How do hearing aids work?

If you struggle to understand what people are saying or often need to increase the volume on the television, you could be one of the 466 million people worldwide living with hearing loss. It's an increasingly common condition and can affect people of all ages, but while hearing loss can feel devastating, hearing aids can change that. Just as wearing glasses help to improve your vision, hearing aids can enhance your hearing and generally enable you to easily hear the world around you.

Today’s hearing aids are small and discreet they become invisible when you put them in your ear. No one will know you are wearing them. They can also do much more to make it easier to hear. They can connect to your smartphone and offer fantastic features such as directional microphones that detect where the speech sounds you want to listen to are coming from, They also offer noise-cancelling technology and speech amplification so you can hear conversations naturally and clearly, even when there is background noise.

A hearing aid is a battery-powered device designed to improve your hearing. These tiny computers are worn either behind or in the ear and are designed to amplify sounds to help you hear better. A hearing aid is generally made up of three components: a microphone, processor and receiver (amplifier). These components enable the hearing aid to work as follows:

• Microphones pick up sounds
• Sounds are analyzed by the processing chip
• Processed sounds are sent to the amplifier
• Amplified sounds are sent to the loudspeaker
• Sounds are transmitted by the receiver into the ear canal. This can be accomplished with the receiver in the canal device, or via an earmold. Sound is transmitted to the eardrum which causes the eardrum to vibrate.
• The mechanical vibrations from the eardrum and middle ear bones are then transmitted to the inner ear where they become electrical impulses
• The brain picks up these impulses and processes them

A hearing aid won’t give you perfect hearing. However, it will help to reduce the impact hearing loss has on your life. Hearing aids can help you comprehend hearing and speech better. When there is damage to the small sensory hair cells in the inner ear, the hearing loss is known as sensorineural hearing loss. The damage can happen as a result of exposure to noise, disease and taking certain medicines, or can be simply down to ageing. Hearing aids will magnify the sound vibrations that enter the ear. The remaining hair cells are able to detect larger vibrations and change them into neural signals which are then sent to the brain.

Hearing aids can:

• Enable you to hear everyday sounds such as the telephone or doorbell
• Help you to feel much more confident when talking to people and enable you to follow conversations in noisy environments
• Help you to enjoy watching the TV and listening to music at a volume that’s comfortable for everyone

If you suspect that you may have hearing loss and could potentially benefit from wearing hearing aids, then schedule a consultation with a hearing care professional. They will be able to determine your type of hearing loss, severity, and its cause and help you find the best treatment to give you back the joy of hearing.

Previously, hearing aids were large, bulky and very noticeable. Unfortunately, without hearing aids, what is noticeable is when you mishear conversations or have to constantly ask people to repeat themselves. Today’s hearing aids are so small, no one will know you are wearing them.  Hearing aids have the potential to transform your life-discreetly.