So you’ve made the decision to get hearing aids – congratulations! Hearing aids offer a plethora of benefits for your physical and cognitive health, not to mention benefits it offers your quality of life. Wearing hearing aids is often the best treatment for hearing loss, but many people are unprepared for the time it takes to adjust to new hearing devices.
With new hearing aids, it may take you a little time to adapt to what they do, so be patient with yourself and your hearing aids. In the end, you’ll have a richer, fuller sense of hearing. Here are a few key tips to making a smooth transition to better hearing.
Why Does It Take Time To Adjust to New Hearing Aids?
Hearing aids don’t work like glasses. While new glasses can instantly bring vision into focus, hearing loss isn’t corrected by “focusing”. Permanent hearing loss is caused by irreparable damage to the auditory system which changes not just how much sound the brain hears, but the mental patterns the mind uses to interpret sound into meaning. When hearing loss goes untreated for a long time we lose both the ability to detect soundwaves in the air and our mind’s methods for translating those soundwaves into meaningful sound and speech.
Hearing aids amplify and enhance frequencies. It has become difficult for you to hear, but your mind will need to re-adjust to this new way of hearing and create still new hearing patterns. While this takes time, hearing aids nonetheless make a fuller range of sounds available to your hearing which ultimately reduces cognitive strain caused by hearing loss and increases cognitive performance.
Wear Your Hearing Aids Every Day
The number one key factor to adapting to your hearing aids is wearing them consistently. You’ll never get used to your new devices if you don’t give them the chance to help you. If your hearing aids seem too uncomfortable or alien at first, ease into wearing them full-time. Begin by wearing the hearing aids for at least an hour, three times a day. Start wearing your hearing aids in quiet, non-stressful situations where there won’t be much sound to hear.
Each day, increase these three periods by a half hour. In about a week you should be wearing the devices full time, with only short breaks. Gradually begin wearing them in noisier settings and more complex listening situations. At first, it may be frustrating, but ultimately this period will help you observe how your hearing aids perform in a variety of settings.
Practice Listening
When your hearing aids are still new to you, take some time to sit in a quiet spot and get used to all the sounds you can detect. A quiet and still setting will let you pick up on more nuanced noises. Be sure to make time for some concentrated listening every day. Work on detecting sounds and also trying to interpret the direction they come from.
Listening and Reading
Many people find simultaneous reading and listening helpful ways to accelerate their adjustment to new hearing devices. One of the easiest ways to do this is to watch movies or television with captioned dialog. The captioning makes the brain forge solid connections between sound and meaning. Another technique for simultaneous listening and reading is to read a print version of a book while you listen to an audiobook recording of the text. Listening while reading helps your hearing readjust to comprehending speech and can be a great way to ready yourself for conversations with friends and family.
Keep a Noise Notebook
While you get used to new hearing aids some sounds may stand out as strange, intrusive or annoying. Observing uncomfortable volume and tone in sounds is normal, and you should keep track of issues you notice. Many of the sounds your new hearing will recalibrate to to make them less disconcerting, if certain sounds are still giving you trouble by the time of your first adjustment appointment, let your hearing aid specialist know. They may make adjustments to the programming or settings on your hearing aids.
To be able to tell your hearing aid provider about issues, write down problem sounds when they arise. Keeping a small notebook or list for this purpose will be helpful. Before your adjustment appointment, review your notes and cross out sounds that are no longer an issue.