Retired schoolteacher Lynn Goodwin wasn’t sure she needed any help with her hearing.
“I didn’t wear hearing aids, and I thought I was doing fine,” she said. “But at the same time, I had found myself increasingly asking friends or my two sons, ‘What did you say?’ and I was at a point where I knew hearing aids might be in my future.”
That changed when the 65-year-old received a call from National Institutes of Health-funded researchers at the USF Auditory Rehabilitation and Clinical Trials Laboratory inviting her to participate in an intensive pilot study of seniors with minimal hearing loss.
Lynn Goodwin, schoolteacher & USF Health patient.
The Early Age-Related Hearing Loss Investigation pilot study, known as PEARHLI, aims to evaluate how hearing aids impact adults between the ages of 55 and 75 with mild hearing loss – evaluating how improved hearing affect communication, physical health, mental health and overall wellbeing.
The clinical study is led by Victoria Sanchez of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine Department of Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery, and Michelle Arnold and Theresa Chisholm of the USF College of Behavioral & Community Sciences Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. Together, they’ve been leading research on the effects of auditory wellness on health for more than a decade – collaborating with researchers from across the world.
The results of the yet-to-be published study are dramatic. Patients with mild hearing loss who received hearing aids, along with education, counseling and self-management support — reported a myriad of benefits. Many patients say they experienced an increased desire to engage in the world around them rather than withdraw, becoming more physically active and feeling happier overall.
“A number of our study participants came to us saying, ‘I’m not really sure what you can do for me,’” said doctoral student Sarah Bochat, who was one of the audiologists on the study. “They would say, ‘I’ll try this out, but I have reservations due to hearing about other friends and family with negative prior hearing aid experiences.’ And that was the case when I called Lynn Goodwin. She was on the fence about whether she should even join the study.”
Goodwin ultimately signed on because she felt she had nothing to lose. She never dreamed of how much she was about to gain: a significant change in her ability to pick up bits of conversation she previously missed, and a greater sense of connectedness with the people around her.
Comprehensive intervention is key
The key for Goodwin, as with all 30 participants who recently completed the PEARHLI study, was to have the hearing aids customized and fine-tuned for clarity and comfort roughly every two weeks, “rather than buying a set of hearing devices from a store independently and going through it alone, with no guidance is often a recipe for frustration and a negative experience,” she said.
“These clinical research studies are mutually beneficial. Patients benefit from top-notch clinical care while also giving us the data we need to evaluate the effects of better hearing on living better. Hearing aids have amazing benefits beyond just enhanced communication,” Sanchez said. “Because patients are hearing sounds more clearly, they are able to fully participate in their activities, adapt better to challenging environments, and have a better sense of self. There are many hypotheses that when you fully engage your sensory systems, people gain a better sense of their physical self, they are more confident and can mentally and cognitively engage more efficiently.”
The ARCT Lab team also underscores a physical benefit from improved hearing in the form of better balance and fewer falls.
Victoria Sanchez, associate professor of Otolaryngology.
“Sometimes people are so focused on hearing that they may not notice that their feet could be tripping up,” Sanchez said. “Have you ever stopped walking to concentrate on a conversation? Or stop moving to think through a difficult problem? People with normal hearing do this often, they focus all their cognitive resources and mental power on the task at hand; so think about that for someone who has hearing loss — effortful listening can distract our brain from controlling our postural stability and missing sounds from our surroundings can make it difficult to move safely without important spatial cues. I believe when you alleviate hearing problems, then you have more resources to be more active and engaged.”
ARCT Lab investigators Arnold, Chisolm and Sanchez recently contributed to a publication that reports reduced falls among patients who received hearing aids. This study was part of the landmark, multi-institution randomized controlled clinical trial known as the ACHIEVE Study. Published in Lancet in 2023, results show that hearing aids slowed down cognitive decline in older adults.
“There’s no question the right hearing aids, working with an audiologist, lead to a better quality of life as we age,” Goodwin said. “I would encourage people who suspect hearing loss is happening — and it is going to happen — to jump on it. Don’t wait until you’re 80, because you won’t know what you’ve been missing all that time.”
Goodwin now has an idea, judging from how well she can hear during lunch outings with friends. She said, “I wasn’t at a point where I was choosing to stay home, but now if I’m at a table with six other women, it makes it much easier to hear all of the conversation!”
She also said she stays more connected to her family and friends because she has her hearing aids connected to her cellphone, allowing her to stream phone conversations, but also allowing her to make adjustment to her hearing aids directly in the cellphone app. “You can use an app to filter out background noise,” she said. “And the hearing aids also connect to my phone via Bluetooth, which makes talking on the phone much easier, too.”
Hearing and brain health
Another PEARHLI study participant, retired executive secretary Pam Burnham, reported similar outcomes after participating in the study. Burnham, 72, learned she had slight hearing loss in a trip to the audiologist in 2022. A widow, Burnham was concerned about the high price of hearing aids, so her primary care doctor recommended she consider joining the ARCT Lab studies.
“It was a wonderful experience,” Burnham said. “And once I got my hearing aids, I realized, especially going out to dinner, how much I wasn’t catching. I have talked to so many people who may be in denial or simply don’t want to deal with hearing aids. I say, ‘I understand it’s a hassle, but your hearing also affects your cognitive abilities. So, when you get your hearing right, that helps your brain work better.”
USF’s recently completed PEARHLI study is part of yet another larger clinical trial being conducted with Columbia University, the Early Age-Related Hearing Loss Investigation, or EARHLI study.
“Some of our past work had been with adults in their 70s and 80s, but patients who are in their 50s and 60s also have hearing loss,” Sanchez said. “And we need to investigate the global benefits of hearing intervention in midlife too. We did the PEARHLI pilot study to prepare for the study we’re now doing with Columbia, which will also include functional magnet brain imaging.”
If the pilot is any indication, EARHLI may well underscore several fundamental findings.
“There’s been a bit of controversy regarding how much benefit can be expected in individuals with mild hearing loss, simply because it’s not severe,” Bochat said. “But here, the remarkable piece is that even in these folks with mild hearing loss, they report feeling like a different person. They say things like, ‘I didn’t know what I was missing.’ Or ‘I’m happier’ and ‘I’m getting back to the previous life I enjoyed.’”
Sanchez puts it another way, not in values on a medical chart but values in lifestyle.
“Maybe you stopped going to lunch with your friends because you just couldn’t hear well and it was exhausting to listen. But with the proper hearing intervention, you start going to more lunches and maybe join a walking group because you can hear better and are more confident in your surroundings. Now you have an even bigger friend group. And instead of slowing down, you’re staying active, moving your body and are more physically able to do things you want to do — or doing new things you never tried yet.”
Sanchez reflects on the ARCT Lab and the collaborations at many institutions that continue to produce high-impact research. “The ARCT Lab is an exemplary symbol of ‘ONE USF,’ where our research team spans cross different colleges, many campuses and different yet complimentary expertise and disciplines. All of us collaborating together allows us to ask and answer important health questions not only dealing with physiological health, but also emotional and psychosocial wellbeing.”
The result of their research: Improved hearing has a far-reaching impact on people’s lives in sometimes surprising ways.
To stay connected with ARCT Lab’s research and opportunities to participate or collaborate, please click here.
Video by Allison Long, USF Health Communications.