If your hearing loss is affecting your quality of life or causing significant communication problems, a hearing aid is often the best choice. Having a hearing aid offers a number of benefits for people struggling with hearing loss, including:
- The ability to communicate. – With a hearing aid, your ability to hear and understand what people say will improve dramatically.
- Increased confidence. – Because you won’t have to worry about not being able to participate in conversations or constantly asking those around you to repeat themselves, you will experience increased self-confidence.
- Safety. – Not being able to hear as well as you should present multiple safety concerns. With the right hearing aid, you will be able to hear fire alarms, intruders and other sounds that signal danger.
- Better relationships.– With your hearing aid in place, friends, family and coworkers will no longer need to speak loudly, repeat themselves or listen to audio at uncomfortable volumes. Your improved ability to hear will also reduce the number of misunderstandings that occur between you and the people around you.
- Improved mood.– If you struggle with depression and anxiety because of your condition, getting a hearing aid could help to alleviate some of these issues and improve your mood.
Fortunately, advancements in technology have made hearing aids more effective, affordable and discreet than ever before, so getting a hearing aid is not nearly as difficult as it once was. Many different hearing aid designs exist, including:
- Open fit– a hearing aid designed to keep the ear canal as unobstructed as possible to allow low-frequency sounds into the ear naturally.
- Receiver in canal/Behind the ear– a hearing aid that rests behind the ear and connects to an earpiece in the canal with tubing or a thin wire.
- In the ear– a custom-made hearing aid with a long battery life and volume control that is designed to fit within the outer part of the ear.
- In the canal – a discreet device that fits partly inside the ear canal.
- Completely in the canal – a small, nearly invisible model that is molded to fit completely in the ear canal.
With so many options available, finding an appropriate hearing aid is easy. These devices are small, subtle and highly effective at amplifying frequencies that are difficult for hearing loss patients to discern on their own. They don’t cause any pain, and you can remove them at any time.