Getting to grips with your hearing aid

Aug 22, 2012 in Hearing Tests

Getting to grips with your hearing aid

Acclimatising to a hearing aid can be a tricky process for many of our customers, as you may expect.

It's something of a two-way street when it comes to getting to grips with hearing loss with effort required on both our side and the side of the patient.

We will do our part which includes good advice and top of the range products but on the part of the customer it's always necessary to take a couple of days to really try and get used to living with a hearing aid.

It's like with anything, you're always much better off easing yourself in to something new rather than jumping in at the deep-end straight away.

With hearing aids, the best way to go about getting used to them it to start by wearing it around your home. Not only will this make the transition seem more comfortable it will also be a lot quieter than elsewhere, generally speaking anyway.

This issue of noise is key, don't think that you should try out your hearing aid in a noisy environment as it simply won't work.

Instead try it out in a quiet, secure environment and, to begin with, only listen out for TV noise (on a low level) and build up to conversing with one family member.

From then you can build up to conversing with more than one person at a time before then using it out in the big wide world.

You should also start to train your brain not only to locate where sound is coming from but also starting to really differentiate between different sounds and noises.

This will give you the best possible chance to get used to your hearing aid but don't worry if things don't start to work straight away.

After all, people with full hearing don't managed to catch everything so don't necessarily assume you're doing something wrong if things get off to a slow start.

Also remember that we're always here for advice should you need it about any aspect of living with a hearing aid.