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When boomers say 'What?'

Manufacturers answer with aids that manage to look cool

Debra Melani, Special to the Rocky

Published September 25, 2007 at midnight

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You might be a baby boomer if:

• You turn the television volume all the way up and still strain to hear.

• Your friends and spouse recently started mumbling just to tick you off.

• You've decided you really like those foreign films with the nifty subtitles.

If it sounds familiar, listen up: Hearing aids aren't just for Grandpa anymore.

Companies are targeting the nearly 78 million U.S. baby boomers, the older of whom are hitting age 60 at a rate of about 8,000 a day, with sleek new hearing aids.

Hoping to corner the market on a generation as it loses its hearing, the companies are working to end the old- age stigma associated with hearing aids and reel in those tech-savvy Americans born between 1946 and 1964.

And baby boomers are biting.

"That can be partly credited to our society," said Sandra Gabbard, director of audiology at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center. "People are walking around with headphones on all the time anyway."

Small, colorful and nearly hidden behind the ear, the boomer-focused hearing aids look like just another high-tech gadget. Some are even Bluetooth compatible, so users can hook up to their iPods and cell phones.

Progressive hearing loss, the most common form in baby boomers, usually takes about 30 years to catch up with people, which is why boomers are paying for their blaring Walkmans and rock concerts now.

Age-phobic baby boomers, leery of their fathers' clunky, ineffective hearing aids, haven't been busting down audiologists' doors, Gabbard said. They also tend to blame the environment first, a common denial tactic, she said. Frustrated friends and family members often provide the final nudge.

"Audiologists like to tell people that wearing a hearing aid is less obvious to the people around them than not wearing one," Gabbard said. And, similar to the "use-it-or-lose-it" phenomenon, there is a long-term advantage to taking the hearing-aid plunge.

"Getting a hearing aid doesn't necessarily stop the progression of hearing loss, but it does keep the hearing system in practice," Gabbard said. "They most likely will be able to deal with understanding people better if their hearing system continues to be stimulated."

For Dean Boosalis, 60, finally getting a hearing aid made him realize what he'd been missing.

"It was phenomenal," said the partner in a Denver accounting firm who has lived with his hearing loss for years. "I was in the mountains, and it was interesting how much clearer I could hear things - like the birds. My whole environment has reopened."

Hearing aids go high-tech, high fashion

When designing hearing aids for baby boomers, companies identified four primary characteristics of this market:

Boomers are: So the hearing aids are:

active tiny

style-conscious fashionable

age-phobic inconspicuous

tech-savvy digitally advanced

Here's a look at two boomer-focused hearing aids on the market:

Audéo, by Phonak Delta, by Oticon Inc.

• Style: Barely bigger than a dime, both the Audéo and the Delta hide behind the ear and come in a variety of colors. Audéo offers changeable skins, so that wearers can switch and match colors to their wardrobes. For both, a transparent wire connects the aid to a tiny earplug-like sound port that fits in the ear canal.

• Technology: The Audéo touts an extended range of high frequencies to provide clarity of speech and enhance music and natural sounds. Delta boasts artificial intelligence, which provides thousands of automatic, subtle adjustments whenever the sound environment changes. Both have dual microphones and digital technology that automatically senses and selectively suppresses background noise.

• Price: In Colorado, the high-tech aids average from $2,500 to $3,500 apiece, depending on the provider and the services included.

Stopping the loss

Age, genetics and disease can cause hearing loss, but for baby boomers, noise pollution is often to blame. Some tips for halting the loss:

• Minimize the time you listen to music, especially with headphones or earbuds.

• Turn the volume down. If you can't hear someone talking next to you, it's too loud.

• Be particularly careful when exercising. Recent studies suggest increased blood pressure can boost noise-induced hearing damage.