So you don’t wear your hearing aids very often? Maybe you put them in when you go to a party or go to the theater, but in most cases, you leave them in your drawer. Is it actually necessary to wear them more regularly than that?
Over the long term, you create trouble for yourself if you’re not using your hearing aids regularly and that’s a problem. You could permanently harm your hearing. You could have problems with social isolation and mental decline. You may compromise your overall health. So, if you aren’t using your hearing aids, you should certainly be reading this.
Why Aren’t You Wearing Your Hearing Aid?
You probably have a good excuse for keeping your hearing aids in a somewhere in a drawer. You might have decided to keep those reasons to yourself. Perhaps, when your family questions you, you even say something generic and elusive, such as, “I just don’t like them”.
Stilted dialogue aside, we know that’s not the complete story, right? Usually, there’s an exact reason why you don’t use your hearing aids. Specific issues are good because they generate an opportunity to find an equally specific remedy.
Some of the most frequent grievances include the examples below;
“My Hearing Aids Don’t Feel Comfortable”
One of the most typically mentioned reasons that people discontinue wearing their hearing aids frequently is discomfort. Maybe the hearing aid keeps falling out of your ear. Or maybe your over-the-ear model chafes in just the wrong spot, causing pain and tenderness.
It’s not supposed to be uncomfortable to wear hearing aids, so if they’re causing irritation of any sort, something is certainly not right. And it’s easy to understand that you wouldn’t want to wear a piece of technology that creates pain, frustration or soreness.
Possible solution: If you’re uncomfortable with your hearing aids, a follow-up fitting session is something you should think about. It’s quite possible that the way your hearing aid fits just needs a few quick adjustments. Some models can even be totally personalized to the shape and size of your ears. You will be able to leave your hearing aid in longer if it fits properly and is comfortable.
My Hearing Aid Has Poor Sound Quality
Maybe you experience the sound of your hearing aid to be too fuzzy or tinny so you don’t wear them very often. If that’s the case, it’s not surprising that you’ve opted to stow your hearing aids in a drawer somewhere and save them for “special occasions”.”
Hearing aids are executing complex auditory functions all the time as they increase some sounds while filtering out others and that can cause a fuzzy or tinny sound. So the sound quality might seem hard to rely on if your settings aren’t properly tweaked.
Solution: This problem has two possible solution: upkeep and calibration. Your hearing aids may be broken in some way or another and require repairing. But your hearing specialist can do a simple calibration which is all your hearing aids may require.
Voices Seem Muffled When I Use my Hearing Aids
You want to hear voices with clarity. When you first bought hearing aids that was the whole reason! You didn’t want to miss a single word. So if all the voices you hear are hard to comprehend and sound muffled it could be a bit discouraging.
This normally occurs when you first get your hearing aids because your ears and brain aren’t necessarily used to communicating all that well anymore (it’s as if they had a disagreement or something).
Solution: Keep practicing. Your brain will have to get used to hearing language again, so putting yourself in a position to hear people conversing regularly will help. Try reading along with an audiobook or reading along with the closed captioning while watching tv. Just having more conversations with the people who are around you is a perfect way to practice, too.
Getting Solutions
You can find a solution no matter what the reason you’re not wearing your hearing aid. And it is vital, both for your hearing health and for your cognitive well-being, that you wear your hearing aids regularly.
So if you’re not wearing your hearing aids? After determining the problem, find a solution, so you can get active in your life again. If you think your hearing aids need adjustment, contact your hearing care expert as soon as possible.