SHOW NOTES:

Women and Hearing Loss

===

Women and Hearing Loss: Why Female-Centered Care Matters
Hearing loss is not a one-size-fits-all experience—especially for women. In this episode of the Hearing Wellness Journey Podcast, Dr. Dawn Heiman is joined by colleagues Dr. Emily Johnson, Dr. Stephanie Micaelides, and Lindsey Doherty to unpack the unique ways women experience hearing challenges throughout life.

Hormones, Hearing, and Tinnitus
Research shows that estrogen may act as a protective factor for the inner ear. Women often have stronger otoacoustic emissions and faster auditory responses compared to men. Yet, shifts in hormone levels—during pregnancy, perimenopause, or menopause—can trigger conditions like otosclerosis or intensify tinnitus. Many women also notice hearing changes during midlife, even when test results appear “normal.”

Sleep, Brain Fog, and Everyday Struggles
Lack of sleep and hormonal fluctuations can worsen tinnitus and create a “foggy brain” feeling. These challenges often make it difficult to process conversations, particularly in noisy environments. Sadly, many women are told, “Everything is normal,” leaving them without answers or support.

The Gender Gap in Hearing Research
Most clinical hearing studies have historically focused on men. Even the “zero decibel” standard for normal hearing was based on young male participants. This oversight has left women underserved, with symptoms often dismissed or misinterpreted.

Why Women Seek Help Sooner
Compared to men, women are more likely to notice and act on mild hearing loss. Social connection plays a major role—missing details in conversations with friends or family becomes a strong motivator to seek care.

Beyond Retail Hearing Care
Unlike retail or warehouse-style clinics, private audiology practices like ours take a whole-body, personalized approach. We perform in-depth histories, consider hormonal and lifestyle factors, and use Real Ear Measurement to customize hearing aid fittings to each individual’s ear canal. This ensures patients receive treatment designed specifically for their needs—not based on a “standard male ear.”

Why a Baseline Hearing Test Matters
The doctors emphasize that every woman should schedule a baseline hearing test, ideally starting in their 40s. This helps detect early changes, provides valuable comparisons over time, and can identify underlying issues before they escalate.

Meet the Experts
Dr. Dawn Heiman – Audiologist and host, dedicated to individualized care and patient advocacy.

Dr. Emily Johnson – Audiologist with expertise in auditory processing and women’s hearing health.

Dr. Stephanie Michaelides – Audiologist passionate about supporting women through midlife hearing changes.

Lindsey Doherty – Practice administrator who champions whole-person care in audiology.

This conversation highlights the importance of treating women as individuals—not “small men.” By combining science, compassion, and advocacy, audiologists can help women protect their hearing and overall well-being.

To see the video edition of this episode with closed captioning, please go to 👉 Hearing Wellness Journey Podcast

Transcript:

Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Hearing Wellness Journey podcast, an exploration of determination, hope, self discovery, and triumph. We'll share the personal experiences of those that are living with hearing loss and provide a haven for their stories to show others that they are not alone in this journey. Please welcome your hosts.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Welcome back to another episode of the Hearing Wellness Journey podcast. Today, we're going to address something that we have stumbled upon in the practice is that our female patients tend to have different, unique needs than the male patients; and we wanna dive into the science of how our ears and tinnitus and foggy brain can all be [00:01:00] related, especially as women's hormones are changing. Especially at certain times of a woman's life as they transition from normal cycles to menopause and even post menopause. Women aren't small men.

So, we should start with Dr. Johnson. She is more versed than some of us into how different hormones can affect the ears. Do you wanna start with that? I find it so interesting that I didn't realize that our hormones could affect our ears.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Yeah. There's been some research into estrogen, which we primarily know as regulating our menstrual cycles and the female reproductive tract, but there's also been some research into estrogen being a protector, barrier, enhancer, if you will, [00:02:00] of the inner ear, our cochlea, and specifically more so our outer hair cells.

And it has been shown that like women's inner ears actually have more spontaneous otoacoustic emissions, which are the little echoes that we measure back when we put two sounds into your ear and measure what our inner ear sends back to look at the outer hair cell function.

And it's also been shown that females have shorter latencies on something called an auditory brainstem response evaluation, and that shows that our systems work a little bit faster compared to male systems, and they've looked into the link of estrogen, because we know that's obviously higher in the female population.

And one of the things in grad school that you learn about is something called otosclerosis, and one of the telltale things that they tell you to look for is hormonal changes in females can be a big [00:03:00] trigger to the onset in the starting developing of  otosclerosis. A lot of it starts during kind of mid thirties, during peak reproduction age, and pregnancy is a big one that can trigger the hormone shift that we can see with otosclerosis.

While men can have otosclerosis too, it is definitely female dominated, and usually a hormone trigger is one of the more common reasons as well. And I think that's just really interesting, because we know with pregnancy, your hormones change significantly, if you've been pregnant. And there's a whole bunch of things that change in your body at baseline, and you know what, let's add the ear on top of that too.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yeah. Right. Or let's say you're not having babies anymore, and you're just having lack of sleep. Dr. Micaelides, I know you've seen a lot of patients who, if they don't get sleep, they suddenly have raging tinnitus. So what came first? [00:04:00] The tinnitus, the lack of sleep, or a hormonal disruption?

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: So, I have to be honest, I'm closer to my fifties, and all of my friends at one point in time have come to me to get their hearing tested, because they feel like they're just not hearing as well as they had before.

And I feel like that's with going in perimenopause, closer to menopause, that I find that I've had a lot of friends. And their hearing still can be in the normal range, but they're definitely noticing a shift. Otherwise they wouldn't be coming to me for this. And really in their forties and fifties.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yeah. During that time there's a fluctuation. You don't have a normal cycle, so sometimes you have estrogen, sometimes you might not. Sometimes it's more or less not feeling like yourself can trigger these things. At any age you can be before that time where you're just not sleeping well, and suddenly something's keeping you up at night, and you're hearing ringing in your ears.

I feel like we should dive into this more and ask more patients about this and maybe even just have a questionnaire for them and start to collect our own data. Because I don't [00:05:00] think there's a study out there. They don't seem to test and study women like they test men, right? Like is everything that we have in this office based off of a study from a man?

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: Yes.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Absolutely. I mean, even the zero decibel, zero DVHL study was young men.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Dr. Emily Johnson: And I mean that is like the standard that we've used forever.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yes.

Dr. Emily Johnson: And nobody's updated it. Nobody's interested in updating it, and we're just like, well...

That's what we're based off of.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: We're a hundred percent female practice, and we work with men and women, and so many people just assume, they're like, "oh, most of your patients are men, right? Only men have hearing loss." And I'm like, "that's not true."

I need to look it up, but I feel like we have more women than men as patients, and we do need to start our own questionnaire study asking when did the tinnitus start? When did the hearing change? How old were you? Were there fluctuations? Did it seem like it got better or worse? [00:06:00] Is it experienced differently?

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: And I find that a lot of the women will come in sooner.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: With a more mild hearing loss, actively trying to help their hearing versus I find men usually someone's telling them to come in, usually the wife or, you know, so I find that they'll come in with more mild hearing loss, which is good though.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yeah. I think we just talk more, and it's a fact.

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: We're social. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Socially. Women communicate. When we have a discussion with someone or during the day, we say 30,000 words, and men will say 7,000 words. If we're trying to have a conversation with a girlfriend, and we can't get all of the information, we're handicapped or realizing that there's a problem sooner.

Lindsey Doherty: Right.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Even with a mild hearing loss, we're noticing it, but I am curious, at what age does the typical woman start to notice a change versus the typical man? And then we have environmental factors. We all know [00:07:00] men tend to participate. Boys, we'll start with boys, tend to be more risk takers. They tend to, and it depends on where you live in the country or the world and things, but they tend to be more likely to use power tools, let's say, or ATVs or even just out in the country hunting.

Where the women typically are staying home or men are the ones, if, depending on your family, they're the ones that do yard work, and the women stay inside and do housework. Right? But, if all things were equal, and you had men and women in the same house, exposed to the same sounds, which one gets help sooner?

Like you said, probably the women. We really, really hang on to conversations, stories.

Lindsey Doherty: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Our girlfriends, just family times. But then there's some that don't do something, but maybe because they didn't know? So maybe we can dive into [00:08:00] that. What's happening if someone isn't sleeping well and they can't seem to hear their family? What should they do? How are we different in seeing them versus someplace that is a typical, retail store, cost-cutting warehouse? How are they gonna treat them as just a typical person who comes in, based on the male guidelines, versus our practice?

Where does it start?

Lindsey Doherty: I mean, I think, in a private practice setting like ours, we tend to look at the big picture more. I guess like a whole body approach, and how we can work with other providers. And what else are you doing? Or what else are you treating? Are you treating perimenopause, menopause? Are you working with a women's health doctor? Are you working with a cardiologist? That's what makes private practice different, because we do try and make this...

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Not cookie cutter, but...

Lindsey Doherty: Right.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: ...tailored, and we start with their video intake. Like how long do [00:09:00] you guys take when you take a history with a patient even before they arrive?

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: 15 minutes?

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yeah.

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: Yeah, about 15.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: What other places take an extensive medical history for 15 minutes before they start that appointment? Before they even walked in the door?

Lindsey Doherty: I think that is my appointment length.

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: I know, right?

Dr. Emily Johnson: Oh, that is all the time I'm allotted. Yes.

Lindsey Doherty: You know what I mean? I'm in, vitals taken, I'm out.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yeah. Right? Or if you go into a Costco, or you go into a retail store, they're all about, well, let's find out real fast, "What kind of hearing loss do you have?" And then they're already making assumptions.

Our providers that are down at Costco near us are pretty good. And what they have available to them is good technology, but the reason why their prices are so low, and I'm sorry, I'm just, my brain's going on this, but, because they can pre-order, let's say a hundred-thousand hearing aids, and they get a really good price. But guess [00:10:00] what? It's a hundred-thousand of the exact same hearing aid.

And it's the assumption that you're fitting into that 80% of those who it's good enough to get exactly what everybody else got. And it's tweaked for you a little bit, but it's, I feel like every time they come in, everybody has the exact same size dome with the exact same large filter, and it's wrong.

But they're pulling stuff off the shelf and they go, "Here, try this. This should be good enough." It's not over the counter, but it's just, there's a template and do you fit into this? And is it enough? And then here, gosh, it's so much different.

Lindsey Doherty: Like it's not a one size fits all.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: It's not. We're buying stuff for people, and we're ordering custom parts, and we're using Real Ear Measurement.

Do you guys wanna talk about what Real Ear Measurement is?

Dr. Emily Johnson: So, [00:11:00] I always joke with most of my patients that like everything in the world of audiology is based on an average man. And statistically speaking, that's true. All of the formulas and everything, it's based off of a mannequin called Carl, who is based on...

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Or Kemar, his cousin.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Or Kemar!

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yeah.

Dr. Emily Johnson: There's a few of 'em, but ultimately it's an average, man-sized ear canal, and we all know that not one of our patients is average. And not all of our patients are male. And those that are, we still do Real Ear Measurements because everybody's ear canal shape is different.

Even between ears on the same person. I always say, "They're cousins, they're not twins." And sometimes they're not even close enough to be siblings.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Nope.

Dr. Emily Johnson: And...

Dr. Dawn Heiman: They were adopted.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Sometimes they're real curvy, and the other one is just a straight shot. And so, what Real Ear Measurement is... we put this little tube [00:12:00] into your ear canal, and we actually measure the appropriate depth that it's supposed to sit at next to your eardrum, and then we measure how different your ear is compared to the average ear.

And then we save that in our computer. And then we also will then put your hearing aids on top of that tube to measure the specific output of your hearing aid in your ear canal. Because, while the computer system does a great job, it's all based on statistical averages that they have found in research, and we wanna make sure that those hearing aids are not doing anything funky in your ears, whether that's under or over amplifying information.

And sometimes those ear canals are much larger than average, so you're actually not getting enough when we're set to just the computer settings, or if you are...

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: They're smaller.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Petite. And you got a little ear canal.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yep.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Even though the computer system says, "You're right where you're supposed to be." When we measure it, we're like, "Oh, whoa. [00:13:00] That's way too loud. Let's back that off." And that way, we're taking the guesswork out of things. We don't have to wonder, "Ooh, what exactly is causing this patient's complaint or what they want fixed?" We're measuring it, so we can fix it, and better yet, we're gonna show you.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yeah.

Dr. Emily Johnson: We'd be like, look, this is what it's doing. Or if you are fit somewhere else and you come in, I love doing comparisons of like, this is what you've been walking around with. This is what it should have been, and this is why maybe things haven't been as successful as you'd hoped for.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yeah.

Dr. Emily Johnson: It's a really nice objective tool that is a foundation, and then we adjust it from there, because you're a human with preferences.

So even though our system says this is exactly how you're supposed to be, we then customize it to you as a human being with all of this newfound information. And it really just gives us the luxury of being able to fine tune something [00:14:00] specific for our patients themselves.

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: Yeah. It takes out the guesswork. There's no guesswork.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Right.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: No guessing. Yeah. And then if people are feeling more comfortable, they don't have a weird, zappy, screechy sound that they can't explain to you, and you don't know where that came from, because we never visualized how you're hearing, you know? They get it right, they go home, and the stress is less.

They can hold easier conversations. They can relax and just watch a show. They can go play cards, or go to an art class, go for walks outside with their friends and things, and then they sleep better at night because they've actively been getting out. They're social and...

I don't know how to describe it, but there's that underlying stress if things aren't going well, and you don't realize you're holding your breath, and you're trying to keep it all together, and you're trying to hide from the world that something's not quite right, and then that's when it leads to these sleep disorders. But, Dr. Micaelides, can you talk to us about [00:15:00] how a sound in your ear is not a diagnosis? It's a symptom of something.

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: Meaning?

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Like tinnitus. Many people think, "oh, I have this, and it's just tinnitus." But it's not usually. Something changed.

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: Yeah, usually there's some sort of damage to the system. In some way, shape, or form. And when that damage happens is when usually you can have that sound, but it really depends.

And it can be any kind of sound. People say buzzing, chirping. There's a lot of different ways to describe it. That's what encompasses tinnitus. And what happens is when, it becomes bothersome, that's when they usually come in to see us. When they really are up and not sleeping.

That's when we would come in and do a hearing test, see what's going on. Sometimes within that 250 to 8,000 Hertz, there might not be any hearing loss there, but there's still some in the higher frequencies because we do hear higher than what we test in office.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yeah, so...

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: There can be damage to that system farther out and that can bring...

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Absolutely. So even if you're not having a hearing problem, you don't [00:16:00] think, but suddenly you start hearing something, come in for testing.

Dr. Johnson, do you wanna address the adult that's having processing issues? Something's not quite right.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Yeah, so I frequently see this. People will come in, they're like, "I'm having difficulty hearing. I can't hear in restaurants. I've been elsewhere. Everybody says that I'm normal." Everybody struggles in background noise. To an extent, background noise is difficult for everybody.

Multiple people, attention... other executive functions come into play here, but then, when we do a hearing test, it all comes back within normal limits. So looking at just the peripheral system - so you hear the beeps, you raise your hand, you push the button - that's all normal. Speech in quiet, normal, no problem.

We add some background noise, and they fall apart. It's like, "Oh wow. Okay. Yes, there's definitely something going on here." [00:17:00] Which can be the most validating thing for these people because they've gone to multiple places, they've looked it up online, they're like, "No, if you have a normal hearing test, you have normal hearing."

But we have to remember that our ears are simply funnels to our brain. And where that all gets processed is in our brain. And so sometimes I'm having adults come in who are getting assessed for auditory processing disorders... where in grad school it was like, "Oh, this is kind of a pediatric thing; and like by the time you're an adult, you've probably figured it out by then."

And I'm seeing all of these adults in workplaces, especially post COVID, where they're like, "When I had to work from Zoom and from home, it was quiet. It was lovely. No problem. But now we're in this trendy, open-air workspace, and so there's a lot of background noise." Even if it's not super loud, it can be [00:18:00] very difficult for people, and then we're like, "Okay, there's something going on with auditory processing." Even though your audiogram is normal, you definitely do have difficulty hearing, and here are some things that we can do, whether it's compensation strategies or low-gain devices - modifying how you host meetings in the workplace, how you speak to your boss, things like that - to help people be successful. So if you've been told there's nothing wrong with you, seek out a second opinion, because there might be something going on in the background that we can address and discuss.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: I mean, isn't that the typical woman who feels like they've complained, they've talked to a professional, and they're like, "Eh, you're normal." But this person feels like something is changed, something is not normal.

More and more women are starting to say, "Hey, I feel like this is something [00:19:00] that we shouldn't have to suffer from." Some people get hormone replacement therapy, some do not. If you have a symptom of foggy brain, you don't feel like you can process anymore. Is that something that could be evaluated? When everyone said, "Oh, you just have to deal with it. There's nothing that's available." Or you suddenly have tinnitus?

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: People are told a lot that there is nothing to be done.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yeah. They were told nothing can be done for tinnitus. Well, what if you're a woman, and you suddenly have tinnitus? What if you are someone that was always doing well at work, and suddenly you've got foggy brain? You're not sleeping at night. Things are just, just not normal. You have anxiety. You're worried about having conversations or just...

Even if you're pretty good at what you do - and you're presenting and you can't understand what the audience is asking you - you feel like you've hit a level where you and your job can't move forward, or you've hit this glass ceiling or something. And we need to work with women, but also their [00:20:00] medical professionals to say, "Hey, if someone has these symptoms, have them come in."

Maybe they do have normal hearing. Maybe they don't have normal hearing. When was the last time women had their hearing tested? Even just for a baseline. But we need to look into this more. How about women that are receiving hormone replacement? Have they been able to maintain their sleep levels?

Me, myself, I never had a sleeping issue. I could fall asleep sitting up. I could fall asleep in a car. I could fall asleep in an airplane. I can sleep anywhere. And then suddenly my body went crazy last year, and I wasn't sleeping. I was all over the place. Hot flashes, you name it, whatever, and the tinnitus and the foggy brain, and I can't focus, and it's just crazy.

And then they got me back to stabilizing, and I'm a normal human being again. Well, relatively, but... I'm still crazy.

Lindsey Doherty: More normal than before?

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yeah. But right? There are so many people that, or providers that were told, "This is what we know and that's it," [00:21:00] but why can't we ask, "But what if there is a link? What if we could be helping more people?"

We help so many women already. And they know we treat them as an individual, and we don't treat you like a small man. So if you have any of these symptoms, it doesn't hurt to have testing done. The testing if nothing else is a baseline 'cause it's probably the first time you had your hearing tested since grade school.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: So if something does just suddenly change outta nowhere... what if you have chemotherapy treatment? And you think, "Well, that's not related to my ears." Treatment 10 years ago can affect your ears. What if you had a concussion? A car accident? What if you suddenly have Parkinson's Disease or MS?

Have a baseline, first of all, so then we can then track how you're processing, or if something's changed in your ears, and you now have tinnitus. You said at the beginning of this podcast, Dr. Johnson, that women tend to have, I did not know this, tend to be more likely to have [00:22:00] spontaneous  otoacoustic emissions, meaning that your ears are making noise just for fun. Right?

Dr. Emily Johnson: They're just having a good time!

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Having fun! And what if you've never known that that's just a thing and that's you? And it's okay. What if you were never told, "Okay, everything's normal," and you're like, "Yeah, that's just me," and you just move forward, as opposed to always wondering, "Is something wrong with me?"

And then if that changes, then we can reference back to what we know.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Yeah.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Yep. And we're all getting back to your graduate school days and my graduate school days about auditory processing disorders. It was supposed to be just a pediatric thing. We're all big kids, or you just weren't diagnosed as a kid.

How many people are now diagnosed with ADHD, and they probably always had it? It just wasn't investigated. Yeah.

Dr. Emily Johnson: It didn't spontaneously start at 28, 29 years old. It was just an awareness thing, and you're like, "Oh, okay, that makes sense."

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Absolutely. But like we definitely in this office are all women, and we're [00:23:00] sensitive to women's needs.

And I do think we should start our own soft study, having some questionnaires and asking when did this start? About what age? And asking about hormonal cycles as opposed to absence versus present normal hormone levels and even see if we can pull in some endocrinologists, if not even just medical doctors that specialize in women's health, menopause, perimenopause, and postmenopausal treatments. Because we can't make assumptions on how someone is dealing with their ears.

And then we didn't even touch on the fact that your inner ear is also your balance system. So even if you have a mild hearing loss, you're three times more likely to fall. And now studies show that if women fall, they are more likely to break.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: And find themselves in a rehab center and then trying to rehab, because they were not as [00:24:00] strong in their bones as men. And we don't want you to trip in the first place. And if you're not aware that your inner ear changed and your balance, your vestibular system is off, you need to just, just be aware so you go, "Oh my gosh, I'm gonna turn on the light. Oh my goodness, I'm gonna make sure my feet are feeling the padding or the tiles of the flooring. Because if we fall...

Lindsey Doherty: I know.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: We can break. I fell this year.

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: I felt that firsthand.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Firsthand. I know. I actually fell twice this year. I fell on the hike. Yeah. I didn't break that time though. Just my pride broke.

Lindsey Doherty: Luckily, that is much more easily repaired...

Dr. Dawn Heiman: There's only one this, so I didn't actually have to tell you, but I fell. Yes. Yeah. So, I don't know. I think it's a good podcast that maybe we bring in, or, I don't know, we could even have an entire day or a summit or a series all about this and dive in deeper, because we're just asking questions.

We need the experts to come in and help us to understand more, [00:25:00] so we can treat our patients better, because there's not enough research on women. And we actually are a greater population than the men. Aren't there 52% of all human beings are females? 48% are males?

Dr. Emily Johnson: I do think we are the majority. I'm not sure on the exact stats.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Okay. Uh, there's a lot of us, and especially as we need to make sure that we're not just cookie-cutter treating everybody the same way. "Oh. You have a sensory neural hearing loss. Okay. You get the same thing as everybody else."

Lindsey Doherty: Right.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Different needs. Live in different places. Different families.

Have you ever had an Italian patient? Italian background?

Dr. Emily Johnson: Yeah.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: And they go, "I don't need hearing aids. My whole family is so loud." You know? Versus others, they come from a quieter, soft-spoken family. Those people come in more likely to try to get hearing aids because their family is quieter.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Mm-hmm. [00:26:00]

Dr. Dawn Heiman: All right. Any parting words? Anything that you can think of, say if it was you? If there was some kind of trigger or symptom, why would you schedule an appointment with an audiologist?

Dr. Stephanie Micaelides: I feel like every person should schedule. It's just like getting your eyes tested.

Why is there so many people, even in schools, you're required to go and get your eyes tested? Same thing. If you're, you know, even like mid forties, come get a baseline. Come see us, get a baseline, and then we can go from there, 'cause if something does change, we know at least where you started, even if it's completely normal, right? So.

Dr. Emily Johnson: If your intuition feels off, and you don't feel heard by a provider, you went to see, seek a second opinion. Do not just let it go and take it for granted, because so many women for so many different things historically in medicine, have been written off as something else. And then... 1, 2, 3 years later, it comes back [00:27:00] that it actually was something a little bit more concerning than just anxiety.

So always seek out a second opinion if you feel like you didn't get the answers and you didn't feel validated. One of the luxuries in our office is we have time. Our appointments are scheduled for that length for a reason to make sure that we can fully test everything we're looking for, which honestly is more than just the regular hearing test.

So even if you've just had a regular hearing test before, where you're like, "I don't know, I'm still struggling way more than I think I should be." Let's see if there's something else that could have been missed on just a regular hearing test.

Lindsey Doherty: And in addition to just, we have more time to test, we have more time to go over those results as well.

And to really take a comprehensive history prior to you coming in, so that we've got more time for that. Which also gives you [00:28:00] not just, "oh, it's normal. You're normal." When you hate being told that and you feel like something is...

Dr. Dawn Heiman: Not normal.

Lindsey Doherty: Not quite right and not normal.

Dr. Dawn Heiman: And we don't just test in quiet. Our comprehensive involves speech in noise, which is usually the issue. And then if you don't do well in that, or depending on the pattern, we can then schedule you for a different day to do even more testing like Dr. Johnson was saying. Test the auditory processing portion at a deeper level. 'Cause there's so many different ways that the breakdown could be, and we wouldn't know if we didn't test.

Kind of like a neuropsychologist, you could do a basic IQ test, but they dive in deeper and find out if there is an issue. Where is it? Is it executive functioning? Is it your processing speed? Or is it your short-term memory or long-term memory? We can look into that on an auditory level. So you don't have to suffer.

Definitely I agree. Have a baseline test done and then we just monitor you from [00:29:00] there. If it turns out everything is fine or you feel like everything's fine, come in or maybe bring a friend that you're worried about. Have your testing done together.

All right, so tune in as we dive into this deeper and try to answer some of these questions of, if you were to have hormonal changes, you're going through a certain period in your life, you're only halfway done to a hundred, right? And things are different, but you feel like you should be sleeping better, you shouldn't be bothered by your tinnitus, or you shouldn't be having foggy brain. Is there something we could test for?

And then once we find the problem, we can help you through that because it's just a temporary season in your life, and there's no reason for you to suffer or be gaslit and say, "Oh, you're fine. You're histrionic." That's what they used to diagnose women as. They were just hysterical. They were histrionic. And they need to just stop complaining. Rather than look into it.

And there's so many different variables, and they actually could be [00:30:00] treated. 2025. We are definitely helping people with what they have and we have fun with it. So start just talking to one of us as a video intake. We'll take your history, we'll go through all the systems of your body, making sure everything's good.

We didn't miss anything. I don't know how many times I've put things together that no one else did, because no one else took the time to take the proper history. Just curious about the individual that we're chatting with. With that being said, make sure you listen to an audio book today or your favorite music.

Smile. And we will see you next time.

Dr. Emily Johnson: Bye.

Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Hearing Wellness Journey podcast. For more information about what we do and the services we provide, please visit our website at hearingwellnessjourney.com/podcast, where you can find more resources based on today's discussion, as well as [00:31:00] request to be a member of our Hearing Wellness Journey community on Facebook.

That's available for our listeners exclusively on hearingwellnessjourney.com/podcast.