The following are twenty five tips and secrets for buying hearing aids.
Even though each topic can be expanded upon greatly, they are summarized for your ease of understanding.
Did you know that aspirin can cause hearing loss? And that supplements can return your hearing? Were you aware that hearing aids break down in two or three years and are considered obsolete by industry standards in five years? Or that recent Doctoral studies have found out that hearing loss can cause dementia? Even the number of teeth you have can determine your hearing loss! Read on and find out more of the in's and out's and scams of the hearing aid or hearing amplified world.
-The Audiology Squeeze For years the audiology profession has dominated the hearing aid world.
Just as you needed to see an optometrist for glasses when you were a kid, you can now buy reading glasses with your milk.
Some people are even using the term "ear readers" today to describe the new wave of hearing amplifiers on the market.
You do not have to pay thousands for an aid anymore, just a few hundred for a good one.
-The Difference Between Aids and Amplifiers The difference is, there is none.
At least not the cheaper one's under a hundred dollars.
They both basically amplify sound.
All sound.
Over a hundred dollars and you start making distinctions between analog aids and digital aids with different features.
-The Difference Between Analog or Digital Analogs may be a little cheaper, but are basically a good hearing amplifier.
The digital storm has changed hearing aids forever.
They have a lot more features and benefits that analogs can ever hope to have.
-The Digital Scam Because digital is so popular, a lot of companies advertise that they are selling digital aids when in fact they are selling digital programmable, or the like.
Unless they say they are "100% digital", they are not.
Buyer beware! -Rechargeable, The Journey Begins There has been an out pouring of reviews that glorify the rechargeable today.
Apparently one of the biggest features an inexpensive aid or amplifier is it's rechargeable feature.
Folks go on about how much easier it is to recharge than change (expensive) batteries.
But be careful to look and see how long the batteries can be used on one recharge before you make a purchase.
-Warranties: The Buyer's Safeguard There are not a lot of warranties or return policies out there, especially in the cheaper hearing aids section.
However there are some.
There are even extended warranties if you look at the mid range priced aids.
It's always an advantage to have your purchase warrantied.
A lot of people have received cheap hearing aids that only worked a short periods (hours) then failed.
Money that's just flushed away.
-"You Can't See The Hearing Aid You're Wearing" Scam No matter what you put in your ear, it will need something for you to pull it back out with at the end of the day.
People notice stuff like that.
How can they not? Regardless, they do not disappear in thin air, so don't be fooled.
-The Two Biggest Reasons People Don't Buy Aids Let's just cut to the quick.
In the past, the tens of thousands of dollars in cost has been the first reason not to purchase an aid.
That was the past.
The next generation of aids is looking pretty good.
The next biggest reason people don't buy aid is vanity or shame.
Looking good runs the world.
The old stigma about deaf people is still around.
People think they are thought of as less intelligent if they wear an aid.
So much so, that it takes a person an average of seven years from diagnosis before committing to purchasing an aid for themselves.
Unfortunately, the longer you wait, the harder it is to regain your hearing naturally.
-Supplements Proven To Return Hearing There are more than a dozen natural supplements out there that are proven by Doctoral studies to assist you with returning hearing that has been lost; Alpha lipoic acid, B Complex, folic acid, all the way to Zinc.
Who knew? According to Dr.
Mark Rosenberg: "Hearing loss should be considered an important factor in healthy aging.
Paying close attention to your nutritional status, B-vitamin wise, may help preserve and/or improve your hearing, memory and other cognitive functions.
" Antioxidants are your best friends forever.
-The Hearing Pill Did you know that the US Navy spent 11 years and millions of dollars to create The Hearing Pill? The basic chemical in it is NAC.
There is also a hearing loss pill that is made of natural substances.
The hormone Aldosterone is a natural occurring chemical in your body and has also been shown to return hearing that has been lost, but is still in it's infancy with respect to development.
-Noise And Air Pollution Are Your New Enemies In the last fifty years, the ambient amount of noise in cities has gone up a whopping thirty percent.
According to Dr.
Shapiro at UCLA, so has the amount of particulate matter in air pollution that affects your ears.
Your ears are being assaulted with noise and dirt.
-Clean Your Ears No, not with a cotton wand or Q-tip.
Every Doctor in the world will say nothing in your ear bigger than your elbow.
Get them done professionally, or go and see Dr.
David Hill who has a lot of videos on you tube for cleaning your ears.
He suggests you go to your nearest drug store and purchase one of a number of different products for professionally cleaning your own ears.
Thereby possibly saving your self the cost of a new hearing aid.
It's worth the wash.
-Ototoxic Drugs That Cause Hearing Loss There are a number of over the counter drugs and pharmaceuticals that can cause hearing loss.
Everything from aspirin and penicillin and vicodin are some of the culprits.
A case in point is the famous radio announcer Rausch Limbaugh, who lost part of his hearing due to vicodin overuse.
Others have lost it completely.
It's very helpful to know what drugs are causing you hearing loss.
-One Hearing Aid Or Two If your hearing is affected in both ears (binaural) then by all means use two.
In the past economics was the biggest consideration for purchasing two aids.
Today there's no reason not to.
In fact, only using one aid will let the other one go limp or atrophy and die.
So when you do get a second one, it takes the brain a lot more time, if ever, to retrain and reorient the ears hearing ability to hear again.
-Cheap Aids Can Damage Hearing Guns don't kill, just the person pulling the trigger.
Or so the adage goes.
Cheap hearing aids don't cause damage, the person operating them does.
Keep the sound levels down when you get a new aid.
Give your brain time to reintegrate hearing sounds again.
For some this may take months.
Even though the advertisements are very compelling.
You don't have to hear a leaf fall from fifty feet away.
-That You "Can" Improve Your Hearing loss For many this is a totally new idea.
The use of supplements, NAC, hormones and hearing pills are creating a new understanding about what you can expect from the world of science and hearing loss.
It used to be, once it's lost it's gone.
Not anymore! Dementia Due to Hearing Loss, 1 in 5 over 60 gets it More and more studies are coming foreword showing that dementia is directly affected by hearing loss.
Apparently the brain tries so hard to decode sound that other areas of the brain falter.
This is an accurate if however simplistic explanation.
Nonetheless, Dr Frank Lin has recently proved this hypothesis at the Johns Hopkins University school of Medicine.
-Hearing Can Affect Thinking "Johns Hopkins University recently revealed the results of a new study on hearing loss and cognitive decline in the elderly.
Their study found that older adults who experience hearing problems are far more likely to develop problems with thinking and memory.
" Apparently, even the number of teeth you have can determine the depth of your hearing disability.
-Hearing Aids Are Now Affordable and Available There isn't a good enough reason any longer not to get an aid when you need one.
If anything, there are studies that show the longer you wait the more difficult your hearing capacity is capable of returning to a better hearing condition.
-Are You Driving Your Family Crazy? On a more humorous note.
It's not the hearing loss person who is looking for an aid these days.
It's the family around them that are infinitely tired of saying, yup, you guessed it.
Whhhaaattt??? Do your family a big favor and get an aid! -iPods Can Damage Hearing Stick those ear buds in your ears and crank up the volume like kids do today and you have a recipe for disaster.
Already in one study in Australia, seventy percent of ELEMENTARY students were found to have hearing loss.
Dr.
Shargorodosky says: "There's lots of information out there detailing the negative effects of using MP3s and iPods.
Dr.
Josef Shargorodsky is an Otolaryngologist (ear doctor) from Harvard Medical School who shows us in the prestigious Journal of American Medicine that loss of hearing in young people 12 to 19 years has risen five percent in just the last twenty years alone.
" -Higher tones Are The First To Go All of our hearing is affected by age.
By the time we're thirty we have already lost some of the higher tones.
Cell phone manufacturers have capitalized on this with the ever popular "ring tone".
The decibels are so high, anyone over thirty can't hear them.
So the next time your teenager suddenly gets up to go to the washroom during dinner, chances are they're going to answer their phone.
There's even sound tracks called Buzzin' that your teenager listens to, and you hear something completely different.
Scary! -Hearing Aids Break Down in Two Years And Die In Five There's the bad news.
Especially when paying a significant price tag for a hearing aid.
Think about the environment a hearing aid exists in.
It's moist, warm and waxy.
It's well documented that hearing aids begin to break down after only two to three years of use and are considered by manufacturing guidelines obsolete after five.
-Silica Carcinogen Scare There are Silica beads for sale on the internet that use blue indicator beads.
They are used for depositing your hearing aid into to help withdraw the moisture out of them.
We are all accustomed to those little packets that come with electronic devices to help keep them dry.
Well some Silica vendors still sell the ones with blue indicator beads in them.
They are carcinogenic.
Be careful! "Some of the beads may be doped with a moisture indicator, such as cobalt(II) chloride, which is toxic and (may) be carcinogenic.
Cobalt (II) chloride is deep blue when dry (anhydrous) and pink when moist (hydrated).
" Orange indicator silica beads in similar products however are not carcinogenic.
-Easy To Lose Harder To Find Once you've been around the hearing aid block a time or two you'll see abundant hilarious stories around the theme of how often many people lose their hearing aids.
Weather it's in you bed or out hunting, the number of times people lose their aids is amazing.
Keep your eye's open.
Another good reason to avoid expensive aids.
There You Have It Twenty five important points to consider when purchasing a hearing aid.
There's a lot more there than you may have originally thought.
We hope we have helped sort out some of the confusion around hearing aids.
Please use these secrets and tips to help you make a more qualified search for your hearing aid.