20 Questions With Dr. Cliff Olson

Ben Thompson, AuD

Today we’re going to play 20 questions with Dr. Cliff Olson. Welcome to episode 15 of the Pure Tinnitus and Hearing Podcast.

Cliff Olson opened Applied Hearing Solutions in Anthem, Arizona. Around the same time, he started his YouTube channel – Doctor Cliff, AuD to educate consumers on their hearing loss treatment options and the importance of hearing aid best practices. Dr. Cliff, we gonna get right into this game, what audiology project of yours are you most proud of and why? Question number one.

Cliff Olson, AuD

There’s been a lot of projects, if I was forced to pick one, I would probably say that it’s my network. The Best Practice PRO Network, which actually started as the AuD Approved Provider Network. And the whole focus of the network is for me to provide some kind of vetting for hearing care professionals who follow best practices. So individuals with hearing loss can actually find a hearing care professional that does basically the same stuff that I do in my clinic out here in the Phoenix, Arizona area. So something that took a while to kind of like create. And then, we’ve had it since around the end of 2019 is when we launched it. And we’re up to about, I don’t know, 80, 90 providers throughout the United States and Canada at this point.

Ben Thompson, AuD

That’s fantastic we’re playing 20 questions with Dr. Cliff question number two, when is buying hearing aids online, a bad idea?

Cliff Olson, AuD

Only when you’re buying them from a company that is not actually selling you what they’re telling you, they’re selling you. And then make it extremely difficult for you to get your money back. One of the common themes that you see online is that they say “oh, you get the same hearing aids “that you can get inside of a hearing clinic “and you can get them for like one 10th “of the price and there’s a money back guarantee “and you can use them for a hundred days and all of that. “And if they don’t work, send them back.”

All of those are just scams and unfortunately, they continue to work, which is the problem. But outside of that I think that any form of hearing treatment is really beneficial no matter where you wanna start at with your hearing journey Just understand that if you end up not having success, with hearing treatment going the online route, it doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t get treatment if you had some professional assistance.

Ben Thompson, AuD

Great question number three, ties into that, when is buying hearing aids online a good idea?

Cliff Olson, AuD

I mean, here’s the thing. There is accessibility issues inside of the hearing healthcare world, specifically with hearing aids, whether you don’t live close enough to a clinic to be able to get care, whether you literally just cannot afford professional care. your options are basically to go online, find something more accessible, more affordable for you or not do anything. And quite frankly, I feel like not doing anything, is where most people end up going and so if it’s between those two options, I would strongly encourage someone to go online and purchase whether it’s a hearing aid online or whether it was just an over-the-counter or amplifier, online.

Ben Thompson, AuD

Fantastic, totally agree. Question number four in your opinion, what has been the biggest development in hearing aid technology in the past two years?

Cliff Olson, AuD

Past two years? There’s been a lot of big stuff that has come out since I even got into the profession, which was 2012. And I say into the profession meaning I started grad school in 2012. But here in the last two years. I think that things have kind of slowed down a little bit, not in the sense that technology has an advanced but switching from analog to digital hearing aids that we saw like back in 1996. Having Bluetooth enter the hearing aid world back in 2014 was really big. And I honestly think that right now and something we just saw was this incorporation of like different artificial intelligence machine learning and then deep neural networks, inside of hearing aids. And I really think that some form of artificial intelligence is really gonna start changing the way that we approach treating hearing loss. And all of that has really started to hit here in the past two years.

Ben Thompson, AuD

Very nice question number five. If you had a family member, aunt, uncle, mom, dad, grandparent who needed hearing aids what would you recommend to them What kind of devices if they came to your clinic, what would you recommend to them?

Cliff Olson, AuD

Man really depends on which family member it is and what they found to be important. ‘Cause that’s the thing everyone wants to know ” Oh well Cliff, what’s the best hearing aid out there?” And I always answer the same way. It depends on what your wants and needs are. So to kind of pigeonhole one of my family members into a certain brand that might not work for somebody else in my family, I would have to say, I literally have no idea.

Ben Thompson, AuD

And that brings in the importance of being able to talk with a professional to get these questions answered, because there’s so many factors at play. All right, we’re five questions in, it’s 20 questions with Dr. Cliff, 15 more questions to go. This is fun, we wanted to do this, new style of engagement on this podcast episode. So question number six, Cliff how will the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act, affect the hearing health industry, and if you could give us a little context of the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act too.

Cliff Olson, AuD

Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act, is something that was signed into law back in 2017. And then we were expecting to see guidelines in 2020, released by the FDA to kind of outline what an over-the-counter hearing aid is. Because to be quite honest with you, even, like we have no clue, what an over-the-counter hearing aid is. Now, we have context of what an actual hearing aid is. What a direct to consumer, amplifier or hearing aid is at this point, but we really don’t know specifically what the over-the-counter hearing aid category is defined as. And so to try to, I guess what that is going to be and how it will ultimately affect the world of hearing treatment, I would have to assume that there gonna be fairly decent devices. And I think that there are a lot of individuals who are religious crossing their fingers and waiting and hoping for those guidelines to be released.

So within the next 6 to 12 months after they’re released, we actually start seeing a significant amount of these devices hit the market. And so kind of like I talked about before, individuals who want to treat their hearing loss but have accessibility and affordability issues, that’s really who these devices are geared towards serving. And so from that context, I think it’s really good for overall hearing treatment, that also could be potentially a stepping stone to actually going into a clinic and getting professional care, kinda get your feet wet, so to speak, before jumping in, to the deep end of the pool with full on treatment. But I also think there’s a double-edged sword side of this, that there’s potential that people could think that, an over-the-counter hearing aid would be completely suitable for their hearing loss and then they don’t have success, with that device and that no treatment will help them, which usually is not the case.

When you start looking at, no matter what type of hearing loss somebody has, there is always a treatment option for it, you know? So whether it’s a conductive loss that you have, a bone anchored hearing aid, a traditional sensorineural hearing loss, that requires hearing aids to help benefit, if you have really poor word recognition ability with a hearing aid you start looking at cochlear implants. If you don’t have an effective auditory nerve to send sound from your cochlear, your hearing organ, to your brain, there are auditory brainstem implants. So there’s always a treatment option. The question is, are you going to try something without having any expertise in the area yourself and call it quits if it doesn’t work for you?

Ben Thompson, AuD

So Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act, we had a Dr. Amlani PhD, who was on one of our earlier episodes, he predicted that due to COVID the delay for them releasing the guidelines that he predicted it would come out around this time next year, early 2022. So we’ll monitor that and see what’s going on there. Question number seven, Dr. Cliff, what is the difference between currently available hearables and the soon to be released over the counter hearing aids? And additionally when there are over the counter hearing aids, do you think there’ll be labeled as such and will there still be online hearing aids sold that don’t meet that criteria or will it regulate everything that if it’s sold in that capacity it has to meet that criteria?

Cliff Olson, AuD

First and foremost I don’t think from a regulatory perspective that there’s gonna be a whole lot of change. I think that, the OTC hearing aid is kind of more of like a buzzword. And there’s companies that try to cash in on that buzz word. But I don’t think you’re gonna have a hearing aid that’s massively different than what you can actually get already online. And we already know that the FDA isn’t doing anything to really stop companies from saying that they’re selling over the counter hearing aids right now. In fact anytime that a company has brought to the attention of the FDA and I’ve seen this personally they send out a letter saying, “Oh, well we already sent letters out “to the manufacturers telling them they couldn’t.” But basically what that means is “well, yeah “they’re doing it but we’re just not gonna enforce it.” So it’s everybody’s best guess as to what will actually happen what these devices will look like. Will they be any different from a hearable or not?

Ben Thompson, AuD

Totally with you and question number eight. Let’s say a patient comes into your clinic or any clinic here in the US and they agree that they need hearing aids to treat their hearing loss but their budget is only around a maximum amount Of around $2,000, $2,500. How do you counsel that patient right now given that there are online options but there are also affordable hearing aids from a clinic and there are other options through donation, et cetera. So how do you counsel that patient?

Cliff Olson, AuD

If you have $2,000 you actually have a better workable budget to treat your hearing loss professionally. Than you really think that you do. I guarantee you that in every major city at least North America that there is a place that you can go with $2,000 and get legitimate hearing aids and have those hearing aids fit professionally. Now they probably won’t come with an exorbitant amount of followup care. You won’t get the best hearing aids in existence but you’ll probably get better devices and perform better with those than what you could, if you’re just trying to find like an over-the-counter type amplifier, right? So I would say that there’s plenty of options. Now inside of my clinic, specifically speaking this is one area that we don’t really serve as much because there’s such a demand for people who want the absolute best when it comes to hearing performance. And unfortunately that does require a lot of time from a hearing care provider which is what we do, we spend a ton of time with patients just getting their treatment exactly right. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t have $2,000 go a long way in terms of getting you some quality care.

Ben Thompson, AuD

Amazing that’s great, we’re gonna switch it up to your YouTube channel. Dr Cliff AuD, question number nine, Cliff what do you believe is your most underrated YouTube video?

Cliff Olson, AuD

Underrated YouTube video, man. Boy, let me think here there. So the it’s, the funny thing is there’s, I’ve got like over 400 videos at this point on my YouTube channel. And to trying to kinda pick the one the worst performers that I think is one of the best videos is hard to do. The ones that I talk about really measurement those are the ones that get all the fanfare, right? Because it’s something that’s very specific to help you improve almost immediately when it comes to hearing performance. But the funny thing is, is that one of my worst performing videos is the what is an audiologist video,

Which is kind of funny. But I think of that as an incredibly important video for you to actually understand what is an audiologist what’s makes them different than other types of providers that are out there both in the medical world and nonmedical world. And yet nobody’s searching for what an audiologist is. So it seems like we have a lot more work to do there.

Ben Thompson, AuD

Personally, I’ve been really inspired by your your progress and your history with the YouTube channel. I remember a few years ago, first learning about you. I even used your video to help educate one of my patients while he was waiting in the office for me working on his hearing aids. To simply watch your video instead of just wait and do nothing on his phone. So from even years back, thank you for making all of this amazing content. Question number 10 I think this is related to your YouTube presence. What is the farthest distance that a patient has traveled to see you in person in Arizona?

Cliff Olson, AuD

I don’t know the distance but Bermuda is. So when someone has like they have their permanent residence in Bermuda and they track, which I don’t know thousands of miles away requires a flight and all of that to come out and see me. I have had people from overseas, in the sense of like Europe come and get treatment from me but they were relocated to the United States or they’re here on vacation. I wasn’t the primary reason they were coming but learning to see a lot more of that, I get people who travel in long distance to see me a very regularly at this point.

Ben Thompson, AuD

It’s pretty fascinating the reach of YouTube and how these videos are reaching so many people that there’s, there’s a family in Bermuda that says, “I wanna see this guy “and I wanna treat my hearing loss.” It’s pretty cool. Okay question number 11. What was the hardest thing about starting your new audiology clinic and more recently moving into a, an actual new physical location

Cliff Olson, AuD

The hardest thing about it is just sticking with it and dealing with all the mistakes that happen along the way some mistakes that are your fault, my fault some mistakes that are the fault of maybe the contractors and the people that you hired to do it. But the project was supposed to be like a five month project. It ended up being a 14 month project. So it’s just sticking with it the whole entire time and not letting it affect your day to day from treating patients in a clinic. But just a quick shout out to my wife, Ashley Olson if wasn’t for her, I still would not be in the new clinic. So if she didn’t kinda clamp down on the contractors and make sure everything got done the right way it probably still wouldn’t be done.

Ben Thompson, AuD

That’s really nice and I appreciate I as a viewer of your channel. I appreciate how you brought in your family how you brought in Ashley and everyone loved those videos. I think people like to learn about the person Dr. Cliff, not just the professional. So that was really nice. We’re playing 20 questions with Dr.Cliff. Next question, question 12. Do D-I-Y do it yourself, your wax removal kits work and now you’ve reviewed some of the most popular ones. They tend to get a lot of views on your channel do those kits work?

Cliff Olson, AuD

I can’t get them to work very well if at all, I don’t know what it is like, trust me. So everyone thinks I’m super biased against this because we do professional ear wax removal in the clinic. And I think doing earwax removal is fun to a degree, but by no means do I make like a killing on it in terms of financially? I couldn’t support my family on the earwax removal that we do in the clinic. And so anytime I do a review of like you’re or the wax blaster 5,000 or whatever that’s called, right. And then doing like the the visual otoscopes where you can go in and dig your own earwax out. I’ve not been successful with any of those or have had anyone who could remove their wax even remotely close as to effective as what you can have it done professionally. So do they work maybe for some people they work. I just can’t get it to the point where they work on the people that were were trying to get it to be effective with and nothing would make me happier than to identify a sure-fire this product works for everybody. And I don’t have to remove your wax ever again. So I can focus on treating, hearing loss and tinnitus.

Ben Thompson, AuD

Oh man, I get a kick of seeing how those videos have the most views. And clearly there’s a, there’s a desire to get. People love your wax and there’s a desire to remove it on your own. My next question, question number 13 looking through your community tab in YouTube and you made a post quote “I’m looking to fly an ear candling expert out “to Phoenix to help me conduct an experiment ‘testing the effectiveness of ear candles “on removing hearing wax.” Is there any update on this project?

Cliff Olson, AuD

No, no one’s willing to come out. I will hate for someone to fly out here. I will put them up in the nicest. Like I live across the street from a, a Hilton hotel. I’ll put them up in the Hilton. We will go, we will do experiments. We’ll record all of it and post it on social media. And ’cause here’s the concern, right? The concern is that well, Cliff you just don’t know how to do it right with her candle. And I’m like, that’s fine. If it’s me, it’s me, but please somebody out there if someone’s listening right now who swears by ear candling. And you know that it’s effective. I will fly you out here and you can show me how to do it. And we will document the whole thing and show how effective it is.

Ben Thompson, AuD

I wanna personally help find this person Cliff. I wanna personally help fly this person to Phoenix and maybe who knows, maybe it starts their own YouTube. Ear candling channel from it. It could easily spawn into that. We’ll see if that happens. Question 14 we’re gonna switch it up. That was fun talk about your channel talk about these earwax videos. Question 14 just about six more left. Cliff do you have tinnitus and does it impact your life?

Cliff Olson, AuD

So I have tinnitus in my right ear. I had it for a long time. And when I joined the military back in 2002, I actually failed my hearing test in my right ear. So I have a very odd looking cookie bite hearing loss. It’s about 65 decibels at its worst, 2000 Hertz. And then it kind of ends up recovering back for these adjacent frequencies. But they asked me if I had any ringing in my ears and I’m like “oh well isn’t that “just what a quiet room sounds like “It just has a ring to it.” And so like I was unaware that this ringing that I had experienced apparently for a long time was actually a condition called tinnitus. And the thing is that I’ve really habituated to it to the point where it doesn’t really bother me a whole lot anymore except for one circumstance which is when I’m trying to fall asleep at night. If I’m trying to fall asleep in a completely silent room but that doesn’t have a lot of other noise or sound going on in it, that ringing gets so loud that I’m just like, that’s the only thing I can focus on. So I consistently do a couple things. I sleep with a fan on when I’m at home. So the sound of the band really drowns out the sound of the tinnitus really well for me. And then I like using the sleep buds as well. So the sleep buds are a product by bows. They will generate different types of sounds, nature sounds other types of sounds that can drowned out the tinnitus as well. I like to travel with those. It broke my heart when the first version of those got discontinued. And then I was like the most excited person in the world when the second version of them came out that fixed a lot of the kinks with the first one. So it has affected my life, but through careful management of it, it doesn’t have a negative impact anymore.

Ben Thompson, AuD

Thank you so much and for anyone listening in the pure tinnitus community those Bose sleep buds and there’s now a new generation that’s something that I learned about through your video Cliff. And that’s something that I’m happy you’re bringing. If anyone’s watching dude consider incorporating that into the nightly routine, the sound therapy options for how to manage tinnitus at night. You mentioned your military experience. Question number 16, what is one lesson you learned from your years in the military that maybe affects how you communicate with patients today?

Cliff Olson, AuD

I’ve actually said this before my military experience I served as a Marine Corps scout sniper and everything about what you do as a scout sniper is about fundamentals and precision. And that translates very heavily into the field of audiology. And I don’t care which area you specialize in inside of audiology. I happen to work primarily with hearing aids adult amplification but there are certain fundamentals that we should be following and those fundamentals are best practices right? Those procedures that we do that have been shown by research to achieve the highest level of outcomes for individuals using amplification. And the other side of that is the precision in which you apply those fundamentals apply Those best practices is very critical . In military if you don’t follow the fundamentals and you don’t follow those fundamentals with precision people die. If you don’t follow the fundamentals with precision in audiology people do not achieve their highest level of outcome. And sometimes they achieve no benefit at all. So I would say that those are really the core things that I brought from my military experience into my profession of audiology.

Ben Thompson, AuD

That’s great. Question number 17. Is there anything you have done in audiology that has pushed you out of your comfort zone? One thing you’ve done really well with your blogs is show your human side that you’re not simply a doctor who to only talks about technology, that you have personal life that you have emotions that you have challenges, you have frustrations so this question here, I feel like we’ll get into some of that. Is there anything in audiology that has pushed you out of your comfort zone or towards the very edge of your comfort zone?

Cliff Olson, AuD

One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I don’t confine myself by my comfort. I make mistakes when I treat patients. I learned from those mistakes. In fact, I even tell my staff that there’s no such thing as a mistake, as long as you learn from it, right? They all learning experiences. And so up through my upbringing in audiology. I had an opportunity to see a lot of different aspects of audiology from the vestibular balance side to cochlear implants to other surgical procedures, to correct hearing loss to amplification with hearing aids to dealing with in managing tinnitus, working with veterans working with children, working with adults. And I would say that every single one of them pushed me outside of a relative comfort zone but that’s how we learn and grow. And the one thing that I learned from all of those different areas of audiology is that there are some amazing hearing care professionals who are working in all of those realms. And I need to let them do their thing because I have one singular focus that I’ve identified as a strength for me. And that’s particularly working with hearing loss working with hearing loss in adults and working particularly with adult amplification. And so all of the areas that I felt uncomfortable with if I feel I can’t perform in those areas, as well as other individuals, I need to kinda stay in my lane. Really nice. There is this idea of the comfort zone, it’s very relevant to tinnitus because those who are really challenged by tinnitus, bothersome tinnitus maybe would consider themselves suffering from tinnitus. There’s worries there’s concern, there’s anxiety, there’s fear. There’s a lot of unknown. So that comfort zone of reaching that edge trying something new, pushing ourselves to a degree very relevant in the work that I do.

Ben Thompson, AuD

Thanks for sharing that question 18. Which have a few more questions here out of these 20 questions with Dr. Cliff question number 18. What is your hunch or what is your analysis of the research about the long-term effectiveness of pharmaceutical drug solutions to regrow outer hair cells? You can mention frequency therapeutics or any other relevant research.

Cliff Olson, AuD

When you talk about long-term effectiveness we really don’t know. And quite honestly we’re still trying to figure out the short term efficacy of any of these drugs to be effective whatsoever. And I know that both from the hearing loss community and the tinnitus community, that they are really hoping that hair cell regeneration no matter who comes up with it. Is an effective solution for both of those things. And unfortunately at this point it’s almost too early to call it. Now we have seen some really interesting research from these companies suggesting that the drugs are safe to use whether they’re safe to use long-term we don’t know whether you can get treated with them at one time period in your life and have a long lasting effect of that benefit. We don’t know and we ultimately don’t know if they’re going to do what they’re hopefully going to do which is have a significant amount of hair cell regrowth that will reduce the amount of auditory deprivation that we have that could be facilitating tinnitus as well. And I think we’re all hoping that it has some benefit and we just don’t know what that is right now but I would tell you this, there are people out there who are a lot smarter than you or me who are researching this stuff and they’re eventually going to find a solution to this. You just give them enough time. In the meantime, we have to figure out ways to try to manage whatever we have going on. Whether it’s your hearing loss, whether it’s your tinnitus whether it’s something else until that point but we should all feel like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel at this point.

Ben Thompson, AuD

Great points something that comes up so often is these drugs solutions. And now I would say someone with hearing loss if they’re hopeful that the drug solution works for them they’re still going to wear hearing aids ’cause it’s quite evident the effect with tinnitus. I would say it’s more multifactorial and variable and a little more complex about where to start and what are some realistic marginal gains to improve the symptom or improve the experience with it. But still, I completely agree with you. It’s very in line with the messaging I have to this pure tinnitus community of, yes, we’re all monitoring any sort of new technology bi-modal stimulation or pharmaceutical drugs. But in the meantime, let’s do what we can. Let’s learn about what can be done or how can we best manage this completely agree with you. We’re gonna switch into some of your prime discussion topics here real ear measures and audiology hearing aid fittings, question number 19. What are some, what are the most important factors for a successful hearing aid fitting. Let’s start with that. What are some important factors for a successful hearing aid fitting?

Cliff Olson, AuD

I’ve talked about best practices on a previous question but for those of us out there listening that understand what best practices are. There are a whole bunch of different processes and procedures that must be followed in order to achieve the highest level outcome with hearing treatment. And I mean to pick one of them being more important than the other you almost can’t do it because every single one of them ultimately matters and can be in its own way either detrimental to a successful hearing treatment or having a negative impact on hearing treatment. But when I first started my channel I talked a lot about the low-hanging fruit of best practices which is real ear measurement. So real ear measurement is basically a way to verify that a hearing aid has been programmed correctly to somebody’s hearing loss prescription. And if you don’t have real ear measurement done when your hearing aids are being programmed for your hearing loss, you really have no clue what’s going on in terms of amplification. And in terms of if you’re getting enough audibility to overcome your hearing loss. So to even consider moving past realer measurement to do any other best practices, almost makes everything else, somewhat inconsequential. Now I don’t wanna discount the idea that using a person centered or patient centered care approach to hearing treatment where you actually look at the wants and needs of an individual and incorporate them in the decision-making process of how you go about treating them. I don’t wanna discount that but at the end of the day I tell my patients all the time, if I make one mistake or I do something incorrectly with hearing treatment then that is going to have a cascade of negative events that occur. And ultimately the patient doesn’t achieve their highest level outcome. So I can’t necessarily say that that one is more important than the other but if I was really forced to I would say that we really need to be doing verification and validation measures on patients who are being treated.

Ben Thompson, AuD

Use technology to make sure how we’re fitting them work and then validate the effectiveness for that individual. Question number 20: Imagine you’re a patient getting hearing aids. Would you prefer to get hearing aids from a hearing aid dispenser or an instrument specialist using real ear measures or an audiologist without using real ear measures?

Cliff Olson, AuD

Dispenser using real ear measures right?

This is kinda the hang up for a lot of individuals who don’t like me inside of my own profession is that, I think that best practice care and person centered care is more important than whatever degree you hold. To be quite honest with you. Now, there are fantastic dispensers. There are fantastic audiologists. There are some pretty crummy dispensers and there are some pretty crummy audiologists. But at the end of the day, if I could at least identify as someone was gonna perform a core fundamental procedure that needs to be done to ensure that I achieve maximum benefit I’m gonna go to the person who does that. Now, when I’m done going to them, I might, if they’re bad at everything else, I might choose to also go somewhere else and have them do other things to optimize my treatment. But at the end of the day you got to have that done at a bare minimum.

Ben Thompson, AuD

And just so everyone listening who knows those are not your only options. You can see an audiologist using real ear measures. You can find a hearing instrument specialist in your local town who uses real ear measures. Dr. Cliff we have a bonus question. Tell us about where someone can find you and potentially sign up for your Provider Network.

Cliff Olson, AuD

You can find me on YouTube. All you have to do is type in anything hearing related most likely. And you’ll see one of my videos pop up. If you wanna go, actually check out my channel. It’s Dr.Cliff AuD. You can find my website, which is drcliffaud.com. You can find me on LinkedIn as Dr. Cliff Olson You can find me on Twitter. I’m not really big into Instagram so don’t try to hit me up there but if you’re an individual who has hearing loss there’s a lot of resources out there for you on all of those platforms. And I specifically, I’m speaking to you as a consumer primarily when I’m making these videos I want you to be well-informed. So even if you don’t come and receive treatment from me, you know what to better expect from it on different hearing care professional to make sure that you get the best care humanly possible. For providers who may be listening to this if you want to be a part of the Best Practice Pro Network which is my network of hearing care professionals who are committed to following best practices and acting in patient’s best interest, you can head over to audiologyacademy.com and take my webinar. You can get CE use from that webinar. And it outlines all of the criteria in order to be able to join the network.

Ben Thompson, AuD

Thanks so much, Cliff, how did that 20 questions go for you?

Cliff Olson, AuD

Pretty good to be quite honest with you some of them made me feel really uncomfortable but I somehow pulled through.

Ben Thompson, AuD

That was good and this is a little different than a typical interview style, right? Because these were rapid fire. Boom, boom, boom, one after the other is there any other message you have for the pure tinnitus community here? We’re gonna end our session. First of all, thank you for being here. Thanks for making time in your schedule. And we really wish you and your family and your clinic and your whole staff a successful 2021 and moving forward. Do you have any messages for the pure tinnitus community to wrap it up?

Cliff Olson, AuD

I would think specifically for your community. I know that everybody’s looking for the solution and the cure for tinnitus to be quite honest with you. And oftentimes hearing loss and tinnitus go hand in hand but there’s usually something out there that will have a beneficial effect for everybody. And mindset comes into this a lot. I regularly do consultations remote consultations for individuals who are really struggling with tinnitus. And a lot of it is, is that you have to reframe your mind on how you’re perceiving the tinnitus. And even though there might not be the perfect cure right now that completely gets rid of your tinnitus and you can go on living your life without hearing that annoying ringing or buzzing sound inside of your ears.

I’m a perfect example, I have tinnitus and it bothers me almost none because I figured out ways to manage it in ways that helped me. But the ways that helped me might not help you doesn’t mean that you can’t find something that does though. So I would say, keep on the journey, talk with other people find out what works with them. Learn from Ben and his content this is great stuff. And you’ll eventually find a way to cope with and manage your tinnitus in a way that allows you to live your life the best you can.