Have you ever had the experience? You were satisfied and hear fine with the hearing aids in the audiologist’s office, but once you get home, Hearing aids fail to restore your hearing to normal, you don’t feel like you hear as well as you were in the office?
This is a quite common experience, especially for first time hearing aid wearers. Below are five possible reasons that can explain this issue.
Change in listening environment
Have you realized in an audiologist’s office most of the time is quiet, and there is no or minimal amount of background noises? This is because the number one most common situation that people who have hearing loss struggle with is background noise situations, or group situations.
Due to this reason, and since audiologists often work with people who have hearing loss, the amount of background noise in an audiologist’s office is often minimal. When you are in a quiet environment, and with the help of hearing aids, it makes sense that you wouldn’t have much trouble hearing and understanding speech.
However, the world that we all live nowadays is noisy; there is almost always some amount of noises throughout our daily life.
Change in listening distance
When you are in an audiologist’s office, did you realize the audiologist sits relatively close to you, and when they are talking to you, they tend to face you, the patient. This is because the short distance will give you the patient a higher chance to hear and understand speech, and the best way to communicate is always face-to-face, regardless if an individual has hearing loss or not.
When we communicate face-to-face, we not only can hear better, instead we can see the other person’s facial expressions and their body gestures. These small communication strategies are also part of our communications, they could also provide us with additional information regarding the person that we are communicating with and the information that they are trying to communicate to us. A lot of times, we don’t know how important and how much we rely on these small communication strategies until we lose them.
Change in communication strategies or methods
Audiologists often work with people who have hard of hearing, and from many years of training and experience they have learned how to better communicate with people who have hearing loss.
If you pay close attention, you might realize that audiologists not only talk loudly, but they talk slowly, they enunciate or articulate sounds clearly, and they talk in shorter sentences. These are some beneficial communication strategies not only at an audiologist’s office, but instead they are also useful outside the office, such as when you are talking to your family and friends throughout your daily life situations.
It Takes time for your brain to adjust to a hearing aid
This is especially important for the first time hearing aid wearers. Regardless of how advanced the hearing aids are, remember hearing aids are not miracle works, they can only work with what you have left, the residual hearing.
On average, it takes an individual who has hearing loss about seven years for them to seek audiological help, and seven years is a long period of time. Having hearing loss for at least seven years also means that your brain has been missing a lot of sounds for many years. Now, with the help of hearing aids, it will also take some time for the brain to re-learn and re-associating sounds to their corresponding meanings.
Therefore, you probably hear from your audiologist recommending you to slowly ease yourself into noise environments with the hearing aids, this is because you don’t want to overwhelm yourself with too many sounds or noises right at the beginning.
Use of hearing aids improperly
This is also especially important for first time hearing aid users. Reasons such as improperly inserting hearing aids into the ears, accidentally pushing on the hearing aid’s volume controls, or any other button controls over the hearing aids could all cause changes in sound qualities.
Following up with your audiologist or bringing a family member or a friend with you during your audiology visit could be a great idea to resolve these issues.
AcoSound Self-fitting hearing aids
AcoSound self fitting hearing aids are a series of hearing aids that can be self-fit based on your hearing test results. Even if you live somewhere remote or, due to physical or transportation limitations, you have a hard time accessing a hearing clinic. As long as you have a smartphone with internet connections, you can even have a hearing test completed through your smartphone via the free AcoSound APP. AcoSound Hearing aids will restore your hearing to normal even you stay at home.