Should You Wear Hearing Aids All The Time?

If you are someone that experiences hearing loss, then chances are you have had hearing aids professionally fitted. These can transform the way you hear sounds and greatly improve your quality of life. If you have recently got hearing aids, you might be wondering just how often you are supposed to wear them.

Should it be just when you are in a social setting and want to hear? Or should you wear them all the time? We take a look at just how your hearing aid works and when you should and shouldn’t wear it. Hopefully, this can help to clear up any confusion and ensure you get the best use out of your hearing aid as possible.

What is a Hearing Aid and How Does It Work?

A hearing aid is a small electrical device that’s made up of a microphone to pick up sounds, an amplifier to convert them into electrical signals and make them louder and a receiver that enables you to hear them. It essentially makes the sound vibrations that enter the ear easier to detect and be processed, enabling you to hear. They are fantastic devices that can be worn in one or both ears depending on the severity of your hearing loss and whether one or both ears are affected.

Should You Wear a Hearing Aid All of the Time?

When you have a hearing aid, you might wonder if it’s something you need to wear 24/7, or if you should take it out and just wear it when completely necessary. The answer to this is that when you have a hearing aid you should wear it as often as possible.

This is because in order for your brain to adapt to the changes in your hearing, it needs to recover the hearing functions that it has lost. While it has gone some time without needing to process sounds and filter out noise as your hearing loss has done this itself, it will now need to learn to do it again. This process takes time and if you keep taking out your hearing aid and putting it back in again, it will take much longer.

The brain won’t be able to process or learn what it should do as easily, and you could find that the hearing aids don’t work quite as well as you would hope for them to. To ensure they are doing their job correctly, try to keep them in as much as you can. Over the next few weeks, you will soon notice a dramatic difference in your hearing and how comfortable you feel wearing them. Soon you will forget they are even there and just be able to enjoy the benefits of being able to hear again, without the hassle.

When Should You Not Wear Your Hearing Aids? 

There are sometimes when you can remove your hearing aids, but these don’t occur too often. One of the most important times to not wear your hearing aid is when you are having a shower or a bath. This is because your hearing aid is electrical and if it were to get water in the mechanism, it can cause it to malfunction. Take them off and put them somewhere dry before you get in the water, then put them back in carefully once you are out.

You also should not wear your hearing aids to bed. This is because they aren’t needed and also, they can easily get squashed and broken if you were to toss and turn and they were to fall out. Hearing aids are precious pieces of equipment so make sure you store them correctly on your bedside, ready to be re-inserted when you wake up in the morning. Other instances when you might not want to wear your hearing aids are if you are going to a dangerously loud environment such as a concert. This is because the very loud noises and vibrations from the sound can impact the way that your hearing aid works.

Get in touch

If you have a hearing aid and have some questions about how it works or when to wear it, please get in touch with us at Beltone Hearing Care. As one of Canada’s leading hearing health professionals we can advise you on any questions or queries you might have and ensure you get the most from your hearing device. Contact us through this to speak to a friendly member of our team.

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