The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 275. Brandon Sawalich: On The Science of Hearing Loss, Dementia Prevention & AI Hearing Technology

Starting point is 00:00:00 You have one in six teenagers right now have hearing loss. It's a quiet pandemic because they're blown out there where there's headphones and, you know, just loud music and a lot of reasons. Once you damage them, they don't come back. It's a health issue, but it's not one that's alarming people because it's quiet and it's invisible. When you have this kind of hearing loss and you don't get an explanation for it, it makes people feel hopeless. Hearing connects you with people. It connects you with your environment, your day job, your kids, and it's the fitness for the brain. It makes sense to me from the standpoint of isolation. I mean, as you lose your hearing, you become increasingly more isolated from your family, from your environment.

Starting point is 00:00:34 Hearing is essential. If you want everything to be balanced at work, you got to feed that brain and exercise the brain, and that's how you do it. Let's say that you go in and you get a hearing assessment and you start to notice that certain frequencies are beginning to degrade. What are the things to mitigate to stop that slide? They talk about the solutions to treat the hearing loss. And it's the two words that always gets everybody because of the stigma associated with it. And that's...

Starting point is 00:00:56 Hey, guys, welcome back to the ultimate human podcast. I'm your host, Human Biology. Gary Brecker, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And today's a particularly interesting topic to me, because having been in this space for so long and run with so many of my peers on all of the different biohacking modalities that we use,

Starting point is 00:01:29 we measure our VO2 max, we do clearly heart scans, full body per novo, we eat a whole food diet, we monitor our BMI's, we monitor our heart rate variability, we have so many measurement tools to see if we're on, track what we rarely talk about today's topic. And there is a very interesting study recently published in The Lancet that I want to bring up on the podcast that really shifted my entire mindset around hearing loss and the impact it has on longevity, isolation, neurocognitive

Starting point is 00:01:59 decline, even dementia. And so today's guest is Brandon Sowellich, Sowalich, Sowalich, Brandon Sawalich from Starkey Hearing Technologies. And he's here to talk about this stuff amongst other things, what you can do about it, when you should start testing. I'm really excited to run this topic with you because rarely do I get a fresh, new, unexplored area of, you know, biohacking and bio-optimization that could potentially be so impactful. And so I wonder if you might just give my audience a little bit of background, what you do and what's going on over at Starkey.

Starting point is 00:02:36 Sure, thank you, Gary. I'm honored to be here. This is excited because you're right. It's hearing and healthy hearing, and there's so many stigmas around it and, you know, hearing aids in today's technology. And let's clear some of these myths up. Yeah. You know, we've been in business Starkey outside of Minneapolis for 59 years. I've been president and CEO for the last seven.

Starting point is 00:02:58 Okay. And been at Starkey for 31 years, started as an intern in college. What are most people, in your opinion, fundamentally misunderstand about the relationship between hearing and. and brain health. Well, they don't connect it. I mean, that's the number one. When people think I have a hearing loss, if I say, you know, ask anybody about it,

Starting point is 00:03:18 the first thing they say is I'm old age. And then there's, you know, due to whether it's movies, media, you know, it could be now, of course, social media. Sure. The stigma is that associated with hearing aids and hearing loss, right? I was thinking of the movie Up or, you know,

Starting point is 00:03:34 a movie or TV show, hearing aids squealing because it's feeding back and it's big and, you know, it looks like you're disabled. And people have a, yeah, it's the social stigma. You know, if you're wearing a hearing aid, then you must be old. Yes, it's a stigma around that. And if I have hearing loss, well, I'm not going to die from it. And I don't need to do anything about it.

Starting point is 00:03:54 So it's a disadvantage that is out there more than people think, but 44 million in the US estimated 500, half a billion. 44 million have hearing loss. Hearing loss. Like clinical grade hearing loss. Wow. And half a billion around the world. So it is a, it's a health issue.

Starting point is 00:04:12 Yeah. But it's not one that's alarming people because it's, like I said, it's quiet and it's invisible. You know, in preparing for the podcast, I started going down some of the rabbit hole in the science behind hearing loss and its connectivity to brain health, early onset, cognitive decline. And I stumbled on to a study in The Lancet, very well done. This was a peer-reviewed, double-blind, randomized, controlled trial. It was a large control group. And essentially what they surmised was that hearing loss is the most preventable.

Starting point is 00:04:47 It is the single most, the intervention is the single most preventable way to mitigate the risks of dementia. I found that pretty fascinating. Yeah, we've been waiting for the results of that study for it was over three years, I believe. Yeah, and I want to be specific about it in the conclusion section.

Starting point is 00:05:04 They named untreated hearing loss as the single largest modifiable risk factor for dementia. So can you kind of walk us through the physiology? You know, it makes sense to me from the standpoint of isolation, right? I mean, as you lose your hearing, you become increasingly more isolated from your family, from your environment. It's obviously the way that we all interact, so my whole audience is listening to this podcast. But can you walk us through the physiology behind that?

Starting point is 00:05:36 Yeah, if you look at, you know, what the human brain works, I mean, we hear with our brains. And if you look at all the five senses, you know, hearing is, you could argue, they're all important, of course, but hearing connects you with people. It connects you with your environment, your day job, your kids, go down the list. And it's the fitness for the brain. And so, again, it's not something that's been talked about because it's always talked about when, you know, you're maybe older in life. Again, it's not as important. And with today's, you know, discussions around mental health, if you start having a hearing loss, let's say 35, 40,

Starting point is 00:06:11 could be noise-induced, you know, many, many reasons. You know, you start, you know, drawing, withdrawing from, you know, your day-to-day activities. And so what we've been doing is, you know, educating people on this because, again, it's not something that's been above the radar. And if you think about the mental health discussions, And somebody that does start having a 35 or 45, they don't do anything about their hearing loss until about seven years. It's about the average.

Starting point is 00:06:40 Because it's never that bad. When it starts to decline and you're talking a little louder to them, they're turning near towards you or something. The spouse usually is the one that forces something, go get your hearing checked. So seven years to do something about it, depending on when it came on. And then the mental aspect of, think of, you know, you do start withdrawing. You isolate yourself. You start putting yourself in positions where you don't have to interrupt or say, excuse me, can you say that again? Because people start becoming embarrassed about it.

Starting point is 00:07:09 And at a point where they really don't notice it. Wow. And you start forgetting sounds. You know, I remember when we, my mom's father, Barry Blake, you know, in his early 80s, his hearing had significantly declined. Now, he had been in World War II and he had had some pretty serious concussive injuries and probably accumulated that over time, my grandfather. And I remember that we would sit around the table and we would literally have to shout at him.

Starting point is 00:07:40 And he was very reclusive because of that. And when you would sit in a quiet room and speak loudly to me, he wasn't unintelligent. He didn't become dumber. He just became more reclusive. And, you know, I remember even to this day, you know, some of my aunts and uncles would almost talk to him like a child, kind of like baby talk,

Starting point is 00:08:05 just because he couldn't hear. And I knew that that irritated him, you know, because, again, he wasn't becoming an invalid. He was just hard of hearing, you know, and he was probably insulted by it now that I think back about it. But, you know, a lot of the physiology around hearing that I am familiar with is, you know, some measures of, damage to your hearing, especially those in the cochlea, the cilia, the hair is in there. Once you damage them, they don't come back. Right. That's the one thing people that recognize is once you lose it, you're not getting it back.

Starting point is 00:08:40 And it could continue, obviously, to get worse, whether it's genetic or more noise-induced. But you have one in six teenagers right now have hearing loss. Really? It's a quiet pandemic. No pun intended. One in six teenagers, because they're blown out their ears, whether it's headphones and, you know, just loud music. I'd love to talk about that, too. I mean, what are your opinions on some of these, like, earbuds and things like that?

Starting point is 00:09:05 I use a corded headset. Sometimes I want to go to the gym, but I keep the noise at a modifiable level. I don't blast myself. I've got a lot of friends that are DJs that are around really loud, noisy environments. You know, consistently, most of them are either dealing with mild tinnitus or they're also dealing with measurable hearing loss. But once you discover, let's say that you do a hearing test, and you discover that you have, you know, certain pitches that are missing or certain pitches that are, that are frequencies that are not audible to you or they're diminishing in your ability to hear them.

Starting point is 00:09:40 I mean, what can be done about that? Well, you know, you could, obviously, you're going to go see an audiologist or hearing health care professional that could do the test. Look inside the air, make sure it's healthy, functional, you know, sometimes air waxes the problem or gets in the way. That's a good one. I mean, that makes it easy, though. Right. It's rare, but it does happen. And then, you know, they talk about the solutions to treat the hearing loss.

Starting point is 00:10:03 And it's the two words that always gets everybody because of the stigma associated with it. And that's, you know, the hearing aid. Yeah. You know, this. And it's not what it was. It wasn't your grandfather's hearing aid. It's like the size of a coffee bean, what's going in your ear. There's 3010 components in here that has to, you know, work all at once.

Starting point is 00:10:24 And we'll stand with sweat. hairspray, you name it. And with the 310 components, you're dealing with an AI processor, Bluetooth radio, and many other components, just to get the sound at the right levels. And you're talking to high-tech sound and, you know, sleep.

Starting point is 00:10:42 But it's more than just sound amplification. It's more than just that hearing aid, receiving the sound, then amplifying the signal. That's what they used to do, right? Because it'd amplify everything. Right. So now what we're doing with AI,

Starting point is 00:10:54 we were the first to bring in AI into hearing technology in 2017. So what we're doing with that is we're personalizing the sound to the listener. So, I mean, AI is the perfect listing tool that's adjusting and adjusting their sounds and what their daily life needs to be so they could do it, I would say, with hearing ease. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, I see a lot of these commercials, you know, for hearing aids, and one of the big hallmarks that they're trying to address, you know, at least from these commercials I see, is not picking up the ambient noise because, you know, the scenario is always like you're sitting in a restaurant, you know, two, three, four people at a table, you're having a conversation.

Starting point is 00:11:39 But the hearing aid is picking up all the clanking of the dishes at other tables and amplifying that sound. and that seems to me like it would actually be, that would give me anxiety if you amplified all that sound. And that's what you were discussing just a bit ago, the amplifying sound. That's the old technology of what it would do. And what we're doing now is again, if I'm sitting here,

Starting point is 00:12:00 we were at an event and you and I were talking, it's, you know, quieting, you know, knowing the environment that I'm in, a noisy environment, it's quieting the sounds around me and know that I want to, I'm talking to you're having a conversation and I want to focus on speech.

Starting point is 00:12:14 You know, it's not going to bring in everything else at the same levels. Yeah. Now, what was wild, which is not related to its ability to improve your hearing at all was I did a demo with this late last year. One of your docs came over, I think, with Damon, fitted me for him. And I have a Portuguese-speaking housekeeper that's been with me for a long time. She also speaks English. I don't speak a lick of Portuguese. But we turned on the language translation, and it was pretty wild. Like in almost real time, she would speak fluent Portuguese to me, and it was translating it into English.

Starting point is 00:12:52 I thought that's like a, that's like some spy level shit. I mean, that was like, you know, like James Bond. So, you know, because like no longer can like the people at the table that, you know, speak Russian or German or whatever and you're only an English speaker, no longer can they have that quiet conversation. Yeah, that's what Starkie's doing different. I mean, that's what we're doing since 2017 is turning in it from a multipurpose, a single purpose to a multi-purpose device.

Starting point is 00:13:18 So, you know, there's a whole lot of reasons, I'm sure that people can lose their hearing, you know, trauma, head injury, age, you know, declines, stiffening in the tympanic memory. Medication. What kind of medications actually run risk? Well, I mean, pain medication. You go down the list. There's, you know, other, you get the warning now,

Starting point is 00:13:37 but there's quite a bit that are promoted on TV and other places that if you take too much of it, you know, you're going to get tinnitus or it can, you know, lose some hearing. You pay medication as I mentioned that's one of the top of you take too much. And what about tinnitus, or tinnitus, as you call it? Is that the right way to say it? Tenetis, yes. Okay, I'll take it from you since you're in the industry. But I always said tinnitus.

Starting point is 00:14:02 But, you know, that has been an issue for an increasing number of clients of mine. I've found a number of things. One, when their nervous system is in a heightened state of alert and they're trapped in the sympathetic state, they can't calm down. I mean, it's well known that if you go into a state of fight or flight or you have a panic attack or you experience a traumatic moment, very often you can have ringing in the ears without a traumatic event.

Starting point is 00:14:32 You know, gunshot didn't go off next to your ear or anything like that. What, if anything, can you do for chronicitis? You match the frequency? Sometimes with our hearing technology, yes, we can mask it and give it that white noise effect where you kind of forget about it. It just calms it. You know, I've seen it so bad on people where it's, I won't compare it to chronic pain, but it's at that level where it just drives them crazy where it's just it debilitates them.

Starting point is 00:15:03 Actually, no, there's some very interesting data on that. I mean, complex regional pain syndrome, I think, is the leading, is right up there with the highest suicide rates. But chronic unrelenting tinnitus is not far behind. I mean, and I've actually had clients of mine that suffered from unrelenting tinnitus and it just destroyed their life. And people that have struggled with that, I have so much empathy for because it's not something you can get away from, you know?

Starting point is 00:15:32 I mean, you know, if your wrist is bothering you, you know, it's kind of distant and you can compartmentalize it, but your hearing is. inside your head. And if it doesn't shut off 24 hours a day, seven days a week, I can't, it's like Chinese water torture. I mean, it's just... And no one knows you're suffering, but you. I mean, because you can't explain it except the way we just did very plainly. But there's so many things that go into it. And in today's world, we're more exposed to sound loud sounds than ever. Think about, yes, there's your nightclubs, your music's sporting events. You know, they're promoting pump up the volume, pump, you know, they want it loud in there. And you get, you're

Starting point is 00:16:08 getting it up to jet engine loud. I mean, it's some of it. of that, that's where the ringing can come, of course, with hearing loss, but the ringing can come from constant exposure from loud sounds. And, you know, I've been reading that even a single event like that, where that noise is that loud, can cause some measure of permanent hearing loss. At the UFC event on Saturday night. I was thinking about it myself. It was 122.

Starting point is 00:16:36 I have pulled out my... If you have a desk. I do. We do, so we also do, we also work with preventing. I mean, I guess you're in the space. You travel with your own meter. We have our sound gear technology and product that protects healthy hearing. So we work with the Department of Defense, hunters, you know, other device that gives you a situation where this. So, you know, you have the hearing because it's not like plugs are putting cotton in your because then you lose everything. You can't hear what's going on around you.

Starting point is 00:17:04 And at the certain DB level, you know, it'll instantly, with a. milliseconds, shut it down and protect our soldiers serving along with hunters, industrial workers, go down the line. Oh, so if there's some kind of concussive sound, it would mitigate that? Like a noise cancelling. Noise cance. Yes, it shuts it down and protects the hearing. That's great.

Starting point is 00:17:27 Absolutely protects it. Because, you know, one of the largest channels that we serve, Starkey works with, is the VA, veterans. And I've been, and I've talked to senators and others when we're talking about veterans hearing health and, you know, just having discussions. You know, they are our number one customer. I said, I hope in five to ten years, that's not the case. Right. Because more education, more technology, there can be things done about up front. Are they starting to be proactive about that?

Starting point is 00:17:57 Yes, they are. Okay. Yes. And, you know, I've got to think that, you know, I'm going to go back to tonight's again for a second. because there's a large group of sufferers. One of the best, most popular podcast shorts that I've done, you know, recently was on tinnitus. What do you do to mitigate that?

Starting point is 00:18:20 And I know it's multifactorial. You can have anatomical damage. You can be in a high-stress state. Your nervous system can be trapped in a sympathetic state and could be actually causing the perception of sound when there is no sound. but do you see anatomical anomalies that lead to this? I mean, there's classic manures, right?

Starting point is 00:18:39 Yeah. But there's so many paths to get there. It really depends on the person's awareness of their environment day in and day out. What are they doing, you know, just like our eyes. What are we doing, exposing ourselves to the ears? And then, you know, that person's, of course, their genetic makeup. Are they going to get the hearing loss, tenetis, or how bad? I mean, there's so many paths to it. I wish there was one answer.

Starting point is 00:19:02 There's a lot of things that are advertised or marketed as, you know, whether it's drops or pills, you know, to help with the tenetess. And, you know, I don't have any solution or found anything there that cures it. But I do know that masking and using hearing aids, if you have hearing loss or hearing technology, can mask it and suppress it where you're not thinking about it. So this is like a similar to how noise cancelling would work. It would match the frequency. Destructive interference says that a two frequencies of.

Starting point is 00:19:30 opposite wavelength meet, they cancel out. So you're trying to tune that to match that frequency or frequencies that they're hearing and then provide that as a constant on to snip that band. Because what I could do with the hearing aids I just showed you is, you know, have them on. Yes, I'm using them the way I want to use them, but I could have the masker on because I have tentatus, but I just remembered it sitting here talking to you. You do have it? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:19:55 Yeah. So you're masking it right now with these dual hearing aids. It just gives it a little, like in an office. And I got to tell you, had you not brought it up, I would not notice that you're wearing hearing aids. I can't see a thing. No, they're very sleek. That's the thing. People don't, the vanity is the, you know, part of that stigma.

Starting point is 00:20:10 They don't want to be seen because they don't want to say, be labeled or feel like I'm disabled or old. We're changing that conversation. This is a superpower. Yeah. Because, you know, think about everything that hearing affects your life, your job. You know, I mean, people that even have a mild hearing loss, you know, today and with the technology we're using, you know, it gives you. that edge, you know, you could actually hear better than normal some situations. So I know that some of the technology that you have now with this new AI generation,

Starting point is 00:20:40 it mitigates fall risk, or at least it can detect fall risk. You know, there's a number of things that it does, you know, it tracks biometrics. What is it tracking? What kind of feedback? And where does that information go? How is it actionable? So, you know, you have to make, you know, number one, People get hearing aids, they want to hear better noise.

Starting point is 00:21:02 One channel, and I'll say path that we took, is how do we, again, make it a multipurpose device? And, you know, I view it, kind of started thinking about it as, you know, Jarvis at Iron Man. That's where it's going to go. I mean, this is going to be your personal assistant. It's going to be about productivity, helping you do be the best that you can each and every day. So, you know, we look at better hearing. We want the best sound, best hearing quality for the person. and then Starkey, you know, has been the pioneer

Starting point is 00:21:31 and driving healthable features. But when it says it's the biometrics, what kind of biometrics are you getting from? You measuring temperature, are you measuring? So you have to be doing some kind of gait analysis if you're estimating their fall risk. Yeah, six embedded sensors. And fall risks, so if somebody was wearing our product falls,

Starting point is 00:21:52 it detects a fall, it sends a text to three of their family members. Oh, like the old I've fallen and I can't get up. Yeah, think about the ears of the new wrist. This kind of where we could do with it. Because if you look at the ear canal, we can do heart rate. You can do temperature. You know, we talk about we can do the step counting. So, I mean, there's the features there that, you know, we purposely put there for the demographic, per se.

Starting point is 00:22:21 And if just one of them say, you know, one of like the fault detection saves somebody life, which I've had many letters thanking us for. what we've done because it saves somebody's life, it's worth it. Now, think about the next round, what we can do or what we're working on, because we're pushing it as far as the technology can right now. But each year we're getting more and more opportunity, but going back to mental health, if you have your mom, your dad, or whoever, I'm concerned about, you know, one of the features, you know, kind of look at your overall mental health, it can detect by the tone of your voice throughout the day.

Starting point is 00:22:53 Am I sad? Am I down? Am I depressed? Am I active? and it could give the feedback to the patient through our app, through the app, which can control the hearing aid. But also, you can give it permission and through our hearshare app, the family, mom, dad, who the caretakers are,

Starting point is 00:23:10 can get the information as well. Just out of curiosity, how many languages do you translate? 78. 78? 78? I didn't even know there were 78 languages, but that would be wild. I thought Melania Trump was killing it speaking like nine. We were at 74 a year ago that they updated me because I was going to be.

Starting point is 00:23:25 You added just some random island off of another island just because you can. So this Genesis AI, I mean, when we talk about who needs it and when we should start hearing tests. I mean, is this like a biometric that we should be tracking? I have a baseline from when I did the test with you guys. and is this a baseline a biomarker that we should start paying attention to and if so why and how do we track it? Do we get this data and then do it twice a year, once a year to see if we have frequencies that are degrading?

Starting point is 00:24:07 I think, well, I know once a year. You should get your hearing tested at least once a year and it takes, it's 30 minutes. I mean, not even that, maximum 30 minutes. And then you're baselining your audio grab, especially if you're working in high noise, or if there's a lot of genetic hearing loss in the family. So it's just something, there's so many things you want to test for nowadays to make sure you're tuned, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:24:31 Hearing's usually one of the last. Dude, I'm telling you, I think this is like a major hole in our industry. It is. Nobody's talking about it. Yeah, you're the first guest I've ever had come on and talk about hearing loss. I've had people talk about tinnitus mainly related to, I had a viral pathologist on that talked about, you know, certain viruses and pathologies in the brain that actually caused tinnitus. And how it's, you know, that very often went undiagnosed that people weren't doing like viral pathogen testing, you know, long term chronic Lyme sufferers and others that actually have damage that when they have an anatomical exam, an E.NT says. your ears are fine.

Starting point is 00:25:17 Right. All the bones look good, the cochlear looks good. There's no damage to your tympanic membrane. Your station tubes are clear. You know, all of the anatomy is working. So there's,

Starting point is 00:25:26 there's, it goes back to the, well, now it's just all in your head. And which literally it is, but no patient likes to hear that. And no patient hears the same. Yeah. We don't have the same ears.

Starting point is 00:25:37 There's, everybody's ears are different. They're like a thumbprint. Everybody's unique hearing, unique ears. Yeah, I mean, I know you used to drive my wife crazy when she, you know,

Starting point is 00:25:45 after she had her L5S1 fusion, and she had this back pain, she would meet so many of these healers, and they were like, well, the pain is all in your head. And she's like, no, no, I'm pretty sure it's in my back. Because I feel it, and I'm not making this up. And that used to just drive her nuts when people would say that.

Starting point is 00:26:03 She's like, all these people telling me that I'm like making it up and I can sort of think it to make it go away. And we've mitigated it with like meditation and other things, but you know, when you have this kind of hearing loss and you don't get an explanation for it. Especially tonight is that, you know, it makes people feel hopeless.

Starting point is 00:26:20 And I've met people on their journey, clients of mine, that have really hit that rock bottom state where they are grappling with the exception that this may be permanent. Now, by the grace of God and most of these folks, in fact, all of them, we were able to walk them out of it. But I never really thought about hearing age as a mitigation tool. Well, thinking about what you just said about your wife's chronic backpate.

Starting point is 00:26:44 most people, if your wife was telling you, or mine was telling me, you have your hearing loss, you're going to deny it. Nobody's going around and saying, hey, I have a hearing loss. Yeah, what? Right, right. No, exactly. It's usually reversed because they get to that stigma or and not understanding the importance of healthy hearing or being connected each and every day, what it can do for you. Yeah. So what age should we start?

Starting point is 00:27:08 I mean, and what age and what are classic risk factors where you say if you work in this environment. I mean, obviously, if you're a nightclub DJ, I get it. But, right, but I also don't think we, we, we have enough respect for, you know, short mitigated, you know, concussive forces to our brain. Like, I love to shoot. Right. Whenever I'm shooting, I actually put ear plugs in and then I have noise cancelling headsets to go above that. I'm where I'm very, very tight. They have a volume knob that allows me to hear, you know, ambient noise or bubble technology or whatever they call it. Um, Since I was a young, young boy, my father was a Navy captain,

Starting point is 00:27:49 and I grew up shooting. I bird hunt, but even when I would hunt or target shoots keat, or just shoot targets, my father was absolutely on our ass about wearing hearing. I have pictures of me as seven years old with a little tiny 22. And now, looking back,

Starting point is 00:28:09 I'm like, I'm really happy that he did that. But all the guys that I hunted with, You know, we would bird hunt, we would deer hunt, we never wore hearing protection. So it was kind of unique. In fact, I used to get teased for it because I would put the, but a bolt action 30 out six makes a lot of noise. We see a lot of, that's where you get the high frequency hearing loss from shooting. That's really my hearing loss.

Starting point is 00:28:32 So at that level, yeah, shooting. Okay. And you start, you know, at that high frequency, you start, you know, your wife's voices, right? You know, usually females are... Your wife's voice? You start losing... You start... That's why...

Starting point is 00:28:48 You just lose the wife's voice. No, that's your wife's voice. You're listening and you lose that frequency of voice because most females have the higher frequency of voice. And you start missing... You just liberated millions and millions of men, right? We're not listening to you, ladies. We were shooting and now we can't hear you.

Starting point is 00:29:04 And I have a high frequency hearing loss. Right. And that's usually why it is the wife that, you know, gets her husband in there for a hearing... It's like, you better start listening. me and if you're not, you're going to get a hearing aid. Yeah, yeah. That's amazing. And that's what the dayman was one of the reasons we talked is, you know, he's wearing...

Starting point is 00:29:18 He loves you guys, man. I mean, he's like, yeah, can't wait for you to you guys to meet and, you know, I think this is a big missing area in the industry. He was, you know, he turns his TV up too loud at night. That's what he noticed. He's like, I can do something about this because, you know, you stream right into his hearing aids and

Starting point is 00:29:34 there's no sound. Yeah. But with him, you know, you know, it's, you know, he's, you know, he's, working with him has been great because he gives a different perspective of outside of, you know, what I work with, you know, it's productivity device for him and Kevin O'Leary, Kevin. Yeah, I knew Kevin. Kevin, where is somebody who's telling me all about it?

Starting point is 00:29:53 Like, I'm sitting waiting for an interview and all these people are just sitting in chairs. He goes, but I'm working because I've got this in and I'm texting and I'm telling it what to text. And, you know, so I mean, it is a productivity device for active. Yeah. And I mean, it's good to have spokespeople like that because, you know, the one thing I appreciate about Damon is he's very vulnerable. He's very transparent.

Starting point is 00:30:12 know, he just posted this whole journey with this biologic dentist, you know, taking all these posts out of his mouth. And as gnarly as that was, I think it drew a lot of attention to, you know, like a subject that people are unaware of. I mean, the reason why you're sitting here is because Damon really encouraged me to do this. You got, you know, I had my hearing tested last year and spoke Portuguese for about 15 minutes, which was actually really, really cool. The problem was, it only translated one direction. I need to get her a set so I can talk to her. That's actually kind of cool.

Starting point is 00:30:45 I can talk to her in English. She could talk to me in Portuguese. That's the ultimate goal. And we're getting there where it's just simultaneous where you can hear, you know, just instant translation and something for somebody else that could understand you. Because that's the biggest barrier is language, right? If you're especially traveling and people's understanding people.

Starting point is 00:31:02 Yeah, when I was young, and I still speak rusty French. I used to speak it very fluently. but I was in this cultural exchange program called Nassel, this North Atlantic Cultural Exchange League. And so I would spend a semester in France and then exchange student and come spend a semester with us and started in high school. It was amazing experience.

Starting point is 00:31:20 But I do remember being like 14, 15 years old. And I was with the family, had three boys that were my age, young boys. And when everybody was like speaking French, I felt so isolated. And it dawned on me the amount of idle time that we spend in conversation. Right.

Starting point is 00:31:40 Like right now, if somebody was sitting in this room watching this podcast, not only would be boring, but there'd be no way for them to participate. Right. And we, so much of what we do is around conversation and communication.

Starting point is 00:31:52 And, you know, we would ride our bike somewhere and we would just go get sandwiches at a sandwich shop, and I would sit there and those guys are just chatting, and then they would burst out laughing. Right.

Starting point is 00:32:01 They're high-fiving. And I felt completely outside of that conversation. Yeah. And I imagine for people that have progressive hearing loss, I mean, this is how they feel all the time. Right. And then they just develop a defensive personality around it.

Starting point is 00:32:13 Yeah. It changes people. It changes your personality. Yeah. I mean, I know we have helped many celebrities, movie stars, global leaders, entertainers. And if they're, if they've, you know, they're starting to change in their personality because of the hearing loss, they're very self-aware because they have to perform. You know, they want to do something about it. If their hearing aid is, you know, is not working, they're calling.

Starting point is 00:32:37 they're calling us right away because they get into panic because it disconnects them from the most important job is that's working with people or entertaining people. It doesn't matter if you're a world known entertainer or somebody in the community you still need to be connected and they just don't understand what that means

Starting point is 00:32:54 and what's the first step. Yeah. So for people that do want to take the next step or they want to know more about you or more about Starkey, where can they find you? Starkie dot, Tom. Starkie and that's S-T-A-R-K-E-Y. Yes.com. And we have information about our current Omega AI product. Is that what you're wearing?

Starting point is 00:33:13 Yes. Okay. Yes. And we have a locator on there that will send them to their local healthcare professional or test and assessment. Okay. And that takes about 30 minutes. Yeah, and most of them are free.

Starting point is 00:33:26 They don't charge. And people that do this, let's say that you go in and you get a hearing assessment and hearing test and your hearing is fine. You know, you're perfect hearing. That's called 2020 vision, the hearing version of that. But, or you go in and you start to test once a year and you start to notice that certain frequencies are beginning to degrade. What are the things to mitigate to stop that slide? Self-awareness of your day-to-day or weekly hobbies or work.

Starting point is 00:33:57 I mean, because you're talking to get, whether you're a hunter or maybe work in a loud construction zone, whatever it might be. It's at your hearing protection. And do you think that the phone ones that you put in are enough? It depends on the brains. Yeah, I mean, you're not going to show up to a UFC fight with headphones on it. No, no, no. But I actually, it's funny because we were at the fights together Saturday. I was thinking about that because there was a few time on those walkout songs that I was like,

Starting point is 00:34:25 this is obnoxious. Like, I could feel that it would, I mean, it was very loud. Yeah. And I don't know how Bruce Buffer still hears anything. I mean, his voice is still so loud. I mean, that guy. Really, it was, but there's product. I mean, we have our sound gear products,

Starting point is 00:34:42 inexpensive, sound gear shield, where they just go in and it allows you to hear, I mean, with the microphone, and good hearing technology, so you're not being over amplified by anything. But again, then it shuts it off in the loud environment. So Starkey.com is where they can find you. And what about you personally?

Starting point is 00:35:00 Are you crawling around social media anywhere? You got any books that I need to know about? Brandon Swahillard. S-A-W-A-L-C-H, so if I'd be on LinkedIn and Instagram and Brandon Swelwich.com. All right, beautiful. You know, I'll link all these. I'm also going to link the Lancet study because I found that fascinating. And it's proof positive that there is a direct,

Starting point is 00:35:21 and they called this a causal link, not a correlated link. And this amplifies the importance of that. It's not just like a trend analysis. This was a direct causal link, which I found pretty fascinating. and I hope to get that message out, you know, alongside of you so that, because it's not hopeless. I mean, people, there's a lot of people can do about it. So I wind down all of my podcasts by asking my guests the same question. So what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

Starting point is 00:35:52 Oh. To be an ultimate. See, if you were watching the podcast, Brandon, you would have known this was coming. Now you're caught off guard. So let the pressure sink in. Be the ultimate human. to me is about purpose life that's giving back and helping others. That's amazing.

Starting point is 00:36:07 Because, you know, I'm not an expert in a lot of things, but I'm an expert in what I do and what I can do for others. And so, yes, we're the business of being in business, but we're in the people business too. And I think what you're doing is inspiring because there's some things I need to get on top of. I mean, I can say here and talk about hearing, but I need to be doing some things, other things for myself.

Starting point is 00:36:30 and keep doing that because you're inspiring more than you realize. I know you get a lot of fan mail, but more and more somebody like me that has been in this biohacking area now for about a year, thanks to Damon, kind of introduced me to it, and it's fascinating. And I remember thinking, that's like, what do they do for hearing? Nobody's doing anything. And there's important things. I know there's priorities.

Starting point is 00:36:52 But hearing is essential. And it just, if you want everything to be balanced and work, you got to feed that brain and exercise the brain. that's all you do it i appreciate that man well brandon i'm gonna we're gonna follow this journey hope to have you back on again sometime and ladies and gentlemen until next time that's just science

The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka - 275. Brandon Sawalich: On The Science of Hearing Loss, Dementia Prevention & AI Hearing Technology

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