or so years ago.

>> Yeah.

Notice that you're wearing such and the amazing thing about what we're dealing with now, it's called environmental controls.

There are hearing instruments out there right now that have artificial intelligence embedded inside their microchips that allow the hearing to do millions of adjustments per hour and microphone are are made specifically to focus forward and reduce background sounds a bit there's the best thing to do is talk to a hearing specialist, talk to it to a hearing health care provider that are out there today that has access to this wonderful technology and see if it can be right for you.

>> Yeah, well and I've heard of people getting hearing aids for that specific problem Fred has and I encounter that too and sometimes the restaurants and so forth that don't have the best acoustics and there's a lot of background music people talking and I have to really rely on watching people's mouths.

They're reading lips.

Yes.

And hearing their sounds so but there is hope for that.

>> There's technology right now they can reduce back.

Nothing's going to get rid of background.

That's something we really need to make sure that that myth is squashed right away.

We cannot stop background noise.

Our brain needs to have contrast but it reduces background noise is called signal to noise ratios.

Like I said, it doesn't have to be that technical.

It just reduces background noise so you can focus on the voices that are most important to you and those are the ones that you're are coming to you from the front.

>> I say let's get back to tinnitus.

Sure.

Is that Age-Related?

No, not necessarily.

But it does get worse over time .

>> Hmm.

Now you like I said when I we were talking earlier I noticed my tinnitus when when I was 20 years old and that had specific reasons because there was a lot of toxicity involved and I had ringing in my ears for quite a long time didn't understand what it was but as I aged it got worse and worse and worse.

So you could have tinnitus genetically you could have tinnitus based injury, you can have tinnitus based on the hearing loss.

>> But once it's there, if it's not cared for , if it's not managed properly, it can get worse over time.

>> Yeah.

And obviously I've seen that with some people.

>> When you say injury, what kind of injury would cause tinnitus anything to the head that they would jostle or damage the inner ear of in car accidents head head injuries, close head injuries, spinal injuries, things like this because our brain and our hearing are so closely knit together.

>> Uh, let's go ahead and talk a little bit more about the sense we're talking about it is our topic hearing loss is effect on health and well-being.

>> What more can you tell us about the relation of the two ?

>> Let's talk about cognition, OK?

In fact comes on the list.

Yeah.

When we when we talk about cognition a person with a hearing loss is unmanaged or is not cared for .

You have a thirty to forty percent quicker loss of cognition or your cognition is depleted at a much faster rate.

>> How would you explain what cognition is the ability to answer questions quickly understand topics of conversation being able to think on your feet more if you will OK it doesn't mean that you're not intelligent.

It just means that you're having a difficult time understanding because you're not getting all the information into your brain that you normally would if you were hearing everything being said when is decreased to thirty to forty percent faster rate as we age already our cognition decreases but we we put on top of that a multiplier of thirty to forty percent faster when we don't hear well yeah our brain needs our hearing.

>> Oh definitely definitely.

Now you mentioned something earlier in the show I definitely wanted you to explain further the last year osteoporosis having to do with overall health and well-being when it comes to hearing loss.

>> How does osteoporosis well we have bones in our ears, OK?

And this part of our hearing process if the bones are not healthy, if you have weak bones or if your bones have calcium and or they're just broken, that portion of the of your hearing needs to be intact to be able to send the proper signal to the inner ear to send the proper signal to the brain and when those bones aren't working properly you're hearing is not working properly and we need to be able to get that signal through.

>> OK, I got it because it makes perfect sense.

>> Now let's talk about in the last few minutes of our program somebody whether it is yourself or a relative, a loved one like a wife saying come on, we're going to go get your ears you're hearing checked out for and we know that it's just not relative to you as a hearing specialist in the audio of parasitologists.

But when someone comes to an office like yours and they're talking about the wife says well, selective hearing, I don't think he's actually hearing everything he needs to what do you do?

I mean obviously hearing tests of any sort or what should somebody expect when they come to an office to get the hearing checked?

>> Fantastic question.

Well, no one expect to be treated like a professional and a family member because your questions are valid.

Expect to be heard.

We do word testing.

We do a familiar voice test.

We if you if you're the most important person in your life is bringing you there, you should feel blessed.

They love you enough to bring you exactly.

So that voice right there that person's voice has to be part of the testing and we want to make sure that you can hear and understand what's being said.

We will test that with what we call a word test and then we would do the audiogram and we'd find out the level of your hearing loss and when that level of hearing loss is is discovered, we'll also be able to keep the professional will give a demonstration of how hearing can work for the patients.

>> I see.

So I can try them on for size just like that.

Yeah, not just for size but for effectiveness.

OK, and we have we have wonderful audiology and hearing specialists in this in this area that have access to the best technology.

>> We should take advantage of that here what we're supposed to hear.

>> Yeah because it's come a long way in such a short amount of time.

Oh my goodness.

Again the 21st century technology.

>> Oh and beyond yeah.

And beyond.

One last question coming in for you Ted.

Bob is asking is there a type of person with hearing loss that isn't a good fit for hearing aids?

And we'll also add there the audio prosthesis.

>> Yes, there are there are people there are hearing losses that are beyond what a hearing instrument can effectively give them and that's where the cochlear implant would come.

OK, and oftentimes we have to be very, very diligent.

Our test in the testing of a person's hearing because of the fact that the depth of the hearing loss for the most part 80 to 90 percent of the hearing loss is out there can be cured care for very effectively with good hearing instruments.

But for those 10 percent or so they cannot there is the cochlear implant and there's other procedures that can be it could be taking into effect when it comes to those types of hearing losses.

>> All right.

Now is this more of a an ear a doctor ear, nose and throat doctor situation or would you be able to as a hearing specialist detect this when somebody comes into their office?

>> But what about earwax problems?

Yes, we have we if the the the earwax is always one of those things is it wax?

Is it causing me to have this problem generally?

No, no.

Generally no.

But when we observe when the ear canal is observed for any obstruction having having a video otoscope or a video of the ear canal so you can see the the image of your ear canal as well you know that it's not wax or if it is wax we know where we need to where the patient needs to be referred to to be able to have that amount of treatment and then they would be referred back to the person that sent them so they can have a full and accurate hearing test that is a earwax problem that you've seen in your career.

>> Is that a common problem or a situation everyone has a little bit as a little bit some have a little more and some have a hole and some have a whole lot.

>> Yes, And if it comes to that point where it is that much of a problem having extracted it is very important.

>> OK, I would imagine yes.

>> Well let's we've got too much I think I was given about a minute and a half wrap up sign.

>> Let's leave our audience with some good advice and give them some hope if they have any hearing issues that they can actually go see a hearing specialist and and let's talk about that for a couple of minutes.

Absolutely.

There's so there's so many wonderful opportunities out in Fort Wayne .

We have we have some incredible we have some incredible opportunities in technology in Fort Wayne take advantage of it if someone loves you enough that says let's go at least see where you're at.

>> We'll see where I mean it's nice to have someone that day cares enough about you to be part of your life and they want you to be a part of theirs.

>> Take advantage of it really is it's important and I'm sure you see this and we don't have a whole lot of time to exchange stories.

But I've told you this before my poor grandmother was losing her.

You're hearing in her later years of life and really couldn't afford hearing aids are much more expensive relatively back then than they are now.

But anyway we were able to get grandma some hearing aids after about 20 years and the poor woman is so depressed but it was like Christmas in July she got her hearing aids.

We had a family reunion and I'm telling you the look on her face you thought it was Christmas because her eyes just lit up and she could hear again and and communicate and understand hearing is life changing.

Yesterday you said hearing is not expensive.

>> It's priceless and it's for the people who love you the most.

Exactly.

Ted Blanford, thank you so much.

We always love to have you on the show and I think we have a few more shows later in the year.

>> I really hope so.

OK, well we will certainly make arrangements for that.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

>> We thank you for your phone calls tonight and as always we wish you a great night and the best of so good night and good