Dr. Konstantina Stankovic

It's completely unregulated.

And when I have approached some people about this topic, then I was told, well, this is a free country.

People should be allowed to do whatever they want.

And if they choose one behavior, then it's up to them.

They know the consequences.

So there are pros and cons to that because as physicians and scientists, we also know what's good for people.

And if that

information is not widely disseminated or if it's not widely accessible, which our conversation today clearly illustrates it's not, then having some regulation in place to protect us all is a good thing.

That directly links to what you mentioned before, the importance of hearing for emotional communication, for relational well-being, and for cognition.

So now there is mounting evidence for a strong link between hearing loss and dementia.

It's not that everyone with hearing loss will develop dementia.

So I really want the listeners to feel reassured that they don't need to run home and

purchase hearing aids right away.

It's just not the case.

However, we are trying to identify who is at risk.

And the standard tests are not that helpful in that regard because if you get just the standard audiometric testing where you're in a sound booth and they play different tones and you raise your hand if you hear it, and then you have a plot generated, it turns out that you can have 90% of neurons gone

and your audiometric thresholds could be normal.

And it's because the auditory system is so exquisitely sensitive that there is tremendous redundancy in it.

And we talked about sensory cells, how they are connected to the brain by the auditory nerve.

It turns out that 10 different nerve fibers contact a single sensory cell.