How to Preserve Your Hearing Aid

Are you thinking about getting hearing aids? Hearing aids are one of the only options if you are suffering from moderate or indeed severe hearing loss. Hearing loss can have a range of negative consequences on your life. For instance, people who suffer from hearing loss have been found more likely to develop memory problems and other cognitive issues. As such, it’s important to make sure that you are speaking to an audiologist about treatment if you suffer from this condition. 

A lot of people are put off hearing aids, because they think they will be difficult to maintain or repair. However, this is not the case at all and it’s actually remarkably easy to keep hearing aids in great condition. Here are a few steps you need to take to ensure that your hearing aids do not start to show their age. 

Clean them regularly

Let’s start with the basics. Hearing aids need to be cleaned on a fairly typical basis. Ears are self cleaning and this means that they regularly push any excess wax or dirt out to keep your ears in good condition. If you’re wearing hearing aids, then your ears are going to blocked quite a lot of the time. With nowhere to go the wax and dirt can get on the device itself. That’s the bad news and you shouldn’t be surprised if, when you take them out, your hearing aids look a little grimey. The good news is that it’s easy to clean up hearing aids. All you need is a damp cloth to wipe away the ear wax and any other dirt. In no time at all your hearing aids will look as good as new. If ear wax has entered the tube that connects the two pieces, you can detach this and clean it out before letting it dry and reattaching it. 

Keep them in the case

When they are not in use, your hearing aids should be properly stored in their case. If you don’t don’t do this, you do risk them getting damaged. Someone could sit on them, stand on them or they could simply get lost. It’s also possible that the outer surface could get chipped. This will mean that when you put it in your ear, it won’t be as comfortable. Keeping them in the case when not in use is the simple way to avoid all these problems. 

Don’t get it wet

Most hearing aids are not waterproof. This doesn’t mean that you can’t wear them in typical rainy conditions. However, they should never be submerged. This means you need to make sure that you are removing them if you have a shower or a bath. If you fail to do this, then there’s a good chance that you will find they stop working.

Handle it carefully

Lastly, you need to handle them the right way. Your audiologist will explain this at your hearing aid fitting. They’ll make sure that you aren’t at risk of accidentally damaging them by holding them incorrectly or forcing the batteries in the wrong way.