October is Audiology Awareness Month. Hear from audiologist Dr. Kody Brooks as he explains some of the reasons for hearing loss and why it's so important to treat it. For any future audiologists out there, Dr. Brooks also gives some great career advice.
Shelby Stockton: Welcome to the Texas ENT Audio blog. I'm Shelby Stockton and October is Audiology Awareness Month. Today, I got to talk with audiologists, Dr. Kody Brooks. He explains some of the reasons for hearing loss and why it's so important to treat it. For any future audiologists out there, Dr. Brooks also gives some great career advice.
Shelby Stockton: Hi, Dr. Brooks, thanks so much for talking with me today.
Dr. Kody Brooks: Hi, Shelby. My pleasure.
Shelby Stockton: So I don't know if you're aware, but October is Audiology Awareness Month.
Dr. Kody Brooks: Yeah, I've heard of that.
Shelby Stockton: Yeah, and since you're an audiologist, I thought, can't be a better person to talk to about audiology.
Dr. Kody Brooks: Yeah.
Shelby Stockton: So my first question for you is super simple, but what is audiology?
Dr. Kody Brooks: Well, audiology is essentially, or an audiologist is a healthcare provider who evaluates and diagnoses and sometimes even treats hearing loss and balance disorders in people of all ages.
Shelby Stockton: Okay. What kind of training does an audiologist have to go through?
Dr. Kody Brooks: Well, it actually started quite a while ago where they just required a bachelor's degree and it led into a master's degree, but actually all the way back in 1995 was when it was recommended by the American Speech and Hearing Association to use a doctorate degree, to require that. And in 1997, there were actually four universities that began a doctorate program. So currently, as of ... Well, as of 2012, they do require in order to practice audiology, you have to have a doctorate degree.
Shelby Stockton: Well, that's super fascinating. That was not that long ago that the requirements changed.
Dr. Kody Brooks: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I was actually ... A fun little fact about myself, I went to Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas to get my a AUD and we were actually the first official AUD class at Lamar, so I was glad to get on board. I felt bad for the audiologists ahead of me because they were just wrapping up their master's degree and they got the option to either finish their master's and graduate or continue on to achieve the doctorate degree.
Shelby Stockton: Goodness gracious. What a decision, I can't even imagine.
Dr. Kody Brooks: Oh yeah, I came in at just the right time.
Shelby Stockton: Yeah. So what type of patients do you audiologists see?
Dr. Kody Brooks: So pretty much all ages and stages. We can test as young as birth all the way to the elderly population, and one thing a lot of people may not be aware of is that there are different titles of audiologists. Ones that work with children, we refer to them as pediatric audiologists. There's even audiologists who help our school age students and they are called educational audiologists. It even goes as far as what we call industrial audiology, where that's actually audiologists who establish threshold shifts for company employees that are exposed to loud noise during the day to ensure that the noise they're exposed to throughout the day and throughout their employment there does not result in hearing loss.
Shelby Stockton: That's so interesting that the specialties are so precise. Is that because the different kinds of hearing loss require different testing or ...?
Dr. Kody Brooks: Not necessarily. Well, as far as the threshold shift testing, there are different types of testing that we have to do for those employees, but for the most part, the different titles are just to meet different needs. A school age child is going to need something different than say somebody who is just employed in the business world because children, they're in large classrooms with a lot of background noise, they're trying to understand the teacher who's moving around the room. So especially children with hearing loss if they do have hearing aids, they need an audiologist who can make sure that their hearing aids, their devices, the FM systems the school uses, make sure they're working correctly so that the kid has the best chance to understand what the teacher is saying.
Shelby Stockton: Oh, that's so interesting. So there's lots of different things that can cause hearing loss, but what are some of the most common ones that you see?
Dr. Kody Brooks: Yeah, so there's technically ... When we talk about hearing loss, it can kind of be broken up into three different categories or different types of hearing loss, if you will. There's one called a conductive hearing loss, which a conductive hearing loss is typically caused by ear infections, wax in the ear, sometimes a perforation or a hole in the ear drum, that can cause a conductive loss. One of the most common ones we see is what we call a sensory neural hearing loss, and what that is involving is the inner ear.
Dr. Kody Brooks: And what I tell my patients that type of hearing loss is, it's typically caused by three reasons, family history of hearing loss or just genetics. Number two is noise exposure. And then the last one is the more birthdays we have. I would say the more professional term for that would be called presbycusis, just wear and tear in our body, our ear, the little hair cells in the ear just don't work as well as they used to. And that's one, but then there's also something called a mixed hearing loss where you can have both types of issues.
Dr. Kody Brooks: SO let's just say you have a noise induced hearing loss so you have trouble understanding what people say, but at the same time, you may come in to see us with an ear infection. So we have to treat the ear infection, but even if we get rid of that or improve that, you still have hearing loss leftover that needs to be treated.
Shelby Stockton: I see. So what are some of the long term effects of untreated hearing loss?
Dr. Kody Brooks: You know, that is a fantastic question and one that I feel a lot of people underestimate the effects of it. The first things that kind of come to mind are when we have trouble understanding what people say, we don't really want to ask them to repeat because it may be embarrassing. And so what we find with people who don't treat their hearing loss, it may lead to them isolating themselves from social activities and if they do that, well then unfortunately, that can lead to them feeling lonely or worried, even depression and anxiety.
Dr. Kody Brooks: And one thing that's very interesting about the ears and what I inform my patients about is what a lot of the research shows currently is there is a huge and very important connection between your ears and your brain. And we actually hear with our brain, not our ears, and always when I talk with my kids I tell them, "You think you hear with your ears or not?" And they're like, "Yes." I'm like, "Well no, you actually don't, you hear with your brain." And a lot of people don't realize that connection.
Dr. Kody Brooks: And one study that actually came out quite a bit of time ago in 2011, by John's Hopkins and the National Institute on Aging, one of their titles of it, they use a scary word dementia, and one thing that can happen is ... What they found in that study is senior adults that have hearing loss, they're significantly more likely to develop dementia over time compared to those who actually treat their hearing loss. So one of the biggest things people need to know is that if you don't treat your hearing loss, it's just not a matter of well, I'm just going to let it go until it gets bad enough or when I'm actually struggling, because untreated hearing loss can actually have a physical impact on your brain that a lot of the studies are pointing to.
Shelby Stockton: Okay, that's a perfect segue for my next question, which is why do you think some people ignore their hearing loss for such a long time?
Dr. Kody Brooks: Well, a lot of people ... One thing that we know for sure is that hearing aids have a stigma. They always have. You get hearing aids, you're old, but you get glasses, you look cool and young. And there's a lot of the times I hear people say, "Well, if they just wouldn't mumble." Or, "My wife made me come in. If she wouldn't talk to me from a different room ..." So sometimes they place blame on other people. They just don't take responsibility for their own hearing loss. I mean, some of it is vanity. They don't want to wear hearing aids or maybe they've talked to people who have worn hearing aids before and they had a bad experience, and so they just automatically assume that they're going to have a bad experience and put off getting hearing aids until it's too late.
Shelby Stockton: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, so what advice would you give someone who is interested in pursuing a career in audiology?
Dr. Kody Brooks: Well, the first thing I would say is make sure that this is what you want to do. Just like with any job, you have to love what you do. Every day when I come in, I really enjoy working with people, listening to their concerns, and providing the best solution possible. It's a lot of school but it's completely worth it. But the most important thing is you have to love audiology. You have to know the importance of treating hearing loss and knowing how it affects people in their life, and just the joy that I experience from removing the ... What I would say, the boundaries that hearing loss places on someone's life, that is priceless. When you allow someone to hear their grandkids better, their wife's voice better, enjoy music again, it's really worthwhile. And so I really just think somebody who's pursuing or wants to pursue audiology, they just need to investigate audiology and make sure that they love working with people because that's what you'll do every single day.
Shelby Stockton: That's great advice, I guess, for any career. Thanks so much.
Dr. Kody Brooks: Yeah.
Shelby Stockton: Well thanks, Dr. Brooks. Thanks for helping us shine a light on audiology for Audiology Awareness Month.
Dr. Kody Brooks: My pleasure. Thank you.
