Hearing Health, Brain Health

Stop treating hearing aids like a scare tactic and start seeing them as tools that support your brain. We unpack how evidence-based counseling replaces fear with clarity, why correlations matter in the hearing–cognition conversation, and how a simple education journey can turn uncertainty into confident action.

We share a practical framework that works across clinics: pre-visit education through short videos, talks, and mailers to set expectations; a welcoming, living-room-style environment and best-practice testing to make results meaningful; and a post-visit drip of plain-English resources and event invites that keep learning going. Along the way, we talk through the real moments patients face—noisy restaurants, overlapping voices, mental fatigue—and explain how restoring speech cues reduces listening effort and frees up attention, memory, and executive function.

You’ll hear why we center research without overpromising, how we use visuals and patient stories to make cognition tangible, and where cognitive screeners like MOCA may belong in a hearing care workflow. The goal isn’t to diagnose dementia; it’s to inform referrals, track function, and align care with what the brain actually needs. If you’re ready to replace anxiety with trust and turn hearing care into brain care, this conversation offers steps you can use today.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a colleague or loved one who’s on the fence about hearing help, and leave a quick review so others can find it. Your feedback guides future episodes and helps more people hear—and think—their best.

Connect with the Hearing Matters Podcast Team

Email: hearingmatterspodcast@gmail.com

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Record Straight
• 0:26 Correlation, Research, And Real-World Impact
• 1:17 Visuals That Explain Cognitive Links
• 1:55 Pre, During, And Post Education
• 3:51 Brain-First Hearing Care
• 5:27 Reducing Anxiety With Trust
• 6:07 Research Over Pseudoscience
• 6:07 Cognitive Screening Questions

Transcript

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS : 0:00

This is the Friday Audiogram. Let's go. So I love the strategy of you educating your patients. And what's so important about this is too often, and I think in the earlier years within our industry, some clinics may have been poking at the fear factor of if you don't wear hearing aids, you're going to get dementia. You're not saying that, correct?

Madison Levine, BC-HIS: 0:24

No, of course, of course. I think you have to quote the research for what it is. It's drawing strong correlations between things. And this is how we start to draw conclusions. You need multiple studies that are showing you different angles of the same problem. But you and I, Blaze, you're right. Us growing up in this profession and then getting to actually work with patients, you know, you see it on the ground. You see what's happening with people's cognition before and after they get hearing aids. And so we sit with such curiosity to see what is the research going to show. And when it does say, it looks like this is actually having a huge impact, we go, that's what I thought. And that's what you hope that research would be doing is to poke at things that are suspicions and to see can we prove them?

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS : 1:17

When when we talk about educational materials for patients, Madison, because I remember there was the image of the tree, and the tree sort of had a, I think it had a face on it, and the leaves were sort of withering away. So it was like a full tree, like a half tree, and then the tree with zero leaves. And that was that visual representation of untreated hearing loss being linked to cognitive decline. So at Levine Hearing, what materials are you sending them home with that is educating them on that connection between hearing health and cognitive function?

Madison Levine, BC-HIS: 1:55

Yeah. This is maybe helpful for practice owners that they're probably doing a lot of a lot of this already, but maybe one of these things will stand out as a little additional way to educate. But I look at pre, during, and post-educ for the patient journey. So a lot of that content that I'm putting out where I'm not asking for anything in return, that's their pre-education. So whether I do a little bit of everything, if I'm honest. So whether it's radio, television, mailers, talks, they're oftentimes they're hearing that message before they get to the office. Once they have arrived, I have done a lot of video over the years. And I've got big screen TV in my waiting room. It feels like a living room. It's got a nice sofa and you know, real lamps and all that. And while they're waiting, hopefully for a very short amount of time, they are seeing facts, studies come across the screen intermixed with videos. And some are patient stories and some are me educating. Then once they get back, you know, the way that we review the results. I mean, obviously, I don't have to say we're using best practices, we're going in depth with all types of speech testing and speech and noise testing. But we're educating in the appointment with our scripting on possible health impacts and we're referencing studies. If they leave and they haven't made a decision, then we've got a whole follow-up drip of information that's going out by mail and by email to them. Besides the fact that they will end up getting invitations to future events to learn more. So I feel like once they're in the family, they're gonna have to tell me they don't want to be in the family anymore because I'm gonna keep educating them all along the way.

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS : 3:51

And and Madison, this has been your North Star again from following your journey for years. You're a second generation hearing healthcare professional, and how amazing it is, you know, for us and the profession, but both of us, especially being second-generation hearing healthcare professionals, the evolution of technology, what the conversation was 20 years ago to what the conversation is now. You know, we don't necessarily hear with our ears, we hear with our brain. And if our brain is not getting the information that it needs, well, then we're gonna feel off. I remember in graduate school, I went for my master's in speech language pathology. So cognition, uh, I love this stuff for lack of a better term, because our brain really controls everything we do. And I remember one of my professors saying, When you eat, you're not necessarily feeding your body, you're feeding your brain. And that just stuck with me because I'm like, huh, I never really thought of it that way. With our patients, when they are out with family members in a complex listening situation, restaurant, meeting, that information's coming to their brain. And now they need to know, okay, how do I categorize this? How do I separate those sounds? I didn't quite get that. So I love that Levine Hearing is taking that educational approach. So that pre-during and post, very similar to what we did here, Madison, with the Hearing Matters podcast. Before patients, you know, were coming into the door, we always sent them our episode of what to expect at your initial evaluation. Because yes, untreated hearing loss and cognition, there's a link, but you're also dealing with a human here. Do they have some anxiety about going to the doctor? Um, do they have that white coat syndrome? So I love that when patients call you, trust has been built. They know your voice. Uh, you know, they can put a uh face to a name. I think it's absolutely incredible that educational aspect. And to your point, leading with the research, it's not pseudoscience. It's absolutely not pseudoscience. So, right now with the clinic education, this is a question I've really been wanting to ask you, and I'm curious to know do you incorporate any cognitive screeners in clinic to assess the cognitive health of your patients with hearing loss? So, for those tuned in, the MOCA is one, which is the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. This measures attention, language, abstraction, delayed recall, and executive functioning.