Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren Boglebaum. Here. There was a time when hearing aids may have seemed too many people like clunky, uncomfortable gadgets that were awkward to wear. But today these devices are often so small and thin that they're mostly hidden behind the ear lobes, and you can adjust these hearing aids with a few taps on a smartphone app to make it easier to hear in whatever environment you
find yourself in. They're so sleek that marketers of the latest products described them with the kind of language you'd expect from car commercials, and they come with all kinds of modern features. For example, one product called the Horizon uses an algorithm to improve speech clarity and can interact with smartphones and other devices to handle phone calls, stream
podcasts and audio books, and even audio from television. And another product, the Olivio AI hearing aid, uses artificial intelligence and integrated sensors to not only make it easier to hear what people are saying, but also can work with a smartphone to track physical and brain activity, and has a feature that can translate foreign languages for wearers. Hearing aids are making technological leaps at a time when hearing loss seems to be on the rise, both in the
US and elsewhere in the world. Some hearing loss is the result of aging, heredity, or illnesses such as meningitis that can damage the ears, but exposure to loud sounds, which was once mostly a problem for industrial workers, is a growing problem in our increasingly noisy world. Study by University of Michigan researchers found that about nine out of ten New York City residents were chronically exposed two levels of noise that were high enough to harm their hearing.
Some of the risk comes from traffic and other environmental sounds, but we inflict a lot of punishment on our ears simply by attending sports events and concerts. If you go to these events where earplugs, listening to music through earbuds and cranking up the volume to drown out the ambient noise that the buds let in also does damage. As a result, more and more of us are having problems
with our hearing at younger ages. One survey of two thousand, four hundred and thirty nine US adults by the American Speech Language Hearing Association found that fewer than half of forty nine percent described their hearing is excellent, while thirty eight percent so that they're hearing wasn't as good as it could be, and thirteen percent so that they were
having difficulty hearing. But despite this, only about twenty percent of the people in the poll had had their hearing tested in the past five years, compared to sixty one percent who had had vision tests, who had had their blood pressure checked, and forty one percent who had had
their cholesterol levels tested or undergone mammograms. Hearing tests were even less popular than procedures such as prostrate exams and kolonoscopy's twenty three percent, and only six percent of people in the survey said that they had gotten treatment for
hearing loss. For the article that this episode is based on, How Stuff Work, spoke by email with Atlanta resident Kristin Palladino, the editorial director and co founder of Equally Wed, an lgbt Q plus wedding publication, who happens to have been born with severe hearing loss in both of her ears. She doesn't even remember when she was first fitted for hearing aids. She said, I know that I put them in my desk drawer in third grade and refused to wear them. I was so embarrassed of them. I just
wanted to blend in, and I felt like I stood out. Palladino, who is now forty three, says it wasn't until she was failing her college courses because she was missing key information that she finally went to an audiologist and got hearing aids again. How Stuff Works also spoke with Dr Hope Lantern, the lead audiologist for here dot com, which is an online source for hearing aids from various manufacturers and also offers access to a nationwide net work of
audiologists who can provide in person testing and guidance. She explains that waiting to get help can be a problem because the longer someone allows hearing loss to continue, the worst the problem will become, and the more difficult it will be to remedy. Though the ears pick up sound, it's really the brain that analyzes and makes sense of all that noise, and over time, auditory deprivation will lead to reduced activity in the parts of the brain that
process sound. However, the brain is always changing, and you can get at least some of that activity back. Once a person with hearing loss starts using hearing aids, there's a period of adjustment. Initially, the rush of unfamiliar sound may be disconcerting or overwhelming. Gradually, though, as a hearing aid user adjusts and gets to the right settings with the help of an audiologist, the regular exposure to sound
can help the brain essentially rewire itself. Lanter says that brain imaging study show audio crossing areas gaining and areas to provide visual processing, reducing the load that they've been carrying. Palladino said, with my hearing aids, I can hear my children, my wife, the rain, strangers in stores trying to get my attention, an ambulance blasting its siren behind me in the road. I'm able to function in society without them.
I'm isolated and vulnerable, and technologically advanced hearing aids can actually help make that transition easier. The aforementioned horizon has a feature called relaxed mode, which allows a wearer to block out the noise of the world for a while and distress with calming sounds. That ability to take breaks and still keep the device in the ear has another plus by making it less likely that the wearer will remove the hearing aids temporarily and then forget to put
them back in. Of course, hearing aids aren't the be all, end all to improving the lives of deaf and heart of hearing individuals. If you or someone you know is experiencing hearing loss and you're not sure what to do, or if you just want to learn more, check out the work of organizations like the National Association of the Death. There is so much work and advocacy being done, from personal education to better healthcare, to more accessible technologies to
governmental policy. Today's episode is based on the article modern hearing aids do way more than help you here on how stuff works dot com, written by Patrick Jake Hyder. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Playing. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.