Why Hearing Loss Is About More Than Just Your Ears

"Why Hearing Loss Is About More Than Just Your Ears
Hearing loss is about more than just hearing better. In this episode of Hear Me Out with Belinda, Belinda sits down with audiologist Victoria McLeod to talk about the bigger picture of hearing health — including brain health, fall risk, tinnitus, auditory rehabilitation, and the future of hearing technology.
They also unpack why a full hearing evaluation matters, how hearing aids are evolving, and why this is such an exciting time in hearing care.

In this episode:
→ Hearing loss and brain health
→ Falls, cognition, and prevention
→ Auditory rehabilitation
→ Tinnitus and daily life
→ Free hearing tests vs full evaluations
→ AI and the future of hearing aids"

00:00 Introduction

01:09 Hearing loss and whole-body health 

05:17 Auditory rehabilitation and the brain 

11:30 Free hearing tests vs full evaluations 

18:10 Hearing aids, balance, and fall support 

24:31 AI and the future of hearing care

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"#HearingLoss #Audiology #BrainHealth #HearingAids #Tinnitus #AuditoryRehabilitation #HealthyAging #FallPrevention #Okotoks #HearMeOutWithBelinda

Host: Belinda Waites
Instagram: @belindawaites
Belinda Waites - Hear Right Canada – Okotoks: where better hearing starts with listening.
🌐 hearrightcanada.ca

Guest: Victoria McLeod
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/vmcleod/ Email: Vicmic081@gmail.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Hearing loss isn't just about a hearing loss. It's about what else it's impacting.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Right. And if we go back to just the the very simple terms of treating hearing loss, right? Our ears are essential for collecting sound. In very simple terms, they convert it into an electrical signal, present it to the brain for interpretation, right? Like the brain Great, short and sweet.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Yep. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

So if the brain's not getting the correct signaling, it cannot interpret it. Or if it's not getting all the sounds, it's forgetting how to repret. So those links, you know, have always been there. I think it's just putting it all together now.

SPEAKER_03 0:37

You are so right. Because I can remember my days back in clinic when you're helping somebody remediate their hearing loss. Oftentimes, as I'm sure you've discussed on many of your programs, you know, people aren't beating down your door the second day after they notice they have a hearing loss. It takes years, right? So when you're starting a person out on that journey and they're very used to a very different sound reality, I remember often saying, I'm sure you relate, where people would be like, it just, it's so loud, and oh, I can't get used to this. And you'd be like, it's gonna take time. You haven't used these parts of your brain, right? Yeah. So you have to get them, get them used to the sound again. So if those parts of your brain haven't been used well, it's not like they're only used for hearing. There are other functions that are being impacted in your brain. So it's all part and parcel of that idea. If you're not using something, you're losing it.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Welcome to Hear Me Out with Belinda. Today, joining us remotely from Winnipeg, Manitoba, is my friend and audiologist, Victoria. Welcome, Victoria.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

It is a real pleasure and a treat. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

You're welcome. I'm really looking forward to our conversation because um you have definitely been an inspiration to me during the years. You have been such your your passion when you're doing training on a product or technology is just once again, it's the only word I have is inspirational. So um, yeah, let's jump in with that. How long have you been an audiologist for?

SPEAKER_03 2:21

Uh if you can believe it, my diploma tells me this is my 31st year.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Wow. So double. I've been I've been a hearing care professional for 15 years now. Yeah, the time. Um, and so I would say when I joined about 15 years ago, it would there was still this um sort of perception that when we were treating a hearing loss, we were just treating the ears, right? We were helping people hear sounds better.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

But I feel like there's been a massive sweat like um shift in the last couple of years. You're nodding there, right? And now we're doing that, we, you know, the words that we're using is preventable. You know, we know the risk of, you know, falls and cognitive um support. So I'm going to ask you, have you noticed the same shift? Like what are you experiencing?

SPEAKER_03 3:08

Oh, very much so. When I graduated, what I when I think back to the education that I came through, we talked very much about hearing loss in isolation, you know, hearing loss as it relates to the fact that your cochlea is damaged or where that hearing loss happens, uh, and then how to assist with that. These days we hear very much about prevalence and of other related health issues, that hearing loss isn't its own encapsulated or bubble. Uh, there are many other issues that hearing loss is a part of. And that was just never a part of the conversation back years ago. I I think it really is a result of great research and the integration of other specialties into our field.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

I think so too, because before, I mean, I think there was the Lancet study, which would be about three years ago now, which was the big dementia study, um, which was this sort of the tip of the iceberg. And I think I saw the neuroscientist, Dr. Sarah McKay, if I have it correct, um, on a different podcast actually mentioning that by treating your hearing loss in midlife, it's your biggest um preventable, you know, risk factor for dementia, which definitely sparked a lot of attention to family doctors and you know, individuals that were.

SPEAKER_03 4:29

100%. I so agree. I think the upswing in attention from society in general on dementia, the various types of dementia. I think I've read in popular uh news articles, et cetera, that dementia for our current generations is very much like cancer was in previous generations. It struck fear in their heart, as dementia does for, you know, as we age and as our parents age, dementia gets a lot more attention. Uh, I think possibly because there might be higher rates of it now, you know, better tests to identify. And so when you start to do more study into dementia, I think that that's when you first start to see the surfacing of the connection to hearing loss. Another name that you heard a lot uh even before Lancet was Frank Lynn and his group, I think he works out of Baltimore, has done a lot, focused a lot on the connection between hearing loss and rates of dementia. So I I think that just got the ball started. It kind of got it rolling as to like, well, if there's that interaction, what other types of interaction? Because we know dementia is very multifaceted faceted. Uh, it's very sophisticated. When you're trying to talk to about dementia, there's not just like the one thing that you're going to be talking about. So it stands to reason that with hearing loss isn't just about a hearing loss. It's about what else it's impacting.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Right. And if we go back to just the very simple terms of treating hearing loss, right? Our ears are essential for collecting sound. In very simple terms, they convert it into an electrical signal, present it to the brain for interpretation, right? Like the brain. Great, short and sweet.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Yep. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

So if the brain's not getting the correct signaling, it cannot interpret it. Or if it's not getting all the sounds, it's forgetting how to repret. So those links, you know, have always been there. I think it's just putting it all together now.

SPEAKER_03 6:29

You are so right. Because I can remember my days back in clinic when you're helping somebody remediate their hearing loss. Oftentimes, as I'm sure you've discussed on many of your programs, you know, people aren't beating down your door the second day after they notice they have a hearing loss. It takes years, right? So when you're starting a person out on that journey and they're very used to a very different sound reality, I remember often saying, I'm sure you relate, where people would be like, it just, it's so loud and oh, I can't get used to this. And you'd be like, it's going to take time. You haven't used these parts of your brain, right? Yeah. So you have to get them, get them used to the sound again. So if those parts of your brain haven't been used well, it's not like they're only used for hearing. There are other functions that are being impacted in your brain. So it's all part and parcel of that idea. If you're not using something, you're losing it.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah. And then going back to that, we call it that auditory rehabilitation part. Like I actually like to, um I also like to watch a few YouTube videos. And I was watching one recently actually on planking and how, you know, if you're just getting into planking, you, you know, don't aim for that 10-minute plank because you're gonna imagine, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Right. Aim for like 10 or 20 seconds and then generally increase it. And I think it's the same principle when you're doing an auditory rehabilitation with somebody who's has has had a long-term hearing loss, and now you're just starting to treat it. We can't set a target, we can't do that optimization on day one because it's like trying to hold that 10-minute plank, right? It's not gonna work for them.

SPEAKER_03 8:13

There's gonna be a lot of frustration, there's gonna be a lot of people falling off that rehabilitation journey because they just think, well, this is nonsense. This is too much. This is too much. Absolutely get. And then it's such a shame when people can't continue on that auditory rehabilitation because as we're saying, it's so much more than just being able to hear your loved ones better or be aware of somebody ringing the doorbell, whatever the auditory part of the scene is that they're missing. There is so much more to it that we now understand from the dementia to falling to either even your mental and emotional health. All of that is part and parcel. Like hearing is one part of what I like to think of as a spider web. I know not everybody loves that particular visual. It can be a little arachnophobic for some. But when you have a hearing loss, I always think of it as like one little thread of that whole web is quivered, and other parts are also responding. So that's why it's a real shame that more people aren't either able to aren't able to either start or even continue with better auditory health.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Yeah. And I think that goes back to being a um hearing care professional or a clinician, right? That's part of your job. It's not just optimizing the product, it's that person-centered care. It's explaining to them, it's setting expectations, it's helping them move through their better hearing journey because everybody moves at their own pace and everybody has different sound tolerances. So it's not a you know, one size fits all kind of boot.

SPEAKER_03 9:50

I 100% concur. I also think that there are different mindsets within this within the profession about whether or not we should be talking with patients about the broader picture of hearing health. Right. So not only, you know, talking about patient-centered health and patient-centered hearing care health, but I think that we've had a lot of back and forth in the profession about, you know, sh is it scary to talk to a patient, or does a patient can perceive it as scary if you're now also mentioning not only are you missing sounds, but this is possibly impacting other parts of your health. I don't know how you have felt about that, Belinda, or what you have also experienced with your peers.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

You know, it is one because everybody wants to put you in a box and say that if you step outside that box, then it's beyond your scope, you know. And so it is that I don't know what the word for is, but I think for myself and within my peers, we talk about in general terms, like this is what we know, you know. So we know that by treating your hearing loss, we know that you're offering um some support for your cognitive function, right? We know from research that a person who's treating their hearing loss, especially an older senior, I think it I may have it wrong, but I think that they are three times less likely to have a fall than someone who's not treating their, you know, their hearing loss. And of course, those falls, you know, can lead to hospital hospitalizations. Never mind what we know about from the dementia study, isolation, you know, depression, and um, dementia links, right? So I think um hearing care professionals are allowed to talk about it in general, you know, terms. This is what we know, this is what the research says, and we're not um you know, we're not going outside of our scope with that, but we're not going to be treating anxiety or depression. We'd be referring back to, you know, the family doctor for collaboration with the appropriate medical professional professionals.

SPEAKER_03 11:54

Yeah, I there's a couple things there that really resonate in in the fact that people are very cautious, right, about that that idea of their what their scope of practice is. And I think because some of this is emerging, or like you say, even within the last 15 years, which might feel like a long time, but time can feels like it can move very quickly sometimes. You can just feel like, well, just yesterday this wasn't a thing I had to deal with, and today it is. So I think that abundance of caution can definitely serve us well. I do think that we now have the weight of evidence over time, very good evidence-based studies out there done from outside our own field that suggests that there are very positive aspects to treating your hearing loss that go beyond, again, just being able to hear better. And honestly, outside of us in the hearing profession, who knows that?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yeah. And who's talking about it?

SPEAKER_03 12:54

Exactly. That's where my real passion comes from, is like if if we're cautious and thinking like, well, I don't want to be scaremongering somebody, then who is telling these people this message? I don't think anybody is. I think it is, it is our prerogative. It it's it's basically our responsibility to tell patients.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

But I think in truth, actually, we have to take a step back and even just look at the industry as a whole. Because there, to me, there's a difference between that free hearing test and that complete hearing evaluation. And so a lot of people think by pushing a button when you hear the beep, you've done a hearing test. But really, that's told you nothing about how the auditory's your own auditory, your own auditory system is working, how you interpreting sounds, how you understanding in noisy environments, right? So I think people have to take that step back and start learning from the beginning that this, you know, just doing pushing the button when you hear the beep, sure, can tell you if you've maybe got a noise-induced hearing loss, you know, or that you need to go and have that full test, but it's not really giving you much information and move forward, you know. 100%.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

It's so one-dimensional, right? It's just, it's literally telling you a threshold, but that doesn't tell you what the impact is. Gosh knows, you and I have both done testing on people who to talk with them would say that they are struggling significantly. And you do a hearing test, and maybe there's a mild hearing loss, and occasionally there's no hearing loss. The thresholds look pretty good. And yet, perceptually to that person, they feel like, my gosh, every day is a struggle. I'm exhausted every day. I'm withdrawing from my everyday things. Uh so absolutely, it is very one-dimensional. And we've done, I think, ourselves a disservice by falling down this free hearing test kind of trap. Um, it doesn't put a lot of value beyond a piece of paper.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Exactly. Yeah. And then going back to um that broader scope, right? And the passion and the other things, I actually, my husband has tinnitus and um he does wear hearing aids and, you know, the I think they're well set, you know, he's hearing a lot of people. Of course, I'm sure they are. I'm not sure. I feel confident about that too, Belinda. Um, but he woke up on Saturday and he was in a very bad mood because his one ear was just ringing so loud, he couldn't um he could not focus aside of it. Now he's had tinnitus for several years, so he he he knows how to deal with it. You know, we've spoken about the box breathing and, you know, um retraining the limbic system and thinking of other things and all of that. But on Saturday, it was so loud he was really angry about it. And he was like, is this it? Like, what happened? And I went through all the different things. Like, did you get a good night's sleep? Are you anxious, stressed? Did you I know you didn't drink alcohol, but you know, all of these different things. And there was nothing, you know, ticked in any of the boxes, and yet his tinnitus was just so loud that day.

SPEAKER_03 16:02

So fear-inducing, right? Pastor, you are thinking, like, is this it? Is this now my new level of life? Tinnitus. This is what I have to experience.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Exactly. You know, so we did make some minor tweaks to the hearing aids, and we upped those tinnitus maskers for him. And um, luckily by Sunday afternoon, he things were calming down again. So that's a positive result.

SPEAKER_03 16:25

That's a good news story for him, but certainly there are people that would relate to that and they don't get the good news at the end of it.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

They don't get the sometimes it is loud, and then we have to once again collaborate and see how we can help, you know, that person. You know, and there's also those invisible um hearing losses. Well, hearing loss is an invisible disability, but even more than that, when a person has um auditory processing disorder. You know, and I find um here in Alberta, we don't even test children for that. I'm not sure if it's the same.

SPEAKER_03 16:56

I think that's pretty common. Like unless you go seeking it as a parent, I think it's very difficult to, you know, it's it's not one of the things that they just do in a school setting.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Yeah. Yeah. Which once again is quite sad because that child is falling behind in school. And um a simple, you know, Roger device or FM device would help them hear that teachers so much better. And the education would just be so, you know, they wouldn't be so disruptive, you know, in class.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

It's an absolute gap. Uh even for adults, right? Even there are adults that have gone through the school system but still find themselves struggling. So I think there's always a place for that, but it's such a very narrow scope of practice for many people. They concentrate on like what the 90% that's going to be coming through their door. So it can take time. This is where, and I'm not saying that a hearing health professional needs to be versed in all the things. They need to be the person that does the tinnitus assessments, that they need to be the person that does auditory assessments, all the things. But I think knowing the resources within your community as to where you can refer that person out to, asking the questions, having the conversations. Oh, this is a concern for you, doing the tests, um, even screening tests, right? You would never make a diagnosis off of a screening test, but it certainly tells you this is a person that should go on for some further evaluation. Where can I send them? And having your network set up, I think that that's just the appropriate professional thing to do. It's what you would expect other medical practitioners to do.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Absolutely. Yeah, that collaboration within the industry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

And oftentimes, because you know, not a lot of people know that hearing health care professionals are out there or even what we do, the onus needs to be on us, right? We need to go out there and make those relationships with the even the other hearing health care professionals in Winnipeg here. I don't know where you are, Belinda, in Alberta, but it feels like every second day there's a new hearing health care clinic being set up. And because the market gets a little crowded, they're getting more specialized. So we have one here, and this is new for Winnipeg, that's specializing more on balance and the auditory systems. So just even knowing that as a hearing health care professional, knowing that we could refer to that person, that's huge.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

That is. That's amazing. Yeah. I really like that. I'm gonna go back to a little bit of um the technology and a hearing aid now.

unknown 19:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

And I definitely think, I mean, we know that they obviously help amplify sounds and that they have, we spoke about tinnitus maskers. But I think they're also becoming more um multi-purpose devices. You know, they are definitely some of the manufacturers are branching off into doing balance and a few other things. Um, is that anything you can talk about today?

SPEAKER_03 19:54

Oh, a thousand percent, especially when you're dealing with hearing aids that have apps. I mean, let's face it, I I recently got a new dishwasher. It runs on an app. Everything has an app to it. Uh, and sometimes you might wonder about the value of the app, but in the world of hearing aids, apps can have a ton of value. So you can purchase hearing aids today. It's a very specific manufacturer. Starkey happens to be this manufacturer that spends a lot of time focusing and working with the hearing else, hearing aid, sorry, hearing loss and what else. They they they do a great job on the hearing aids, as all manufacturers do, and then they take a special focus on on the and what else portion. So there are other hearing aids that certainly have apps that can help you track your steps. Um, and certainly the Circuit Hearing Aids do that. But what's special about their apps is that they also help with the balance and the fall portion of it. Um, and that is huge because as I think you mentioned earlier in the conversation, falls are a huge issue for people as we age. It's it's it's certainly exasperated by the the balance, I'm sorry, by hearing loss. If you have a hearing loss, you are even more likely to fall. With every 10 dB of loss, your your likelihood of falling increases like if three times, I think, of that point. So it's not I just lost my frame of thought for my my train of thought for a second, but that's all right. So about oh, about the the balance and the hear and and falling and how prevalent it is in the population. Um, and so they actually have both fall detection. So if you're using their hearing aids and you have the feature turned on on their app, it will notify your loved ones up to three contacts. If you have fallen, it sends a message to their phone. Um, the other part is that it can actually help train you on your balance, like all things in life. You don't have to like accept that your your balance declines. You can actually improve your balance. Um, this is a worldwide initiative started by the uh Centers for Disease Control back in 2012. Um, they started to recognize what a problem falling was for people who are aging. So they started to figure out, like, first of all, you know, how could they assess fall risk? And that's something that the app does for you. They can assess your fall risk. And then you can also just work on your balance abilities through the app. So it's not just uh tracking when you've already fallen, it's that idea of preventative, which you've mentioned earlier as well. Falling is, I think everybody knows somebody who's fallen, certainly within the people that you see in clinic, and even just personally, it's that prevalent that falling is so common. And yet, what I always say about falling is nobody plans on falling. Right? Everybody's like, oh, I don't need that thing. I don't need the feature, I don't need a fall alert because I'm not gonna fall. Well, neither are any of the people that just fell. They weren't planning on falling that day, right? Um, and it's a significant enough problem that it's actually the leading cause of injury-related hospitalizations in elderly. It's the leading cause of injury-related hospitalizations. And in the elderly, it's also the leading cause of death due to an injury, is fall specifically. When you're talking about elderly people having an injury, if it's a fall, they're they're more likely to die of that than anything else.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

And going back to who's talking about that, I mean, it does go a little bit beyond, you know, that hearing care professional, you know, scope, but they do have access to it within treating their hearing loss, you know, and that app. They can choose to utilize it or not, you know.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:01

And I again, I think it's incumbent upon us because the factor of layering in the hearing loss, people just as they age, even you remove hearing loss from the equation, they are still more likely to fall because of changes within the balance system, et cetera. So you can still work on your balance regardless of whether you have a hearing loss or not, it's still important. But when you layer in the hearing loss complication, that makes you even more likely to fall. And we have very good evidence from studies that have been done that if you remove the hearing loss factor, in other words, if you wear hearing aids, you go back to the baseline amount of falls, meaning that we don't re remove falling from that person's risk factors. It just means that they're more, no more likely to fall than their age-matched here, well hearing appear.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

Yeah. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Well, I think that um this is a very exciting time to actually be a hearing care professional. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

Unbelievable. It can be an overwhelming time too, right? With lots of choices and opportunity. It can feel overwhelming, I think.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

I think it can feel very overwhelming, but I think it's also I think it's a really exciting time for younger hearing care professionals coming into the market. Um, you know, in actual fact, I just bought, well, my husband found at the antique store. I live in Okotokes, Alberta. And my husband found at the antique store a um ear trumpet.

SPEAKER_03 25:32

An ear trumpet, amazing.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

It's huge. I didn't realize how big it was. You know, you hold this thing up to your ear. It's it's very, very big.

SPEAKER_03 25:39

Well, it was a matter of acoustics, right? The bigger it was, the more sound you could connect collect. So you could get really little ones, but they didn't hardly collect any sound. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

And according to the person who sold it to him, you know, at the antique store, she said the providence goes back to around, you know, the 18 1800s sometime. And um obviously, you know, hearing aids have changed a lot since that big ear horn. But I'm really excited to think, you know, what's what's coming next, right? With with AI, with these little computer chips, you know, like the balance, like what's coming next for us?

SPEAKER_03 26:14

Yeah. Yeah. AI, uh, and there's different types of AI, like when you talk, say the words AI, you throw that out there. People can be like, oh yeah, all AI is the same. It's it's not. There's different types of AI. So really the biggest difference will be when we get AI that you can put on the computer chips that are basically adapting at the time. Right now, the computer chips that we use in hearing aids are quite tiny compared to when you think of the kind of computer chip that's in your smartphone or in your laptop computer, right? So, although all hearing aids these days use various forms of AI, they're all trained. The AI algorithms are static once they are put into your into your hearing aids. They don't continue to learn, they don't continue to update. That will be the next great leap forward when we have a powerful enough computer chip to run an AI algorithm that continues to learn about you in the moment. And it's realizing, like, oh, you in this moment, like I can see this environment. This is very difficult for you. And the specialized testing that we can do to figure out, oh, this person actually has more difficulty in a background of noise than this person does. Because as you were talking before, I mean, there's some very interesting testing that you can do to see those differences in your patients, far beyond just that one-dimensional audiogram. And so to have adaptive hearing aids that are truly adapting in that moment for that specific individual, um, that's going to be such a game changer to be able to individualize for your husband waking up on Saturday morning with that tinnitus, for the hearing aid to recognize that, for him to be able to feed that information in and for the hearing aid to make live real-time adjustments based on how he's feeling on that specific day and how he's managing. I mean, imagine what that would do for your patients, Belinda.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Oh, I'm just thinking out loud here. Like we do something called um our speechy noise testing or what we would refer to as a quicksand test. Yeah. And we take our signal-to-noise ratios, and obviously it helps us um explain to a client why a certain technology level would be beneficial to them, you know, for their lifestyle needs. Yeah. But yeah, going back to that future, can you imagine typing in this person has a six decibel signal-to-noise ratio loss in this type of background noise and you know, adjust accordingly, you know? Yeah. That would be pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

Yeah. Because right now, most of the changes that are made are tied to an algorithm. There's there certainly is adapt adoption. Uh adaptation is the right word. So I wouldn't want people to walk away saying that that's hearing aids aren't doing that right now, because they are, but there's only a limited amount that they can do. And, you know, theoretically, two people could end up with the exact same setting.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:17

But going forward to have them tied truly to an individual, it would be it would be massive.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Yeah, it's gonna be. You know what? I think everybody should be wearing hearing aids soon. I mean, there's this thing was what do they call it? The listening demand in noise, even with normal hearing, right?

SPEAKER_03 29:34

Listening effort is huge.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Yeah, and how that's affecting your your mood, your um, your energy levels. Everything, right? So even a normal hearing person moving in the future could benefit for this um, you know, speech and noise, right? So it's 100%.

SPEAKER_03 29:52

Well, you start to see this convergence of consumer level, you know, in ear, ear, like the wireless, um, wireless headphones, right? My kids wander around. If they're not having their headphones on, they often have like their in-ear plugs in listening to their music. Well, how is that a lot different from hearing aids that are in the ear?

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

So if you could embed, uh, and some people would even say, you know, kind of what that's what Apple earphones are doing for you right now, but not to a great degree. I think that manufacturers have often dreamed of, you know, hearing aid manufacturers specifically. Like, what if we made a hearing aids that were so great that people with normal hearing would want them? I think that that is like their their golden chalice that they're reaching for.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Yeah. And then the effects of that on somebody that has that auditory processing, right? As an adult, right? Or that type of thing, that could be really um improving um quality of life for so many people out there.

SPEAKER_03 30:58

And not only improving quality of life, I think it also reduces the stigma factor.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

Yeah. That's true. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 31:04

Yeah, which is a huge one still for many people.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Yeah. You know, Victoria, I think you and I could sit and chat for ages about it because it is such an exciting time. And like I said, you you inspire me. Your passion is just amazing. So thank you for everything.

SPEAKER_03 31:17

Oh, you're very kind. And I am inspired by the fact that you can put together a podcast on the regular. I'm a podcast lover. I know it takes a lot of energy and uh organization. So my hats are off to you, Linda.

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Well, thank you so much. Is there anything else you wanted to mention on the show before we end off today?

SPEAKER_03 31:35

Uh just that if you are in the hearing care industry and this is something that you hadn't really thought of before, I really encourage you to get some peers together to figure out like how do you want to address this? I think you could be more to your patients than just the person that allows them to hear their tea kettle better. You could be so much more.

SPEAKER_01 31:54

So much more. Go back to that person-centered care and collaboration within your community.

SPEAKER_03 32:00

Thousand percent. So thank you for spreading that message and helping me spread that message, Belinda. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

You're more than welcome. This was so much fun. You know, we may have to book a follow-up in in a few months as well.

SPEAKER_03 32:09

See where we You'll know where to find me here in Winnipeg.

SPEAKER_01 32:12

Sounds good. Thanks again, Victoria.

SPEAKER_03 32:15

Bye bye.