Why Don’t the Best Hearing Aids Work Like You Remember?

If your hearing aids no longer work like you remember, there are other solutions that may be able to help: hearing implants. Your hearing may change over time, but there's no reason to give up on hearing your best—you can still enjoy all the wonderful sounds life has to offer.

Imagine this situation: After years of hearing loss, you just picked up a pair of the best hearing aids you can get, and everything sounds so much better. You can hear some sounds you’ve been missing out on for years.

But with time, you start to notice that, once again, you can’t hear some things as well as you used to. The TV is too quiet, and trying to have a conversation with someone in another room isn’t possible.

You decide to go to your hearing aid center and have your acoustician make some adjustments. But these quick fixes only work for a little while. You might start to blame your hearing aids or even your family, and then you search for the newest technology to restore the hearing quality you remember.

Does this sound familiar? If it does, hear this: It’s not your fault, and more powerful hearing solutions exist.

How Hearing Changes

Everyone’s hearing changes over time. How you hear now might not be how you heard seven years ago, and it might not be how you’ll hear seven years from now. That’s because the tiny hair cells in your inner ear that are crucial to hearing tend to deteriorate as you age.

What You Can Do

Don’t ever give up on your hearing. There are technologies that can work with some hearing aids to help you get the most out of them. Wireless assistive listening devices connect directly to your phone, television, computer, or other audio source and send sounds directly to your hearing aid. It’s like turning off all the other noises and hearing only the TV.

Keep a journal of how you hear in different situations, where you have difficulties hearing, and what others say about your hearing. Read it every now and then to figure out if and how your hearing is changing.

Thought About Hearing Implants?

If even your hearing aids don’t provide enough amplification, it might be time to consider other options, such as hearing implants. There are a few different types of hearing implants, and each one is specialized to treat a different type of hearing loss. Because of this, you’ll want to talk to your doctor about your specific hearing loss to find the right solution for you.

Here’s a quick overview of some types of hearing implants that might be able to help you hear better:

If the hair cells in your cochlea are damaged, a cochlear implant may be able to help. A cochlear implant bypasses the damaged hair cells in the cochlea by using electrical pulses to send sound directly to the auditory nerve.

If the hair cells in your cochlea are still in good shape but the bones in your middle ear are hardened or malformed or you have frequent ear infections, a middle ear implant or bone conduction implant might be for you. A middle ear implant replaces the damaged parts of the middle ear and transmits sound waves to the cochlea. A bone conduction implant sends sound waves to your cochlea through the bones of your skull.

You can also try out ADHEAR, our non-implantable bone conduction system. Simply stick, click, and hear immediately whether ADHEAR is the solution for you.

MED-EL offers the widest range of hearing solutions, including solutions for every type of hearing loss. So, no matter where you are on your hearing journey, MED-EL has a solution that could work for you.