How do hearing aids help with hearing loss?

Hearing loss can be quite a debilitating condition. Patients often don’t know how to communicate with other people, & feel anxious & depressed in most every day & social situations.

Hearing loss creates a lot of problems in a person’s personal & professional life, & causes issues with their emotional well-being.

The causes of hearing loss can be diverse and not particularly related to any specific reason. 

Certain diseases, illnesses, infections, medications, & accidents can lead to hearing loss, as can certain structural & genetic disorders. 

Whatever the cause of hearing loss, hearing aids can help treat your hearing loss. 

They can very easily help you hear properly & interact with other people more meaningfully.

However, it’s important to choose the right hearing aids for this purpose.

How do hearing aids work?

A hearing aid is basically a battery-powered electronic device that helps you hear external sounds more accurately. 

They are quite tiny so they can easily be worn around or behind your ears, & they help make external sounds louder to help you easily hear those.

With the help of hearing aids, you can amplify external sounds which helps you communicate with the other people around you in a better way.

There are three components of a hearing aid. These are:

• A microphone, that picks up external sounds

• An amplifier that makes those sounds louder

• A receiver that sends these amplified sounds into your ear.

However, hearing aids don’t benefit everyone who wears them. Hearing Aids often benefit those people who have damages to their inner ear and/or the nerve that links the ear with the brain. 

The damage can be due to:

• Disease

• Aging

• Loud noises

• Medications

Hearing loss that occurs due to issues with the eardrum, ear canal, or middle ear, is called conductive hearing loss.

In most cases, surgery or any other medical intervention might help relieve the hearing loss of patients.

But these options are often not for everyone. 

Typical Hearing Aids only work for you if you have an open ear canal & a relatively normal exterior ear canal. 

Instead, a device that sends sounds to the inner ear through their skull bone, might be the best option for them.

How you can get a hearing aid?

An Ears-Nose-Throat(ENT) doctor can help you with the proper hearing aids for yourself.

These specialists can easily evaluate & help treat your hearing loss.

The ENT specialist will conduct exams to help you find out the best hearing aids for your case.

In addition to that, an audiologist will perform certain tests on you to figure out the exact type of hearing loss you’re suffering from. 

You should always get hearing aids from a specialist, only after performing all the tests and due diligence.

Avoid mail-ordering hearing aids as they often don’t fit correctly, & don’t improve your hearing issues much.

Most people don’t experience hearing loss in both ears, however, some people do. 

For people with hearing loss in both ears, it’s probably best to wear two hearing aids.

Types & Styles of hearing loss:

An audiologist can help you find the right kind of hearing aids for yourself. They will figure out the best kind of hearing aids for you depending on your exact degree of hearing loss, & also modify it according to any special needs you might have.

The factors that determine what kind of hearing aids is best for you:

• The type of hearing loss you suffer from & its severity

• Your age

• Your experience & efficiency with small devices

• Your lifestyle

• The cost. Hearing aids costs can vary greatly in price, often ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars

Hearing Aids are primarily of two types. These include:

• Analog hearing aids: These convert sound waves to electrical signals that help make the sounds louder. They’re generally less expensive than the other kind of hearing aids. They are also easier to handle as they have easier volume controls. 

• Digital hearing aids: These hearing aids convert sound waves into numerical codes much like computer codes, which then amplifies them.
  The codes include information about the direction of a sound, its pitch, & its volume.
  This helps the patient easily control & modulate the sound volume, frequency, & intensity according to their physical conditions & surroundings, i.e., whether they are in a quiet room, setting, or someplace noisy & loud. Most digital hearing aids are able to adjust such tiny details & nuances automatically, without any manual adjustments.
  The automatic kind, however, costs significantly more than the manual digital hearing aids, but have shown better results & are also smaller in size, thus easier to handle. They are also more powerful than manual digital hearing aids. 

Style of hearing aids:

There are three main styles of hearing aids. They differ in their size, placement in or over the ear, along with how much they help the patient hear external sounds. 

These styles include:

• Canal hearing aids: Canal hearing aids fit inside your ears which makes them harder to see. An In-the-canal(ITC) hearing aids are made to fit a specific canal of your ear. A completely-in-canal(CIC) hearing aid is smaller & nearly disappears inside the ear canal. Both types are used to treat moderate to severe hearing loss, however, since they are both extremely small, they can be difficult to adjust & remove.
  Owing to this reason, these usually aren’t used for small children & older people who might have difficulty adjusting to them.
  These devices are quite difficult to see, hence you might want to wear them every day, or even use them for several months at a stretch. 

• In-The-Ear(ITE) hearing aids: ITE hearing aids fit completely inside your ear. They come in a hard plastic case that holds the electronics parts.
  They are used for people with mild to severe hearing loss, although they are not suitable for children whose ears are still growing in size. 

• Behind-The-Ear(BTE) hearing aids: BTE hearing aids sit encased in a hard plastic case behind your ears. A plastic ear molds fits inside the outer ear & directs sounds to the ear.
  A different type, which is called Mini BTE, fits entirely behind your ear with a narrow tube that goes into your ear canal.
  This tube helps prevent earwax from building up inside the ear, as well as helps make your own voice sound clearer.
  BTEs can help treat mild to severe hearing loss, however, they aren’t for everyone.
  
  

• Receiver-In-Canal(RIC) & Receiver-In-the-ear(RIE) hearing aids: Both of these hearing aids have a behind-the-ear component that connects to the receiver in the ear or the ear canal with a tiny wire. This helps low-frequency sounds to enter the ear in a natural way & also helps the high-frequency sounds to be amplified through the hearing aid. RIC & RIE hearing aids help patients with mild to severe hearing loss. 

You can also modify any of these devices according to your specific needs & requirements. Your doctor will help you define those needs & requirements, based on which they will specify the exact hearing aid for you. Book an Appointment: https://vertigoandearclinic.com/contact-us.php