Spending so much time at home over the last seven months has made it easier to forego daily requirements like taking showers, putting on real clothing and combing your hair. While these actions don’t have major consequences, one activity does—wearing your hearing aids.
Even if you are home alone, it is still important to wear your hearing aid every day during all your waking hours. The top reasons are laid out below.
Auditory Deprivation
When you are living with untreated hearing loss, your brain becomes used to not hearing specific sounds and adapts accordingly. if you stop wearing your hearing aids for an extended period of time, your brain will forget how to process and understand certain sounds and words.
Catherine Palmer, the president of the American Academy of Audiology explains, “We don’t want the auditory system deprived of sound because over time that can change auditory processing abilities.”
Return to Living with Hearing Loss
When you are fitted with hearing aids for the first time, there is an adjustment period. Often sounds seem too loud and background sounds can feel unpleasant and intrusive. It takes about two to three weeks for your brain and ears to become fully comfortable with new hearing aids.
During this adjustment period, your brain adapts and requires less energy to process sounds. When you stop wearing your hearing aids for a long stretch of time, your brain will suddenly have to work a lot harder in order to try to hear. This can be exhausting.
Increase Your Isolation
Even if you are home alone, you are still interacting with people through video and phone calls. If you stop wearing your devices, you will find that hearing others will become more challenging. This will likely lead you to stop trying to have conversations and withdraw even further.
Revisit the Audiologist
After an extended period of time without using your hearing aids, it is not as easy as you would like to simply pop them back in your ears. Your hearing will have changed since you last wore the devices, meaning the programming is no longer compatible with your current hearing loss configuration.
If this happens, you will need to schedule an appointment with your audiologist to have your hearing retested. To learn more about the benefits of hearing aids or to schedule an appointment with an audiologist, contact The House Institute Hearing Health Centers today.