Say that again? Understanding hearing loss as we age

Dr. Cynthia Hogan, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm glad to be here today.

Well, this is a very important topic we're discussing because about one in three adults between the ages of 65 and 74 have hearing loss.

What, Dr. Hogan, is actually happening with the ear that makes this more likely as we age?

The ear has three main parts.

It has the outer ear, which is the part we can all see with the ear canal.

It has the middle ear, which is the eardrum and consists of those three little bones connected to the eardrum, and then the inner ear.

And it's the inner ear that seems to take on the most damage over time as we get older.

That inner ear has two parts.

One is the hearing part, which is called the cochlea, and the other is the vestibular portion of the ear, and that is for our balance.

And so inside the cochlea, we have thousands of tiny hair cells, and they're all lined up in nice little rows if everything is perfect.

But as we get older, we're exposed to noise, we're exposed to medications and other trauma that we don't even think about.

And that impacts those little tiny hair cells in the inner ear.

So it's not just that we're losing hair on our heads as we age.

We're losing the function of the hair in our ears.

That's correct.

Yep.

So in addition to what's happening with the hairs inside that inner ear, are there other changes that are happening in the ear as well?

So technically beyond the ear, we know that the hair cells connect to the hearing nerve or the eighth nerve.

And without stimulation of that eighth nerve, we know we lose some neurons or some of those nerve fibers.

They don't respond like they do when they're stimulated routinely.

Right.

And so we have this interface between the ear and the brain that also is accumulating some malfunctioning portions, so to speak.

Then in addition to that, as we get older, we have some changes in our brains.