Myths and Truths About Hearing Aids

There are often some myths about hearing aids that circulate by word of mouth. Below you will see Myths and Truths about Hearing Aids:

MYTH 1: Hearing aids whistle.
TRUTH: When a hearing aid fits properly in the outer ear canal and is of modern technology, it is impossible to experience hissing.

MYTH 2: I will wear a hearing aid when my hearing loss gets too old and I will have serious communication problems.
TRUTH: Hearing aids work together and are based on the living part of the hearing, so it automatically follows that they are necessary to be applied when the hearing loss is at least moderate.

MYTH 3: I don’t put on hearing aids yet because I’m afraid my ear will get lazy and I’ll lose more hearing.
TRUTH: The ear gets “lazy” when it is inactive. All the hearing aid does is “connect” us to the auditory environment and keep our auditory memory in touch with all auditory stimuli. So the conclusion is that by applying a hearing aid our entire auditory system, which ends up in the brain, is trained to hear sounds that were previously impossible to hear and the sensitivity of the auditory nerve and its proper functioning is restored.

MYTH 4: Hearing loss is a disease of old age.
TRUTH: Hearing loss is a disease that affects all ages, even newborn babies. The majority of sufferers are aged 46 to 64 years old. Only 37% of the hearing impaired are aged 65 and over.

MYTH 5: I’ve heard that hearing aids make buzzing and noise.
TRUTH: Modern hearing aids have the ability to adjust background noise to a normal level and bring out more speech without annoying noises.

MYTH 6: I’ve been wearing a hearing aid for two days but I can’t hear what I thought I was going to hear.
TRUTH: What we want compared to what we can hear especially in the first few days of wearing hearing aids is not always the same. This is because the brain takes about a month to get used to the sounds of the outside environment in general. So patience is needed and you will find that sounds that you find surprising or difficult in the first few days, you will be much less concerned with them in the second week.
Any observations after the 15 days should be brought up at the first post-fit appointment you have with your hearing care professional and they will in turn make the appropriate adjustments which will bring what you hear closer to what you want.

MYTH 7: I should only wear the hearing aids when I need it.
TRUTH: You should wear the hearing aid from morning to night, otherwise you won’t be able to adapt to the new conditions it will offer.

MYTH 8: Is it true that a hearing aid user hears his voice “unnaturally”?
TRUTH: The reality is that when someone is hearing impaired, it is not only the sounds of the environment or the speech of those around them that are affected. The truth is that when a person has a hearing loss, to the same extent that they are unable to hear the voices of others normally, they are also unable to hear their own voice. For this reason, it has been observed that people with moderate to severe hearing loss speak louder than normal in order to be able to hear their own voice at a level that is satisfactory to them. So the moment they first put on the hearing aids it will take them some time to realise that they need to speak at a lower volume, just as their fellow human beings speak to them so as not to be disturbed.

MYTH 9: Small hearing aids are more expensive and more technologically advanced than larger ones.
TRUTH: The size of a hearing aid cannot be a criterion of cost or quality. The explanation is much simpler. Smaller hearing aids apply to smaller hearing losses than hearing aids placed behind the ear.

MYTH 10: The choice of hearing aids, regardless of whether someone has hearing loss in both ears, should be based on the worst ear.
TRUTH: Originally, mother nature endowed us with two ears and two eyes. Imagine someone wearing one pair of glasses instead of a pair of spectacles. The same is true for hearing aids. When hearing loss afflicts both our ears, the maximum of good hearing can only be obtained when we apply hearing aids to both. This stems as a necessity not so much from the ears but from the brain which is “tuned” to perceive stereo sounds. Especially in cases where there is difficulty in distinguishing and understanding speech, stereo hearing obtained from two hearing aids is the ideal solution. However, in the last resort of using a hearing aid in bilateral hearing loss, it should be applied to the ear that has the best perception and in 80% of cases this is the least weighted.