How to choose a Hearing Aid – part #2

Hello again and welcome back to the Peter Byrom Audiology blog. Last time we started thinking about how to choose a hearing aid. As our starting point, we looked at the different types of hearing aid available on the market. If you want a recap, check out the last blog here:

Lifestyle – active, sporty, outdoors

The next think to think about is your lifestyle. As part of our appointment, I will want to find out about how you live your life! We encourage you to wear your hearing aids from the moment you wake up, to when you go to bed, so it’s important to think about what your average day looks like.

If you are a very active person, you may appreciate as much technology as possible; runners tend to stream music from their phone to their hearing aids.

What about something that’s waterproof? Obviously, this is a good choice for swimmers, but waterproof aids will always be super-durable if you’re doing vigorous sports.

If you exercise or just enjoy being outdoors, then a hearing aid that can cope with wind could be a consideration. Most of the manufacturers provide enhanced features in their top-of-the-range aids; you may also find speech in loud noise programmes helpful too.

Lifestyle – meetings, school, restaurants

What if you attend a lot of meetings? Similar, to those who play a lot of sport, technology is your friend here. The RIC, BTE and ITE will all give you options to connect to assistive listening devices (ALDs). This is additional equipment such as microphones that are really useful in meetings and challenging environments. ALDs these days are incredibly slick, well-designed and blend seamlessly into the office or school environment, but I’ve also had a lot of happy patients who use theirs in noisy restaurants, for example.

Lifestyle – musicians

There is one group of people who need a special mention – musicians! If you play an instrument, listen to a lot of music, or work in a musical-related field then your hearing aid has a lot of work to do. You may need individual music programmes or want to consider an analogue aid like Lyric for a more natural sound. You might also need to consider hearing protection for loud concerts.

Aesthetics

Along with sound, you might also have an idea of what you want your hearing aid to look like. Do you mind something behind your ear? Do you wear glasses and would prefer an ITE? Is it important to you to have something 100% invisible?

Your anatomy

Finally, there may be some features of your anatomy that will rule out certain hearing aids. Some points to consider:

• Shape/ size: small or bendy ear canals can make building ITCs challenging
• Waxy ears – the ear canal is a naturally waxy place but some of us make more than others. This could rule out deep fitting aids such as Lyric.
• Your dexterity – can you handle small aid or a battery compartment?

Ready to choose?

I hope that this has given you plenty of information for starting your hearing aid journey with us. Remember, you can get in touch via phone, email or the ‘contact us’ section of the website.

Thank you for reading and take care,

Peter