How to Improve Your Hearing, Part 1 with Hope Lanter

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

The following is a podcast from a qualified senior care provider, hurt, on the answers for elders radio show. And welcome everyone to answers for elders radio network. And we are here, believe it or not, in the month of February as we are celebrating two thousand and twenty two and kind of a lot of us. For me anyway, I’m kind of been on a lot of new changes in a new world and of course, a lot of us are. It’s interesting in this time of history. Right now our country is coming out of the darkness, let’s say, for example, there’s masked mandates being lifted and all kinds of things. So we are seeing a general, you know, slow decline in covid nineteen, and that is really a good thing. And you know, my darkness, not only you know, was the fact that I didn’t even know I was, quote unquote, had hearing loss and and it was interesting to all of our listeners that listen to US regularly. About two weeks ago we had a gentleman on by the name of Jason Sargeant and he I shared my story of having to, quote unquote, swallow my pride to, you know, basically face the fact that I was I had hearing issues and you know, I know that I’ve had symptoms for a long time and there’s a lot of statistics out there and I really wanted to talk to our listeners that are primarily over the age of fifty because, believe it or not, that’s really when it starts to escalate with hearing loss. And as a result, I have asked Herecom to come back and again they did not solicit this in interview. I asked them to be on my show and we have the lead audiologist from Hear.com, Hope Lanter,, and she is here with me. Hope, welcome to answer for alders. It’s very nice to be here. Thank you for having us. Well, we’re glad you’re here because, hope, I have to say for a very, very long time I resisted the fact that I needed help with my hearing and, you know, I put my husband through so many things of you know what, what did you say? You know, I’m saying stuff to me, I didn’t hear anything. And and it was interesting because finally I had several friends say, Sudan, you really need to get your hair and checked, because it got so bad and and obviously I’m a communicator, so I knew that I needed to go get hearing checked. And so the first of the year, just a little brief recap, hope is a I saw one of your commercials herecom commercials, and you guys have them all over the place and I’m sure our listeners have seen them, and I thought, you know, this is really I need to do something about this. I’m just going to go to their website and I found it super easy. There was a little assessment thing that I took. You know, do you? Do you experience these things? And sure enough, I click, click, yes, yes, yes, and it was the easiest thing in the world. Nobody pressured me, nobody pushed me into buying anything. It was the most simple, easy thing process. And the great part about it was was that, instead of working with somebody remotely, I actually then was referred to a audiology center here in Edmonds, where it is close to our lit where I live, and I was able to deal with and befitted specifically here, and you know by on the audiologist here in this area. So talk about customer service. Was One of them most easy, seamless processes. I had a great hearing check I brought my husband with me. He noticed it right away and all of a sudden it brought a greater awareness to me and as a result, you know, I’ve been learning. Now, just like I’ve been I’m like a sponge. I’m taking so much information in and so hope, I am just curious is how does my story, I guess, Pan out to what you mostly find? I think you’re you’re echoing the the story of a lot of the people that we talked to and are able to help. And so, you know, we know that many, many people wait a very long time. So average is about seven years before they’ll actually do anything about the hearing loss. And so, you know, it is all of those things. You know, I had somebody come in one time who was pretty much telling me every single thing that we would would expect to hear. You know, hear from Zody has hearing last and she’says, but I don’t have a problem with my hearing and so I pull out this list and I said, okay, let’s go through this, and she says I can say yes to all of those things. And oftentimes I think we sometimes can put it off onto will it. Maybe it’s not quite that bad. But you know, the signs that we’re looking at now are things like, you know, are you asking people to repeat a lot you are you having a lot of trouble if there’s more than one person that’s talking to you? You kind of accusing everybody that you’re talking to of mumbling. You know, it’s not. It’s not me not being able to hear, it’s them not speaking very clearly. You know, kind of kind of accusation feeling of it there. Yeah, or it’s like my husband would say, you never listen to me. It’s like actually, I mean and I think that you know, and that’s where it starts to get into okay, well, if it starts to become work to hear or you know that you start feeling like, you know, I’m just missing so much. You may stop going places. Maybe you’re avoiding restaurants or avoiding, you know, going to the party or you know those kind of things, and so you know, it really just kind of creeps in. And sometimes it’s that you’re turning the TV up very loudly or you know, it’s those kind of factors that start. I’m packing other people. Yeah, and so then you start going okay, well, maybe it’s there, but I don’t want to, don’t weren’t want to recognize it or, you know, I want to just kind of ignore that, you know, the elephant the room of that well, and there’s hope. There’s such a stigma around, quote unquote, hearing aids. I know for me it was a vanity thing. I didn’t want. The first thing I said to Jason is I don’t want one of those things that go behind my ear. I mean, and now I’m wearing something behind my ear because, and I for those that are looking on Youtube, I’m just going to go like this so you can see. Do you see a hearing aid? Everyone? You don’t. You don’t see it. And that’s the beauty of where we’ve been and we’re going to talk a little bit about this hour into the technology, but first I really want to talk about like like the statistics of people over fifty hope. Can you give me kind of an overview? I I think it’s like forty percent experience hearing loss over is that right? Has So the statistics are kind of interesting. We were digging into this, you know, in terms of looking into some research on our end well within the last last couple of years, and what we know is that about forty seven million adults in the US actually have some level of hearing loss. What we you know, the statistics like you’re saying it’s you know, we generally say, okay, well, we know it’s probably, you know, it gets more and more as someone gets older. But if there’s seventy or older than we know it’s about thirty percent of those folks that have hearing loss. Okay. We look at people who are under, you know, sixty nine or under, that’s about, you know, sixteen percent at those folks and so okay. When you look at the sheer number of people who fall to those categories, though, it’s almost double the number of people you know, have hearing loss under sixty nine. So that’s really the big impact here is it’s a lot of people that really you at that point that those are the folks who need devices and aren’t using them. And so the end mean we we it’s a massive group of people that really, you know, we’re not helping as many people as we need to. You were, and I’m sure with US baby boomers we were, as we call it, sex, drugs and rock and roll run you know, a lot of us played very loud rock and roll music and in our cars and all those things which I remember as a child. I you know, I was a performer, right, so, but I was a voice major, so I didn’t. I was more in the you know, classical side and things like that, but understanding that there’s still orchestra, there’s still there’s still you know, symbols and timbers and all kinds of stuff. So you know, obviously that contributes. But I think the other side of it is is that my grandmother and my mother both were hearing ets. So it’s also can be genetic. Can’t absolutely and that’s the thing. As you mean, we know that that’s all those factors combined. Often Times, you know, it’s not for most people’s not one thing, but but it sure obviously makes a big impact if you know that you have some family history of hearing loss and now you add in. Okay, well, I can also say, yes, I’ve had some noise exposure in the past or maybe I’ve had some health issues that may also create some worntes of hearing lest. There’s a lot of these things that come along and everything in our life. Where our health stands today as it is, pretty much just a picture of what our life leading up to it has been. So I’m so often times it does kind of creep in and, as you mentioned before, very, very slowly and sometimes you don’t necessarily notice it, but often times others will notice it before you do. So it’s a, you know, it’s kind of gentle nudge of saying maybe it’s time to check it out. Yeah, and for those of you that are listening, if you’re experiencing just wondering, I it’s like I encourage all of our listeners to go to herecom and take just the assessment. At that point you just at least can no kind of a baseline of is it worth pursuing, and I promise you you will not be pressured. This is not a high pressure scenario. Nobody wants to fit you with hearing. It’s that you don’t need and certainly nobody wants to put you in a situation where you know, you feel like you’re compromising anything. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. And just for me, my experience, I’m hearing sounds that I haven’t heard in years and it’s kind of interesting. The spectrum of sound that I hear is so amazing and that’s now. I’ve been wearing my hearing it’s for almost a month now, and I can see such a different are. You know, I can feel such a difference and here, such a difference in the quality of my life. It’s been so easy. It’s so much easier, and I sit there and think to myself, Susanne, why didn’t you do this earlier? And that was the part that just this crazy. I didn’t. I didn’t do this earlier because I had a perception that it was just opening up a can of worms and I and I didn’t want to appear old and I didn’t want to you know all of these things, and I think that’s one of the things that you know. As you’re as you’re thinking about you know you’re either yourself or loved one. This is not difficult and it is something that will truly open up a new world and hope I couldn’t be more a greater testimonial to my experience with Herecom you guys have been amazing. And tell us a little bit. Do you have any like? I know you do have any, like promotional offers right night, like a trial? I believe you do. Right. Yes, always. You know that we do have a forty five day. We caught a norvous trial, meaning that we want to make sure that we get you in to the best product that fits your lifestyle, your needs, because that’s really the questionnaire you talked about. They if you go to Herecom and actually click on the website they are, you’ll see there’s like a map of the US. You can click there and on the end Washington and and really go through the questionnaire we’re looking to basically say, okay, what what’s going to fit you the test, and that will help determine the journey that we will kind of tell them journeys, but the journey that we sent you on. You can also call in seven, eighty six, five, two, zero, two four and fifty six and someone can speak with you there as well. But you know, at least helps to start kind of tailoring down the process of what it is that we need to do for you. But the goal is that if it doesn’t, you know if there’s really something, either you it’s not what you need at this time, or you try something and it’s just simply as not not bidding in with with what your expectations were, then it is something where you would then be able to receive a full refund. Wonderful. And you know, everyone we’re going to discuss hearing loss, the technology behind what is, all the advancements that have been going on, and also just really I think I want to talk a little bit about health issues, how health issues can be exacerbated through hearing loss, things like that, and hope will be right back with US spread after this answers for elders radio show with Suzanne Newman. Hopes you found this podcast useful in your journey of navigating senior care. Check out more podcasts like this to help you find qualified senior care experts and areas of financial, legal, health and wellness and living options. 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