Dr Mark Syms - The Hearing Loss Physician on Expert Talk 9@9

Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. You know where you are, the 9@9 with me TGo. And today we're going to talk about something that's kind of really important to me personally, because I had all kinds of problems with this. When I was a little kid today, we have Dr. Mark Syms, and we're going to talk about hearing loss and how you can protect these things.

You know that you have to have your ears. Hey Doc, are you out there? Thanks for having me. This is great TGo. I appreciate you hosting me here. I appreciate you coming on. We had a little bit of technical difficulties, but we got this. We're going to run right through this. Thank you so much for hanging out with us for a few minutes.

My pleasure. So you are the hearing loss physician. You, you know, teach people and also help people to regain some of their hearing. That's right. Hearing loss is my passion. So How did you get into hearing loss? Well, I had a brother, my middle brother, Robbie had a brain tumor when he was a teenager and he had radiation to his brain and lost his hearing.

So that was one of the ways, you know, knowing firsthand, how hearing loss affected him, affected his relationship with me, with his family, with his friends firsthand, you know, front row seat to that. That was what's really made me passionate about it because frankly I missed it. I didn't realize how much it was affecting us. And I was an ear nose and throat doctor who took care of your disease.

But I didn't realize until hindsight how much it affected my relationship with him. Wow. So you wrote a book called listen up, and this is a more of a Isn't it, it is. It's, it's written to kind of explain to people why hearing loss matters, why it needs to be treated. Why? Unfortunately, for a lot of people it's not well-treated and how to pursue the treatment,

you know, it's crazy, but 90% of hearing aids out there are not adjusted correctly for people to hear well, 90%, it's crazy. How many bad hearing treatments are? No, they're not adjusted well because the patient is not doing it correctly, or they literally not being set properly when they get, They're not being set when they get them. Because the companies that make these have what are called factory settings.

And so they're all on factory settings. So people aren't getting custom fits or custom prescriptions, they're getting generic prescriptions. So kind of the way I explain it to people is, is like, you know, that's for the average length with circumference and shaped ear canal. And frankly, I've never seen that ear canal, but if you think of like a pipe,

an eight inch pipe with water going down, it, if you make it 12 inches, the water goes slower. Four inches, the water goes faster. So the flow of the sound like in water is determined by the size of the ear canal. So you don't want a generic prescription. You need a custom prescription. And when we look at hearing aids out there,

90% of them have custom prescriptions. Why? Because people are buying hearing aids. Like they buy bricks and mortar. But if you're going to build a brick wall, the Mason matters, not the bricks and mortar. And if you're going to get your hearing loss treated the care provider matters, not the device. Okay. So how would someone know? You know,

my Mother had hearing loss before she passed. So did my Father, they hated wearing their hearing aids. And we'll talk about that. You say that, you know, quite a few people leave them on the dresser. How would they know that the problem is not, you know them? Cause my Dad said, you know, my ears are just too bad that these things don't help me.

And it's just because they don't have the proper adjustments Or the proper care. Right. But what I would tell you is the skills matter, craftsmanship matter. And you need to find somebody who has that. And so, you know, to be Frank with you, if you're going to go to the same place where you buy meat, trash bags and toilet paper,

you're probably not going to find a lot of craftsmanship. And so the, the way that you really know is, is there are ways to validate your prescription. There is a way that we can put a little microphone down your ear canal, put the hearing aid in and measure that your hearing aid with your prescription in your ear, treat your hearing loss.

So your hearing loss should be validated. So, you know, we all know this. If you had high blood pressure and your blood pressure was 210, over 110, and your primary care doctor gave you a pill and said, Hey, now it's true to come back and see us when you need us. And they never measured that your blood pressure was down.

You think they're crazy? Well, think about hearing care, not hearing aids, you need care. People checking on you, making sure you're treated right. Validating all those things that we do when we treat medical problems, which is what hearing loss is. I know that you're in Arizona. So if somebody locally in your area, they can definitely make an appointment with you.

But when they're in there, I'm in Vegas, you know, or, or maybe Chicago or Boston, how do they find the right physician? What questions should they be at? Well, I think, you know, so the thing I just talked about, like, so, you know, how does somebody verify that they're treating? So verification is the measurement that you are being treated.

Validation is me receiving that information that I know it is. Right? So look at other health problems, blood pressures of support. How do you know your blood pressure treated? Because they put that sphygmomanometer, which is the blood pressure cuff on. And they measure your blood pressure and they show it to you. If you treat my hearing loss, can you demonstrate to me that you have actually given me a prescription that treats my hearing loss.

I want you to show me that my hearing loss has been treated a lot of times, these people, just the sellers of hearing it. So just say, does that sound better? Well, that's not. I mean, that's like saying I gave you a blood pressure pill. Do you feel better? That's not what it's about. It's about objective measurements demonstrating that you objectives have your hearing loss treated.

That's what it's all about. You know, you mentioned a few minutes ago, a store where you can buy, you know, toilet paper, paper bags, and you know, your favorite soda, you know, and a flat screen TV. And recently I want to know if you brought to tell me some bad news, because I just bought like two big boxes of these things called Q-tips and I don't think you want to use the nodes.

Right? You mean the tools of the novel? Oh, okay. That's what I tell people. So if you look on the back of a Q-tip box, it says, do not stick in your ears so you can use them for everything. But that I'll tell you there's two things. One is everybody says they don't stick them in too far. And it might seem like a little bit of a crash joke,

but I say that's what the pregnant girl says. And the second thing is, is if you think of a pipe with debris on it, so you think of a pipe with junk in it. If you took a mop and jammed it down that pipe, why is that going to get anything out? That's what a Q-tip does. It just pushes the wax in.

And then the last thing is, is it takes off wax, which is good. Wax is it protects your skin. It's sticky to prevent dust going in. And it has an acidity that kills off bacteria and a fungus. So the problem is people's ear to itch because they scratch them in a braid them with Q-tips. So that's why I say they're the tools of the devil don't use them,

but you know, Johnson and Johnson makes a lot of money selling Q-tips. If you go to Q-tips dot com, guess what it doesn't have on it. Any indication that you should stick them in your ear, what? Wow, I have to check that out. So how should you properly clean your ears? Then Your ears will clean themselves. The wax will slowly migrate out.

Once you can get it with within the outside part of your ear, you can grab it, but it'll, it'll migrate out on its own. That's amazing. Now I have to ask you about, and I'm sure our producer's going to be flashing up the two minutes in a one minutes here and there pretty soon, but I want to ask you really quickly,

you know, these things. I have mine in my ear right now. I just realized that now the new one don't even have the little stick. It looks like a little gumball or something sitting in your ear. Are they doing damage? It depends how loud they are. I mean, if they're in and somebody is three feet away from you and you can't have a conversation with them,

they're too loud. The other thing I would recommend is, is taking a break five minutes every hour, taking them out, letting your ears rest. It's not just the loudness that matters. It's the duration of the exposure. So people should take, there is an epidemic of hearing loss in the youth, one in five people under the age of around the age of 20,

have a measurable hearing loss. And that's likely from noise exposure from, you know, personal listening devices. Well, we have one more minute to go. I know that our producer has been showing the website, but can you please tell people the name of your book and where they can find it in your website? Sure. It's www.ListenUpHearing.com.

You can go there. You can order the book there. It's a less expensive there actually, but you can also get it on Amazon. Go ahead and read the reviews. Great reviews. Been very well received, you know, writing a books harder than I thought. I'm really glad it's done. I need some revisions, but it's a great thing.

And I think it's a really good start. It's highly educational. I think it's a great way people to better understand hearing loss, why it matters and how to treat it. Well, I thank you doctor for being on. I hope you'll come back because we went kind of over the 50 foot, you know, view. And I'd love to talk about with Seniors and more about Youth and,

and cause it's very important. I mean, I had a lot of hearing loss problems when I was a kid. So I would love to have... Really Allen really. Hey everybody. That was Dr. Mark Syms. And you know, he's going to be our favorite physician for hearing loss. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you'll come back next time.

And as always I'm TGo, I'll talk to you next time. Really Allen really.