Getting Used To New Hearing Aids

Whether you are wearing hearing aids for the first time or have a new upgraded model, it will no doubt be a different experience to what you are used to. Just as your eyes need some time to adjust to a new glasses prescription, so do your ears need time to adjust to new hearing aids.

Adjusting to new hearing aids can take up to a few weeks to become fully comfortable. However, there are some key behaviours you can adopt to not become overwhelmed too quickly building up your hearing and confidence.

1. Slowly Wear Your Hearing Aids More Over Time

Slowly build up the amount of time you spend wearing your hearing aids. It’s important to put yourself out of your comfort zone, but not so much that you are really struggling with the new noise level. If you ordered a pair of hearing aids, you can even start by wearing one for a couple hours a day before moving onto wearing both at the same time.

2. Listen To Nature Sounds Outdoors

Take your hearing aids for a real-world spin by wearing them outdoors around your neighbourhood. The majority of sounds might be fairly quiet such as birds chirping or the odd car passing by.

Not only will this help you focus on specific sounds, it helps you build up to more noisy environments that you might encounter in everyday life such as group conversations or loud restaurants and bars.

3. Go To Noisy Environments When You Feel Ready

Loud environments can be overwhelming with multiple people talking, lots of traffic on main roads, loud music and much more stimulation occurring in your vicinity.

There’s no shame in taking a few days before going into these environments. Going in straight away might make you feel uncomfortable as it can be hard to process everything, even with the latest speech processing technology in hearing aids such as the Phonak Lumity or Resound OMNIA.

4. Use Accessories To Aid Your Devices

If you watch a lot of television or participate in a lot of meetings at work, we stock a wide range of Phonak, Signia and Resound accessories that can make your hearing aids perform better in any situation. If you struggle with dexterity issues, the buttons on many of our accessories are large and easy to press.

Use a TV Streamer to stream audio directly from your hearing aids and test out different volumes to find the one that is right for you. Place a microphone in the middle of the table at a work meeting and let people’s voices go directly to your ears no matter what angle they are sitting at.

5. Keep A Diary

Keep a diary of different environments that you seem to struggle more in or features you want to explore. This can help you slowly build up to these environments. Keep a record of how long you are wearing your hearing aids each day, again so you can increase this by an hour or so every day.

If you require any ongoing adjustments by our expert audiologists, simply look at the notes from your diary and we can answer any questions you may have.

By building up your hearing aid usage over time, focusing on natural outdoor sounds and keeping a diary of any teething issues, you can adapt to your new hearing aids much quicker. Remember to be patient, getting hearing aids can bring the sounds you love or have maybe missed back into your life. Follow our advice and contact us if you have any questions.