What happens after you purchase affordable new hearing aids online? The world can be a loud place, and it can be a bit daunting to suddenly start hearing clearly again. It might take days or weeks for your brain to get used to you wearing them. Luckily, MDHearing has some tips and tricks to acclimating yourself to your new hearing aids.
Day One with Your New Hearing Aids
To begin, we suggest sitting in a small room with another person. As your friend or family member is talking to you, adjust the volume on your new hearing aid until their conversational voice sounds normal and comfortable. Resist the temptation to crank the volume up if you miss a word; your brain is not used to the sound level, and the increased volume can be more distracting than helpful. Patience is important in the early days of wearing a hearing aid.
Week One with Better Hearing
In the first few days, some sounds may seem unnaturally loud because your brain is relearning how to prioritize the sounds it hasn’t heard in years. Hearing these new frequencies that you haven’t heard in a long time can be exhilarating as well as a little tiring. MDHearing suggests starting gradually and wearing your hearing aids around 30 minutes at a time until you are comfortable. Build up to using the aids all day.
Week Two and Hearing Exercises
While you adjust to hearing again, we suggest trying some simple hearing exercises. Listen to songs you know by heart, or watch the television with closed captioning. Already anticipating the lyrics or dialogue can help your brain connect with the sounds you’re hearing again. As you wear your hearing aids, listening should become easier and you’ll be understanding more. Conversations should start getting better since you won’t be guessing to fill in missed words as much. In fact, you may even have to ask people to stop yelling at you.
Week Three and Beyond
As you near a month with new hearing aids, your brain should be filtering out more insignificant sounds. You should be able to hear voices clearly without thinking so much about it. You may find yourself having “aha” moments, where you realize there’s a difference between quiet sounds and silence. Because your brain is no longer working overtime, you might even start to feel more energized. With the sounds of life coming alive again, you can go back to doing things you haven’t done in years, like going to restaurants, playing cards with friends, seeing a movie at the theater, or even just listening to the birds in the backyard.
With time, patience, and frequent use of your hearing aids, your brain will begin to adjust to hearing so many new sounds. After a few weeks, you will be amazed by what you have been missing.
Still comparing online hearing aid prices? Check out MDHearing’s great selection of affordable FDA-registered hearing aids.