Speaker 1: You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks
Speaker 1: EDB and I.
Speaker 2: Heard him seeing nothing's ever promised tomorrow the day when
Speaker 2: a shot like timmisa hard away. So this is in
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Speaker 2: me to go get a job today, can I at
Speaker 2: least get a raised on a menu the wage? And
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Speaker 2: just pray like the Minister c I Bob throwing some
Speaker 2: hot cars and things we see on the screen.
Speaker 3: And welcome back to the Weekend Collective. I'm Tim Beverage
Speaker 3: and it's now time we want your cause. By the way,
Speaker 3: I eight one hundred and eighty ten eighty text nine
Speaker 3: and it's time for the Health Hub and joining us,
Speaker 3: we're going to talk about hearing. And she is Leslie Smith,
Speaker 3: ahead of audiology at Tritton Hearing and Leslie, good afternoon,
Speaker 3: Good afternoon. Just get you to just fold your microphone
Speaker 3: down a bit and just come a bit close to
Speaker 3: it as a chatting that's great. How are you?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Good?
Speaker 5: Thanks? How are you?
Speaker 3: Oh? Pretty good? Now hearing wise, I have a chat
Speaker 3: of it, but now we want your calls on hearing
Speaker 3: any of the questions you've got about whether you're concerned
Speaker 3: about hearing loss, or whether you are wondering whether you
Speaker 3: need a hearing aid or someone else, or you want
Speaker 3: information about what's the best way to prevent hearing loss.
Speaker 3: But also if you are thinking you're going to need
Speaker 3: a hearing aid, what's sort of what you would expect
Speaker 3: at a typical a point where were basically everything about
Speaker 3: hearing and hearing loss. And I think I actually think
Speaker 3: the first way to start, I'm quite hot. I'm hot
Speaker 3: at the moment on this topic. Fairly only because sometimes
Speaker 3: when I come into the studio Leslie and I plug
Speaker 3: in my headphones and they I can tell a person
Speaker 3: who's just used them. I actually do say, gosh, I
Speaker 3: think someone's got some hearing loss because they're quite loud.
Speaker 3: But it's quite an insidious thing, isn't it that you
Speaker 3: don't realize the changes that are going on in your
Speaker 3: hearing because your brain is constantly adapting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, right, you're right. It's a bit of a
Speaker 5: chicky thing because noise damage is not just how loud
Speaker 5: it is, it's how long you're exposed. And so it
Speaker 5: could be that the volumes started off at a comfortable
Speaker 5: level for those people, but then over the hours they've
Speaker 5: slowly crept up the volume just to try to hear
Speaker 5: over the background noise. Perhaps so, and it sneaks up
Speaker 5: on you because you know they might not have noticed
Speaker 5: it in a quiet place, but when they go to
Speaker 5: background noise or restaurants or cafes that you know, you
Speaker 5: might find you if it's someone in your family, you
Speaker 5: might find that they're just watching a little bit more,
Speaker 5: or they're laughing a little bit slower to the jokes, or.
Speaker 3: Being a wallflower, because the brain does have quite an
Speaker 3: amazing ability to compensate. I guess you start looking for
Speaker 3: lip movement just to help confirm what you think you're
Speaker 3: hearing exactly.
Speaker 5: You start watching a little bit more, and you have
Speaker 5: your eyes and I guess you're the front part of
Speaker 5: your brain trying to figure out patterns and to fill
Speaker 5: in the gaps. So you end up working a bit harder.
Speaker 5: So at the end of the day you've deciphered the
Speaker 5: message the whole day long, so you might just be
Speaker 5: a little bit more tired.
Speaker 3: One of the biggest dangers to or I don't know,
Speaker 3: want to use dramatic language because then the wood that
Speaker 3: came into my mouth was into my brain. Was hearing threats.
Speaker 3: What are the biggest threats to people's hearing?
Speaker 5: The first signs?
Speaker 3: I know, what are the causes? You know that the
Speaker 3: major causes that the most troublesome causes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'd say noise damage would be one. Another one
Speaker 5: is any constriction to your blood flow. Actually, so diabetes,
Speaker 5: heart disease. Anything that restricts your circulation can affect your ears.
Speaker 5: So we all tend to lose our hearing a little
Speaker 5: bit over age as well, So just the hair cells
Speaker 5: in your ears, not the hair like on your head,
Speaker 5: but little hair cells. When the sound comes in, they
Speaker 5: bend over and that's what sends the signal to the brain.
Speaker 5: So they just tend to get a little bit aged,
Speaker 5: and that works so well.
Speaker 3: Can you do anything to sort of give them a
Speaker 3: bit of a shampoo condition? I mean I always ask
Speaker 3: dumb questions because sometimes people will say, funnily enough, that's
Speaker 3: not a dumb question because of X, Y and Z
Speaker 3: and science.
Speaker 5: But anything that keeps your cardiovascular health as good as
Speaker 5: it can be is the best thing you can do
Speaker 5: to prevent any aging.
Speaker 3: Where are those how far into your ear are those.
Speaker 5: Little behind the ear drum and behind the three little
Speaker 5: bones of hearing. It's the inner ear, which is shaped
Speaker 5: like a snail and has billions of little wee hair
Speaker 5: cells standing up. And as the sound wave goes through,
Speaker 5: so think of it like a wave on the ocean,
Speaker 5: it bends over those little hairs and off it sends
Speaker 5: the signal to the brain.
Speaker 3: So intuitively, I would imagine that there would be something
Speaker 3: because if their physical structure and organic physical structure. But
Speaker 3: I'm making this up as a go along. Is there
Speaker 3: any work Is there any work going on with regards
Speaker 3: to restoring people whose heirs have just gone that's the
Speaker 3: online flat for the rest of the day.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Actually they've developed a drug that you can take
Speaker 5: to regrow those hair cells. The problem is they haven't
Speaker 5: figured out how to stop that growth, so there were
Speaker 5: halfway there. And then there's also so a genetic kind
Speaker 5: of hearing loss, which is similar to what I have,
Speaker 5: and people are born without a certain protein and and
Speaker 5: so there's there's something in the actual DNA that's that's missing.
Speaker 5: And with the recent COVID epidemic and the vaccines using
Speaker 5: a virus, you know, to transmit it. They've actually put
Speaker 5: this gene therapy into the virus and injected into the
Speaker 5: ear and they've restored when baby's hearing in the UK
Speaker 5: so far, in particular hearing loss. Yeah, she had her
Speaker 5: sister has double coclear implants, and she's had this gene
Speaker 5: therapy using this virus as a vehicle to get it
Speaker 5: into the ear, and her hearing is miraculously normal. It's
Speaker 5: it's absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, is that was she profoundly deaf at
Speaker 3: the time?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, profoundly?
Speaker 3: What can you tell her? A babies profoundly deaf because
Speaker 3: by whether they were react because you can't say, hey,
Speaker 3: can you hear this?
Speaker 5: I'm going to tell you something fascinating. Your eyes absorbed
Speaker 5: light and that's what lets you see your ears. Right,
Speaker 5: sound goes in, but you may not know that your
Speaker 5: ear produces their tiny little echo of sound back out
Speaker 5: of your ear. So they test babies by putting his
Speaker 5: little headphones on. Sounds go in and they measure that
Speaker 5: little tiny echo coming out to see if the hearing
Speaker 5: is normal. And they also can test with just some
Speaker 5: sticker electrodes that they put on the baby's head and
Speaker 5: play sounds and watch the brain waves. So yeah, we can.
Speaker 5: We can check to each frequency.
Speaker 3: And so what was the what was the physical Sorry?
Speaker 3: So with the baby who had genetic hearing loss, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you said she was profoundly deft?
Speaker 5: Did you say profoundly zero or just a touch like nothing?
Speaker 5: She was on the list for coclear implants. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: her older sister already has co clear implants. Yeah. They
Speaker 5: both had the same genetic mutations. So with this gene therapy,
Speaker 5: it gave them back what they were missing protein wise,
Speaker 5: and it fixed her hearing.
Speaker 3: Why what did they do it? Why did they try
Speaker 3: it on a baby rather than someone who was older.
Speaker 3: Is it because they think that the development she could develop.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know the details of that. I'm not sure.
Speaker 5: But her sister has the cocalarm plants. They're not going
Speaker 5: to do that with her. She's she's happy with the
Speaker 5: cochlearan plants and is carrying on doing well.
Speaker 3: So I guess she feels it ain't bright, don't fix it.
Speaker 3: Maybe that is amazing though, is that?
Speaker 5: Yeah? So I think we're going to see it in
Speaker 5: our lifetime for sure.
Speaker 3: Wow. Hey, by the way, just a quick question, is
Speaker 3: the word deaf, okay these days, because you know how
Speaker 3: people say, hey, what's wrong with you? Death or something
Speaker 3: it feels I mean to people, is it Is it
Speaker 3: a word that sort of you still use. It's like
Speaker 3: as such and such as definitely you say you are
Speaker 3: suffering from hearing loss, and death is more of a
Speaker 3: I think it's.
Speaker 5: Like everything description fit individual. But I grew up in
Speaker 5: a deaf family and sign language is our first language,
Speaker 5: and for us, deaf is the right term capital D deaf,
Speaker 5: so we identify with deaf culture. You have a whole
Speaker 5: different Yeah, but hearing loss, hard of hearing?
Speaker 3: Checking the terminology because you never have, you know, because
Speaker 3: times change and some words become It's like, okay, the
Speaker 3: word would be if someone is disabled. People used to
Speaker 3: throw around the word crippled, and that is not a
Speaker 3: word you use. And that's why I was just checking,
Speaker 3: because our terminology does change, and that's yeah, I was
Speaker 3: hoping that was a reasonable.
Speaker 5: I'd say it's probably more acceptable hearing loss or hearing
Speaker 5: impaired these days, but I think hard of hearing.
Speaker 3: Is still so you have hearing aids yourself, yes, And
Speaker 3: is that from just a young age or did you
Speaker 3: get progressive hearing loss a.
Speaker 5: Bit of both, so yes, from a young age and
Speaker 5: it is progressive, so it's getting worse every year. But
Speaker 5: my grandparents profoundly deaf. You sign language. My dad's quite
Speaker 5: hard of hearing. We all use sign language growing up
Speaker 5: because of my grandparents being so close. And my daughter
Speaker 5: has has a hearing loss as well, so it obviously
Speaker 5: something runs in our family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so is that what you become an ordeologist in
Speaker 3: steut of curious? I mean it does sound obvious as.
Speaker 5: Well, but yeah, well, the thing is, nobody knows anything
Speaker 5: about getting your hearing tested. You know, we see on
Speaker 5: TV people getting their eyes tested, and you have the
Speaker 5: eye chart in the in the doctor's office, but you know,
Speaker 5: if you've never had your hearing tested, don't really know
Speaker 5: what to expect. So when I was little, I was
Speaker 5: back and forth all the time. I had four sets
Speaker 5: of gromets as well, and you know I wanted to
Speaker 5: be on the other side pushing all the fancy buttons,
Speaker 5: not just the one button, you know. So yeah, that's
Speaker 5: how I's how I got into it.
Speaker 3: How many changes, what changes have you seen so far
Speaker 3: since you became an ordiologist? To head of audiology amazing.
Speaker 5: Actually, So the first hearing aids that that I used
Speaker 5: had had tiny little screwdriver adjustments and they were linear
Speaker 5: and nothing was digital, and you had a million different
Speaker 5: cables and plugs to plug the hearing aids physically. In
Speaker 5: was the next step when they were analog but digitally programmable,
Speaker 5: and now they're fully digital Bluetooth wireless. You just connect
Speaker 5: everything wirelessly, and they even some of them even have
Speaker 5: artificial intelligence inside to figure out background noise from speech
Speaker 5: and enhance the speech and turn down the noise. It's
Speaker 5: pretty neat.
Speaker 3: That is mind blowing. So it's not we're not just
Speaker 3: talking an EQ here. We're talking art official intelligence which
Speaker 3: is processing the sound and going hmm, that sounds like speech,
Speaker 3: will pop that up. How quickly can it do it?
Speaker 5: In real time? Real time? Oh? Absolutely? And there's no
Speaker 5: lag either with the Bluetooth connectivity. So I stream from
Speaker 5: the TV straight to my hearing aids. Really yeah, and
Speaker 5: I can hear it in real time without any any echo.
Speaker 5: And my partner can watch a one volume, I can
Speaker 5: watch at another volume, and you can even soon soon,
Speaker 5: soon we'll be able to select different languages to listen
Speaker 5: in in real time as well.
Speaker 3: So if you're hang on a minute, hold it so
Speaker 3: I could be talking to you and you can say,
Speaker 3: I could be talking in French and you would say,
Speaker 3: just translate that for me as we go close.
Speaker 5: But not yet, I'm thinking about TV streaming. TV streaming,
Speaker 5: so if it's been recorded in different languages, so Netflix,
Speaker 5: for example, you can choose different languages. You know, if
Speaker 5: your grandparents were from Korea and they wanted to watch,
Speaker 5: you know, in their language, and you wanted to watch
Speaker 5: in English.
Speaker 3: Let's say everybody in real I was a step ahead
Speaker 3: of it. Like in other words, you go on holiday
Speaker 3: to Frantce and someone says something to you in French
Speaker 3: and you would say and would translated.
Speaker 5: I don't think we're that far away though, because you
Speaker 5: can stream that through your phone, so we could do that.
Speaker 5: In theory, how big would your hearing aid need to
Speaker 5: be to carry that sort of level of energy and
Speaker 5: processing power? Not very big at all.
Speaker 3: You've brought in a collection of hearing aids. There are
Speaker 3: the ones that look like there's a tiny there's three
Speaker 3: that look like they fit over the back of your
Speaker 3: ear with a tiny insertion into your ear, and then
Speaker 3: there there's the big sort of old school clunky one. Yes,
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's still in use now, but
Speaker 3: it's molded saria. Yes, And then it gets a bit
Speaker 3: smaller but smaller until there's one that's probably the size of.
Speaker 5: My probably.
Speaker 3: Tip of my tip of my little finger, actually the
Speaker 3: tip of a smaller person than me, but that is
Speaker 3: it's way smaller than Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for the recessing to determine speech from noise. It's
Speaker 5: available in all of them. So the next level with
Speaker 5: Bluetooth streaming, that chip is a little bit larger, the
Speaker 5: receiver is a little bit larger, so that would be
Speaker 5: probably from the medium sized battery upwards. And a lot
Speaker 5: of them now are rechargeable, so there's that's also the
Speaker 5: little charger case that I brought in that looks like
Speaker 5: an air pod case kind of where the hearing aids
Speaker 5: pop down into it and they charge overnight.
Speaker 3: Are these so what's I'm guessing the most expensive one
Speaker 3: is that one at the end that's tiny the size
Speaker 3: of my pinky.
Speaker 5: That's a great question. Now the size is completely irrelevant.
Speaker 5: It's what kind of computer chip and features are inside? Yep, yeah, okay,
Speaker 5: so some people it depends on their type of hearing loss.
Speaker 5: Some shapes will be more appropriate than others, and some
Speaker 5: you need to have your own voice escape from your body,
Speaker 5: so you can't block off your ear because you might
Speaker 5: have excellent hearing for some sounds. So if you have
Speaker 5: a partial hearing loss, you want one that doesn't block
Speaker 5: off your ears.
Speaker 3: Oh, I see, so one of the ones that fits
Speaker 3: behind your ears with a much smaller and I don't.
Speaker 5: Know what, do you call it a little sneaker that
Speaker 5: goes in your ear?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the little end on that speaker should have
Speaker 5: lots of ventilation holes if your hearing is normal for
Speaker 5: any of those pitches. And the other useful thing with
Speaker 5: having the speaker in your ear is if your hearing
Speaker 5: gets worse, you don't need to purchase any new hearing aids.
Speaker 5: You just put a new speaker, a stronger speaker on
Speaker 5: and it can keep up with you. So that's that's
Speaker 5: the kind that I wear. So if my hearing continues
Speaker 5: to get worse every year, then I don't need to
Speaker 5: buy a new hearing aid. I just put a stronger
Speaker 5: speaker on and then just adjust the sound output to match.
Speaker 3: In terms of the cause of general hearing losses. It
Speaker 3: all to do with the hairs, those billions of.
Speaker 5: Hairs, not always, so that's a permanent hearing loss called
Speaker 5: a sensory neural loss that's in the cochlea or the nerve.
Speaker 5: But you can also have a conductive loss, which is
Speaker 5: the ear drum or the three little bones of hearing.
Speaker 5: So it's kind of like the equivalent of like an
Speaker 5: amplifier basically, so you know, when you're underwater and you
Speaker 5: can hear someone talking above the water, but it sounds
Speaker 5: very very far away, that mismatch, that volume change. What
Speaker 5: you'd need is an amplifier to hear somebody on the
Speaker 5: other side. And that's what that part of our ear does.
Speaker 3: It's funny because we're talking about hearing. I'm consciously adjusting
Speaker 3: my headphones to see how much I need to turn
Speaker 3: them down because I'm so tuned to it right now.
Speaker 3: Just one other question. We're going to take your cause
Speaker 3: by the way, eight hundred eighty ten eighty. There's lots
Speaker 3: You may have lots of questions anything about hearing loss.
Speaker 3: If you are concerned, you want to get some advice.
Speaker 3: What's the procedure, what are you what are the range
Speaker 3: of costs and anything that's involved with addressing your hearing concerns.
Speaker 3: We want to hear from you on eight hundred eighty
Speaker 3: ten eighty. You can text on nine two nine two.
Speaker 3: Just one thing. I've always been curious about that if
Speaker 3: it is a loud noise that causes those hairs to
Speaker 3: lie flat, I guess or give up, how do you
Speaker 3: prevent the cure not being the cause further cause, because
Speaker 3: obviously a hearing aid turns up the sound, and so
Speaker 3: how do you how do you stop that sort of
Speaker 3: the cure being a cause of further ifness and just
Speaker 3: chasing your tail?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah, And what you're saying is like the glasses analogy, right,
Speaker 5: Like if you're wearing glasses, your eyes get lazy, sort
Speaker 5: of thing. With hearing aids, it doesn't really work like that.
Speaker 5: So what tends to happen is the soft sounds. You
Speaker 5: won't be able to hear them anymore. If it's noise damage,
Speaker 5: you won't be able to hear the beginnings and ends
Speaker 5: of the words just at a few pictures. So the
Speaker 5: hearing aids will turn up the soft sounds enough that
Speaker 5: you can hear them, but they still sound soft to you.
Speaker 5: Medium sounds are turned up just a little bit and
Speaker 5: then loud sounds are not touched at all or turned down. Actually,
Speaker 5: so it's not like it's just overall volume. Everything is up.
Speaker 5: It has has alternating volume depending on what the input.
Speaker 3: Chris, it's fascinating. Look what your calls one eighty ten eighty.
Speaker 3: My guest is Leslie Smith. She is Triton Hearings Head
Speaker 3: of Audiology, so I think she's pretty well qualified to
Speaker 3: answer answer your questions. If you've got me, we'd love
Speaker 3: to hear from you. We've got lots we can talk about,
Speaker 3: which will carry on with in just a moment this
Speaker 3: news talk sai'd b. This is our health AaB. It's
Speaker 3: twenty two and a half past four. Yes, and did
Speaker 3: you know that one in six New Zealanders experience hearing
Speaker 3: loss and choosing the right hearing solution for your individual
Speaker 3: needs is important. Your local Triton Hearing team will work
Speaker 3: with you to find the best hearing solution for your
Speaker 3: listening needs, lifestyle and budget. So if you or someone
Speaker 3: close to you is considering hearing aids, the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four Consumers Guide to Hearing Aids is out now and
Speaker 3: available exclusively from Triton Hearing. It's the only truly independent
Speaker 3: guide in New Zealand, so you know you're getting the
Speaker 3: best advice. Find out about the latest hearing aids from
Speaker 3: top brands. There's information on everything from features and styles
Speaker 3: to a price guide to help you choose the right
Speaker 3: hearing devices for your lifestyle and budget. To order your
Speaker 3: free twenty twenty four Consumers Guide to Hearing Aids, simply
Speaker 3: visit Tritonhearing dot co dot nz or you can call
Speaker 3: on eight hundred forty five forty five forty two. That's
Speaker 3: eight hundred forty five forty five forty two.
Speaker 1: Property, parenting, politics plus health, money and the week's big issues.
Speaker 1: It's all on the weekend Collector with Tim Beveridge used
Speaker 1: Talk Sat B and we would.
Speaker 3: Sign different dance and we would smoking runned things, making
Speaker 3: a letter every song excepting Whiskey not taking but Marvel
Speaker 3: singing Sweet Home Alabama, Our summer life. Yes, News Talk
Speaker 3: set B eight hundred eighty ten eighty. This is the
Speaker 3: week in collect for the health and my guest is
Speaker 3: from Triton Hearing. It's Leslie Smith, Triton's Hearing. Triton Hearing's
Speaker 3: head of audiology, and actually Leslie has brought in a
Speaker 3: bunch of hearing aids for me to ever look at,
Speaker 3: seven of them, including a sort of I don't know
Speaker 3: how to describe it actually, but it's a little sort
Speaker 3: of large bullet shaped device which Leslie acts as what
Speaker 3: a remote.
Speaker 5: Control, So the remote control. Yes, So for the tiny
Speaker 5: hearing aids that go deep down in the canal that
Speaker 5: are invisible, they're called iices invisible in the canal or
Speaker 5: completely in the canal see ices. There's not enough room
Speaker 5: for a Bluetooth chip because normally we would use your
Speaker 5: phone smartphone app to be a full remote. But yeah,
Speaker 5: it's like a little key chain that you can unscrew
Speaker 5: the end of and it's got a little magnet that
Speaker 5: you can hold close to your ear and it lets
Speaker 5: you adjust through a couple of different volume stages or
Speaker 5: different programs for different situations.
Speaker 3: You're telling me something interesting in the break about the
Speaker 3: ability just so it's no longer just hearing fitscen rear
Speaker 3: where you turn it up and down all and that's it.
Speaker 3: You can for instance, you're saying if you go to
Speaker 3: a quiz nite or something and the hearing and if
Speaker 3: it's a bit loud and you're just you're hearing. Next
Speaker 3: time you go to that quiz nit, because everything's linked
Speaker 3: up with your phone's right, it'll say, oh, by the
Speaker 3: way where it knows, oh we're quiz night, let's turn
Speaker 3: down the volume.
Speaker 5: That's right. So it's part of the As I said,
Speaker 5: the artificial intelligence has been around quite a while, but
Speaker 5: there's a machine learning subset of it. So as you
Speaker 5: go along every day, if you turn your volume up
Speaker 5: on your app or in your remote control consistently, then
Speaker 5: it will learn. So if you do that over three months,
Speaker 5: then it will just start doing it for you so
Speaker 5: you don't have to fiddle around with it anymore.
Speaker 3: Amazing. Gosh, I love science. Doesn't science exciting? You know
Speaker 3: what we can do? And that one you, by the way,
Speaker 3: the thing about the gene therapy for the baby you
Speaker 3: had hearing loss, that that is amazing. I think it's
Speaker 3: very exciting.
Speaker 6: New.
Speaker 3: Yes, look, I've got a few texts and we've got
Speaker 3: well we're taking your calls on O eight one hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty ten eighty What about this? One says guys
Speaker 3: at work out wearing ear pods instead of ear muffs,
Speaker 3: to listen to music. As an employer, where do I
Speaker 3: stand on that. I'm of the opinion they are not
Speaker 3: going to protect them cheers.
Speaker 5: That is such a good question. In fact, it came
Speaker 5: up just yesterday and I've been doing some research on it.
Speaker 5: But the it's I haven't found anything specific to New
Speaker 5: Zealand yet. But from an employer's point of view, you
Speaker 5: need to use hearing defenders that are certified and at
Speaker 5: the right grading, And at the moment, the air pods
Speaker 5: haven't been graded to my knowledge, so I would still
Speaker 5: recommend that they use proper hearing defenders. But it is
Speaker 5: an area that I'm going to do quite a bit of.
Speaker 3: Research on, like hearing like literally hearing muffs that just
Speaker 3: they block the sound as opposed to what about imagine
Speaker 3: they're problematic, but noise canceling earphones and things.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and I think that's what that person texting
Speaker 5: is inquiring about. So the AirPods or things that are
Speaker 5: noise canceling, yes, they attenuate the sound, but they're not
Speaker 5: certified according to the grading that they need for health
Speaker 5: and safety regulations. It may be coming, but right now
Speaker 5: I think you'd have to stick with the certified ear
Speaker 5: muffs in order to meet the health and safety guidelines.
Speaker 3: And actually you probably need to get some advice from
Speaker 3: someone around your and obligation as an employer. But because
Speaker 3: the people refuse to wear hearing and you've got to
Speaker 3: give them a job to do, like go and operate
Speaker 3: that chainsaw, and they say, I've got my EarPods and
Speaker 3: and you're like, no, no, no, you've could put in
Speaker 3: you want them to do the job. At some stage,
Speaker 3: when does it become the just it's their fault, the employee.
Speaker 3: But that's probably a legal question.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I'm not fully okay.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to put any pressure on you on
Speaker 3: that one. I should anyway, Right, let's go to some
Speaker 3: calls stand by DearS.
Speaker 6: Hello, oh hello.
Speaker 4: My question is I've got many years disease and I'm
Speaker 4: deaf in one ear. We're going going deaf.
Speaker 5: My concern is will.
Speaker 6: It get progressively worse and then therefore have.
Speaker 4: To keep updating all the time to new aids? And
Speaker 4: would the basic aid be okay? Because I can't afford
Speaker 4: the expensive one?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Have you got hearing aid now?
Speaker 4: Now I don't. I'm a bit to go and get
Speaker 4: them right, right, So, with.
Speaker 5: Many years disease. It often can be progressive, so it
Speaker 5: may continue to drop a bit more. Without seeing your audigram,
Speaker 5: it's a bit hard to say if it's dropped to
Speaker 5: where it will stay or not, but I would factor
Speaker 5: that into your decision making. And as I was saying before,
Speaker 5: if you go for one that's behind the ear but
Speaker 5: with a little speaker in your ear, they're quite discreet
Speaker 5: because they have a little fine wire that's only one
Speaker 5: millimeter that you can actually see and that goes down
Speaker 5: into your ear. That's what I would recommend, because if
Speaker 5: your hearing continue to drop, then you don't need to
Speaker 5: purchase a new hearing aid. You can just get a
Speaker 5: stronger speaker and have that one hearing aid adjusted as
Speaker 5: you go. I would just a word of advice would
Speaker 5: be to look for a provider that gives you maybe
Speaker 5: free care and support going forward so that you don't
Speaker 5: have to keep paying.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's when sure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've always gone to try and so yeah, okay,
Speaker 4: so behind the ear and the speaker in the ear.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, that's what I would recommend, because then then
Speaker 5: it could keep up with you and they do last
Speaker 5: a long time. They're built for six years, but usually
Speaker 5: the part behind the ear will actually last ten years
Speaker 5: or so.
Speaker 4: Right, okay, and sorry, go ahead. I just wondered does
Speaker 4: it necessarily go to the other ear as well, or
Speaker 4: does it affict the other ear that you had lost
Speaker 4: the hearing because of many years in the other ear.
Speaker 5: That's a good question. Usually it will stay just with
Speaker 5: the men years ear. There's rare cases where it's both years,
Speaker 5: so probably it will be just the one ear is
Speaker 5: the most likely scenario.
Speaker 3: Okay, great, good, thanks good. Let's go to Alistair. Good Alistair. Hello, Hello,
Speaker 3: I like to know.
Speaker 7: How long batteries will last in the future. Do you
Speaker 7: think they may last five to teen years in the future.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's a good question. What kind of batteries do
Speaker 5: you use?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 7: Oh I'm not sure. I'm not sure of a name, okay,
Speaker 7: but of a trade name, I'm not sure.
Speaker 5: That's all right, that's all right. How long do yours last?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 5: How long do yours last?
Speaker 6: Now? A last three months?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Okay, Oh that's good. So it's it's hard to say.
Speaker 5: I'm not in the battery industry, but they do. They
Speaker 5: do last longer and longer, so I know the rechargeable
Speaker 5: ones last about two years now.
Speaker 7: Yes, they have improved over time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it depends on how big they are too,
Speaker 5: and what's inside the battery.
Speaker 7: Oh, yes, thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Okay, thanks cheers ALUs the nastaying you might take care
Speaker 3: bye bye. Hey, Actually, are some of them rechargeable these days?
Speaker 3: I was looking at these really tiny ones. They don't
Speaker 3: look like something. They all have a battery and that
Speaker 3: lasts a long time. Or do you take them out
Speaker 3: at night and pop them on something that charges them?
Speaker 5: Yes, they're both. So there's disposable batteries and some and
Speaker 5: the tinier the battery, the faster they'll die. So the
Speaker 5: tiniest ones are only two or three days. And then
Speaker 5: if they're chargeable, then that's a more sensible way to
Speaker 5: go because the last two years before the rechargeable battery
Speaker 5: needs to be replaced. And then yep, just pop them
Speaker 5: in a charger at nighttime and they just.
Speaker 3: They don't actually plug and it's just they inducted the
Speaker 3: charge induction. Gosh, that's another bit of technology that blows
Speaker 3: me away. Right, let's carry on with the Call's got
Speaker 3: lots of texts and questions about this. Anthony High.
Speaker 8: Afternoon to both of you, Hi, I got pretty poor
Speaker 8: hearing as a result of industrial power tools and things
Speaker 8: back in the seventies and early eighties, at the time
Speaker 8: when people weren't wearing we should have been. So also
Speaker 8: on top of that, pretty severe tenus or tonight and
Speaker 8: in recent times because I know my dad, who also
Speaker 8: written in the same industry, had hearing aids up until
Speaker 8: he passed away, and he had us through covered by
Speaker 8: a SEC. I've been to two separate hearing tests where
Speaker 8: you go into you're familiar with it, obviously soundproof room,
Speaker 8: and you sit in that sound group room and you
Speaker 8: put your headphones on and then you listen to a
Speaker 8: series of different sounds, usually high pitched sounds. And the
Speaker 8: first time that I did it, I came out and
Speaker 8: the results came back and it said, no, you probably
Speaker 8: wouldn't qualify for hearing aids. It's not very bad. And
Speaker 8: I went, well, to be honest with you, in that booth,
Speaker 8: my tonights and the high pitched noise that it actually
Speaker 8: makes my ears made it difficult for me to positively
Speaker 8: be sure that I'm actually properly hearing them, and I
Speaker 8: put them through them and they said, come back again,
Speaker 8: we'll have another tribe with what they call the test. Yes,
Speaker 8: so I did that, but that sort of probably lean
Speaker 8: in my favor a little bit more. But I still
Speaker 8: felt that I was sitting in there pushing buttons. It
Speaker 8: sounds that I wasn't. I was confusing between the tonight
Speaker 8: this's and what they were playing. I actually don't think
Speaker 8: it's an accurate test. It's difficult, isn't that what your opinion? Yeah,
Speaker 8: it is, and maybe there's something else said I can do,
Speaker 8: but I hand on heart. No, I've got hearing problems,
Speaker 8: and I've got some good writs and i know what's
Speaker 8: caused it. Yeah, And I'm not officient that wants to
Speaker 8: go in there and play the fall and just say no,
Speaker 8: I can't hear anything just so I can get Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's right. I mean, you want it to
Speaker 5: be scientific and you want it to be accurate, so
Speaker 5: that that second test sounds like it was on the
Speaker 5: right track for you. Because instead of using just a
Speaker 5: flat beep, you know, just a beep, it's a bit
Speaker 5: tricky to hear over the tenatus, so instead they played
Speaker 5: you a warble sound, so it had kind of a
Speaker 5: wiggly sort of a sound to it. To make it
Speaker 5: a bit easier. There's a few other things that can
Speaker 5: make it easier for you.
Speaker 4: To hear.
Speaker 5: They can beep the test on and off a few times,
Speaker 5: because sometimes you can hear the on off better than
Speaker 5: you can hear a flat sound, so that would be
Speaker 5: my other recommendation is to have a warble and a
Speaker 5: pulsed sound, and that will be easier for you to
Speaker 5: hear over the tenetus. There's a few other objective tests
Speaker 5: that can be done as well that you don't need
Speaker 5: to rely on you pushing the button because it can
Speaker 5: be challenging. And one is that OAE test I was
Speaker 5: talking about earlier with babies, where they play a sound
Speaker 5: in your ear and it measures the little echo coming
Speaker 5: out of your ear, and that also can can help
Speaker 5: to add, you know, to all the different pieces of
Speaker 5: the puzzle for you.
Speaker 8: I feel that the bar is hit fairly high from
Speaker 8: an a sec point of view, because I have no
Speaker 8: doubt I've got hearing problems. I can't sort of cost
Speaker 8: a table from someone in the room that's reasonably noisy
Speaker 8: to hear what they're saying. All the symptoms are there,
Speaker 8: and I thought this will be where I'm going I'm
Speaker 8: going to have to go and get a hearing it
Speaker 8: down two times in a row.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it depends on the configuration of the shape of
Speaker 5: the pattern of the hearing as well. So yeah, there's
Speaker 5: lots of different factors. And then also with your age
Speaker 5: as well, so there's there's several different eligibility criteria for ACC.
Speaker 5: But it sounds like you've got a partial hearing loss
Speaker 5: for sure. Some sounds like the clarity sounds might be.
Speaker 3: Trickier with ACC. By the way, Anthony, I'd keep having
Speaker 3: a crack at them. You make it difficult for them
Speaker 3: to say no, okay, appeal, appeal, appeal, You'll be be
Speaker 3: obstinate because I think so, yeah.
Speaker 8: I don't give up easy.
Speaker 3: Good on you mate, Okay, thanks for good on. You're
Speaker 3: good to know. Bye bye. Is coming up to twenty
Speaker 3: to five News talkshit b got a bunch of calls,
Speaker 3: plenty of text. So we're talking hearing with the head
Speaker 3: of Triton Audiology hit Triton Hearings, head of Ideology. There
Speaker 3: we go, Leslie Smith back in just a moment News Talks.
Speaker 3: He'd be twenty to five. Welcome back to we can collective.
Speaker 3: This is the health hub, and my guess is Leslie Smith,
Speaker 3: head of ordeology at Triton Hearing, taking your calls. Let's
Speaker 3: try and crack through as many as we can before
Speaker 3: we wrap it up. Max. Hello, Hi.
Speaker 6: My question is is I've been dead for quite a while.
Speaker 6: I've had five sets of hearing aids and I'm not happy.
Speaker 6: I still can't hear very well. I've got my phone
Speaker 6: on loud, I've got my hearing aids turned up. Should
Speaker 6: I try some other hearing a person, Yeah, it.
Speaker 5: Might be a good idea. Is it that they're not
Speaker 5: loud enough, We're not clear enough? For Max?
Speaker 6: Well, my problem is is I hear somethings and then
Speaker 6: other things just I'll never hear right. I've watched them
Speaker 6: do the computer taste and all the rest of it.
Speaker 6: I've ask them to turned them up. I mean I
Speaker 6: can't when I play Bridge, sitting across to my car
Speaker 6: partner on the other side, I have trouble hearing them
Speaker 6: right right?
Speaker 5: And is it that the noise is too loud or
Speaker 5: is it the voice is not clear?
Speaker 6: Well, I'm not sure because I've got on these hearing
Speaker 6: aids that I've gotten now, which aren't quite two years old. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I can turn them so I turned the background noise off. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and I can turn them up so that I can
Speaker 6: hear in front of me.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Now, should I be going back and saying, look, these
Speaker 6: hearing aids don't work.
Speaker 5: It sounds like they would need an adjustment because you
Speaker 5: have all the features that you should have. The only
Speaker 5: other thing I could recommend is like a remote microphone
Speaker 5: that sits on the table or your partner wears, and
Speaker 5: then you can hear that person from like ten meters
Speaker 5: away really clearly. So that's the only other tech that
Speaker 5: you could add to the system. But I would try
Speaker 5: getting them readjusted first.
Speaker 6: So well, before I go back to my do you
Speaker 6: have a triton hearing in Taranaki at all?
Speaker 5: In Taranaki? I'm sure we. I'm sure we must not
Speaker 5: at the top of my head, but the address would be.
Speaker 6: Look, I might just look at that, because, as I say,
Speaker 6: I've been beginning to get a bit annoyed with my
Speaker 6: hearing aids because over the years, I mean I once
Speaker 6: gotten sent back and saying I shouldn't work in the
Speaker 6: dirty area. But I was a bloody plumber. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: I worked in dirty areas.
Speaker 5: We do have a great traiting clinic in New Plymouth.
Speaker 5: Would that be you do? Yes, yep, yep.
Speaker 3: Are you on the internet there, Max? Do you have
Speaker 3: the Internet?
Speaker 6: I'm not very good, but I do. I couldn't have
Speaker 6: it on my phone. I'm saying. It's just if I'm
Speaker 6: on a c C. Would I still have to pay
Speaker 6: AC fee or would I have to pay a full fee?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 5: No, you can just go along to a Traton clinic
Speaker 5: and have a free full assessment and and then they
Speaker 5: can give you some advice from there.
Speaker 3: Okay, thanks, thanks Max. And look at if you're in
Speaker 3: just Google Maps or something, just look for TRT and
Speaker 3: hearing it. W'll give you the load with the one
Speaker 3: nearest you. But also go try and hearing dot co
Speaker 3: dot in Z. The Internet's pretty helpful that so these days,
Speaker 3: and if you misspell it, they'll still go Did you
Speaker 3: mean try and hearing? Yeah, that's the one. Thanks very much. Right.
Speaker 3: More calls Beryl Hello.
Speaker 7: Hello, Sorry, I've only just tuned in radio radio date
Speaker 7: with you, but I couldn't get the name of your.
Speaker 3: Visitor, Leslie Leslie.
Speaker 7: Okay, can I talk to Leslie?
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, I'm here.
Speaker 7: Berro Hello, Lucie, Look, I've only just chained. Don I
Speaker 7: know that you're talking not to the last thing one,
Speaker 7: but the one before at that tentatus with which I've
Speaker 7: rung up. About what I would like to know is
Speaker 7: a two on one question. One is can tinaous low
Speaker 7: you're hearing? And two are they doing anything much about tinatus?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a really good question. Usually tinatus is a
Speaker 5: side effect of hearing loss, So it's usually because your
Speaker 5: hearing is down that you hear tinatus. And it's not
Speaker 5: like it's going to make your hearing worse, but you'll
Speaker 5: notice the tinatus louder the worse you're hearing is, and
Speaker 5: you'll notice it louder in quiet places. So the best
Speaker 5: thing to help with tinatus is twofold threefold. Probably One,
Speaker 5: protect your ears from noisy sounds to avoid complete silence,
Speaker 5: because that's when you'll hear it the worst. So if
Speaker 5: you're trying to sleep at night, use like a fan
Speaker 5: or some ambient sound. Put the radio on very softly.
Speaker 5: That'll help to keep your ears busy, but not too loud,
Speaker 5: just nice and softly in the background. And three, if
Speaker 5: your hearing is down at all, try some kind of
Speaker 5: hearing it that's not too loud, but just gives you
Speaker 5: back the sounds that you're missing. So just gives you
Speaker 5: back those soft sounds, and while you're wearing them, the
Speaker 5: tenatus will go down about eighty percent. That's usually what happens.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's Lousie so much.
Speaker 3: Thanks, Beryl, cheers.
Speaker 5: Okay, nice to meet you, Beryl.
Speaker 3: Somebody says that they had some hearing loss and they
Speaker 3: went to someone who had performed a step addict to me,
Speaker 3: which is something to do with that bone and the conductivity,
Speaker 3: and it was said it was a miracle. Yeah, sort
Speaker 3: of restortion of hearing loss.
Speaker 5: That's right. So for that person, those three little bones
Speaker 5: of hearing and the ear drum, they act like an
Speaker 5: amplifier like I was saying earlier. So if those three
Speaker 5: little bones get too stiff, then the sound isn't amplified
Speaker 5: going into the ear, so it's like wearing an ear
Speaker 5: plug essentially. So having that little bone fixed would have
Speaker 5: been yeah.
Speaker 3: Change changed his life. Yeah yeah, yeah, let's go to
Speaker 3: another call. Bill.
Speaker 4: Hello, oh h look reading.
Speaker 3: Yes, hi Bill, I'm going to put you back to
Speaker 3: my producer. We'll do a text or two and then
Speaker 3: you can have a chat with him because you're just
Speaker 3: a bit distant there. One of the questions we've got
Speaker 3: someone about and worried about. My grandson constantly plugged in
Speaker 3: with headphones twenty four to seven, working on zoom calls
Speaker 3: at the gym, listening to music all the time. Is
Speaker 3: this dangerous because my instinct would say, well, possibly if
Speaker 3: he's got his settings wrong.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, it's any kind of noise
Speaker 5: damage is how loud and how long you're exposed. So
Speaker 5: the advice would be to where any kind of headphones,
Speaker 5: either in the ear or over the ear headphones at
Speaker 5: about fifty percent fifty to sixty percent, because that should
Speaker 5: let you wear it safely for hours. It sounds like
Speaker 5: that's what the situation is for this person. And as
Speaker 5: you go louder and louder and louder, it just drastically
Speaker 5: reduces the sound. So if you're wearing them at max,
Speaker 5: for example, five to ten minutes would be damaging, So
Speaker 5: you want to wear them around around mid volume.
Speaker 3: Okay, here's another one from Kath. I have difficulty who
Speaker 3: I'm talking with there, and there are other conversations going
Speaker 3: on around me. I'm forty four sorts of a new
Speaker 3: issue for me, it's likely a hearing problem or ADHD,
Speaker 3: asks Kath, Well, we can't comment on ADHD. That does
Speaker 3: sound like that is one of the one of the
Speaker 3: signs that you would want to get your hearing checked
Speaker 3: A nice Yeah.
Speaker 5: I would recommend just having a hearing test because it
Speaker 5: could be that you're not deaf, but it could just
Speaker 5: be very subtle at a couple of pitches.
Speaker 3: How much is the hearing what's the story with getting
Speaker 3: your hearing checked?
Speaker 5: What's I mean free free test? Yep? Yeah, so we
Speaker 5: believe in you know, awareness and getting your hearing test
Speaker 5: before it becomes a problem. So hearing prevention is always
Speaker 5: always the best. But yep, come in and have a
Speaker 5: free test. You can have either a free screening or
Speaker 5: a full diagnostic test, depending on what you need.
Speaker 3: So when do you start paying for things?
Speaker 5: Well, hearing aids aren't free, so you pay for hearing aid,
Speaker 5: but we have free after care. So if you do
Speaker 5: purchase a hearing aid, we're not going to run away,
Speaker 5: and you have free appointments for life.
Speaker 3: Okay, we need to take a moment. We'll be back
Speaker 3: in just a tick. It's coming up to nine minutes
Speaker 3: to five news Talk said, b.
Speaker 5: To soon Tuna.
Speaker 3: No, yes, welcome back. News Talk said, be gosh, time
Speaker 3: flies when you're having fun. We're with the Leslie Smith Tritton,
Speaker 3: Hearing's head of audiology. Look, look, we can only ever
Speaker 3: scratched the top of the issues around hearing and all
Speaker 3: the solutions that are there. But Leslie, the AI think
Speaker 3: fascinates me as to the future of and it has
Speaker 3: some people get upset about AI when it comes to
Speaker 3: Google and not analyzing your data, but I want to
Speaker 3: think that it comes to health products and things that
Speaker 3: can improve your life. It really is quite exciting.
Speaker 5: Isn't that fascinating? Yeah, And it's been around for twenty
Speaker 5: five years and hearing aids and it's only going to
Speaker 5: keep getting better and better. So with the sound classifier,
Speaker 5: so now the hearing aids can tell if it's music
Speaker 5: and they don't alter the sound. In fact, they turn
Speaker 5: off all the sound cleaning because of course you want
Speaker 5: to hear music as pure as it is. They can
Speaker 5: tell if you're on the phone, they can tell if
Speaker 5: you're streaming, so they try to turn up the volume
Speaker 5: a little bit and reduce the microphone a wee bit.
Speaker 5: If they can tell if you're in background noise. If
Speaker 5: it's background noise, that speech, and they can tell where
Speaker 5: the speech is around you. So it's all around just
Speaker 5: trying to trying to create that cocktail party effect. If
Speaker 5: you have normal hearing, you can look at somebody and
Speaker 5: focus on them and then chune everybody else out, or.
Speaker 3: Even the entry level expenses, because imagine the price range
Speaker 3: would be like any sort of thing, you can go
Speaker 3: for the sort of basic one, but to get a
Speaker 3: hearing aid as a relatively sophisticated hearing aid, what sort
Speaker 3: of what's the ballpark that you're spending? Hard to say,
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, middle of the road would probably be about
Speaker 5: four and a half five and a half thousand for
Speaker 5: a pair, and they start anywhere from five hundred dollars
Speaker 5: for a pair.
Speaker 3: What are you getting for five hundred bucks?
Speaker 5: Two really good solid hearing aids Bluetooth capable, but without
Speaker 5: all the sound classifiers.
Speaker 3: Without the AI probably yes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it would be more basic. It would be
Speaker 5: more like I'm listening in quiet, or you can drive
Speaker 5: it and say now I'm listening in background noise, so
Speaker 5: they don't switch as automatically for you on their own.
Speaker 3: It's funny because well, I think sometimes with regards to
Speaker 3: things that are important for our everyday existence and health,
Speaker 3: we sometimes go all that's a lot, but then we
Speaker 3: go spend fifteen hundred bucks on a cell phone without
Speaker 3: thinking about it.
Speaker 5: Oh that's right.
Speaker 3: And so look, I'm not that I'm arguing either way,
Speaker 3: but and yeah, the higher.
Speaker 5: Up in technology you go, the more and more automatic
Speaker 5: it is, the more fidelity it has, it can and
Speaker 5: cut down noise when you're in the car, for example,
Speaker 5: so you can hear your passengers.
Speaker 3: Just fascinating And if people want to learn more they
Speaker 3: can go to Trent and Hearing And don't forget if
Speaker 3: you want to check your hearing, it's free. Just call
Speaker 3: up your local TRT and Hearing. And thanks very much, Leslie,
Speaker 3: love to see you again.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: We'll look forward to next time and we'll be back
Speaker 3: just a minute. In just a moment, Smart Money is
Speaker 3: next
Speaker 1: A very For more from the Weekend Collective, listen live
Speaker 1: to News Talks it'd be weekends from three pm, or
Speaker 1: follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.