Hearing Aids Benefits And Side Effects

Hearing loss is surprisingly more common than you might think. Every day, we expose ourselves to a myriad of different sounds, some of which can actually start to negatively affect our hearing if we’re exposed for too long. Thankfully, we do have treatment options available such as hearing aids which can help drastically improve our quality of life.

But what exactly are the benefits of hearing aids? And are there side effects that we should be worried about?

Hearing Aid Benefits

There are many benefits to using hearing aids:

• Improved ability to perceive sounds: The most basic function of a hearing aid is to make it easier for people to perceive sounds. It helps to amplify the sounds around you, and it often has settings to let you filter out specific types of sounds or sounds that come from a certain direction. This makes it much easier for you to pick up every day sounds such as the phone, doorbell or even other cars when driving.

• Makes it easier to have a conversation in a crowded area: A challenge of hearing loss is being unable to separate sounds in a crowded environment. This makes it hard for someone with hearing loss to speak with another person when there are lots of conversations going on at the same time or when there is a lot of background noise. Hearing aids can help remedy this problem.

• Helps improve your confidence in social situations: Those with hearing loss tend to find it difficult to engage in social situations. This is because they may find it difficult to communicate when they have to ask someone to repeat themselves or if they simply find it challenging to understand certain words. By wearing hearing aids, you can overcome this challenge and improve your confidence to engage in social situations.

• Can improve your work performance: Work requires us to clearly communicate with others. If we fail to collaborate with our colleagues or have a hard time talking with clients, then it can greatly reduce our overall productivity. By wearing hearing aids, you’ll have a much easier time understanding other staff members and greatly improve your work performance.

Hearing Aid Side Effects

While there are plenty of promising benefits when using hearing aids, it’s important to remember that there are certainly some side effects that you need to keep in mind.

Increased earwax build-up. When wearing in-the-ear (ITE) or in-the-canal (ITC) style hearing aids, it’s common for earwax to build up since you’re essentially blocking the wax from falling out as it normally would. Because of this, you may find that you have to clean your ears a little more often. If you don’t do this, then your earwax can eventually reach the hearing aid and start to block the microphone or speakers, reducing its functionality.

Skin irritation around the ear. Hearing aids are often worn for a very long time. Due to sweat and dirt, your hearing aids can end up being quite dirty if you don’t clean them often. This dirt can result in bacterial buildup which may start to cause a rash or itching sensation depending on the type of hearing aid you use. This can be solved by switching to a more comfortable style of hearing aid or just cleaning them more often so that bacteria is less likely to build up.

Crackling and hissing noises. Crackling and hissing noises are usually caused by feedback and interference in your hearing aids. Luckily, this is something that your audiologist can fix quite easily. Simply bring the hearing aid to them and let them know about the problem. They’ll either be able to adjust the settings to fix it or they can replace it if the hearing aid itself is faulty.

Contact Us Today

We understand that picking up your first pair of hearing aids can be intimidating, but with our team of professional audiologists at the Hearing Wellness Center, we can help you settle into using hearing aids much more quickly and easily. Simply contact us at (519) 735-4327 and we’d be happy to book you in for a hearing appointment to help you analyze your hearing loss and recommend you a good pair of hearing aids.