Hearing Aids: How to Choose the Best Ones
By Thinking about getting hearing aids but confused about where to get started? Don’t worry, we understand the challenges involved. To help you ease into the process, we have listed down everything you need to know to choose the best hearing aids for your needs.
But before we dive in, it is important for you to know that hearing aids can’t restore your hearing, They help by amplifying sounds, thus making it easier for you to hear and understand sounds.
The Different Styles of Hearing Aids
Hearing aids come in a wide variety of sizes, prices, and features. Over the years, designers have been working on making smaller hearing aids to meet the rising demand for compact devices that aren’t very noticeable. But the con is that these smaller aids may not offer the same power as their larger counterparts.
Completely in The Canal: Completely-in-the-canal hearing aids are used to improve mild to moderate hearing loss. These fit inside your ear canal and are hence not very noticeable.
In the Canal: The in-the-canal aids are customized to fit partly in the ear canal. These work towards improving mild to moderate loss in hearing.
In the Ear: In-the-ear hearing aids can be customized to fit in the bowl area of your outer ear or its lower part. Both these fittings help people with mild to a severe loss of hearing and come with directional microphones for better hearing in noise.
Behind the Ear: Behind-the-ear aids usually hook over the top of your ear and rest behind it. They have a tube that connects the hearing device to a custom earpiece in the ear canal. These devices can be used by people of any age for any type of loss of hearing.
Receiver in The Ear or Receiver in Canal: These two styles are similar to the behind-the-ear style where the speaker sits in the canal. But instead of a tube, these styles have a tiny wire connecting the piece behind the ear to the receiver.
Getting used to your hearing aids can take time. You need to be patient and allow yourself some time to get used to it and adjust to the amplified sounds. If you continue to face trouble, you can seek out support from your physician or a support group.
The end goal is to stay positive through the process and find hearing aids you’re comfortable with.