Hearing issues and treatments

I have severe haring loss particularly in high frequencies. I have worn hearing aids for over 10 yrs. I didn't hold back when I finally faced the facts on my loss and my daughters giving me hell to get them! Professionally I was in a lot of meetings so being able to hear was a job requirement and I went to Beltone and went with top of the line aids. I have gotten new ones every 3-4 years. I have two and the cost was around $6-7,000 for the pair. The aids are very sophisticated. they do things like take sound in higher frequencies I can't hear and change them to frequencies I can hear. They are programmed to give me options like a noisy room settings, speech emphasis and noise filtering. My journey has taught me a good bit and I'd put some of that forth to build understanding for those considering aids. Any reputable service like Beltone will test you and work with you for aids to help you within your desires and budget. Aids don't just amplify, they do it where you need it, not across the board of the sound spectrum. When you lose hearing in frequencies and levels, your brain "forgets" what it is. So when you get aids you have to relearn what sounds are. I will never forget the first day I wore aids and took a piss. the sound of the piss hitting the water was so LOUD and it made me aware of what I didn't know I had loss. They actually start you slow because it is a shock and it can be very disorienting.Many people get them and end up not handing the adjustment and don't use them. I am actually at the point where without aids I only hear 20%. I finally went to an audiologist because even though I was utilizing the highest end aids, I still have issues. They told me I was a candidate for cochlear implants, that is the next step. My advise is get help, get educated and stick with it in the acclimation period. Consider an audiologist over a hearing aid company. Aids are not perfect but it is better to hear more and you probably do not understand how much loss you have and what you are missing out on. What bothers me the most is when I can't understand my grandkids.

Between construction equipment, cars and motorcycles I have some loss already. At some point I have no doubt I'll wear a hearing aid. They make them pretty small and good now so I'm not too vain to try one one day.

I have been experimenting with hearing aids. I tried an inexpensive in-canal type. It was supposed to be 16 channels, but it had no way to adjust the channels, which should have been frequency bands that you can individually boost. Essentilly they were just amplifiers AND they hurt my ears after 2 hours of use. Lesson learned. I'd likely need custom molded ones to even consider in-canal hearing aids, and these will not be over-the-counter hearing aids.

Those around my age are likely familiar with graphic equilizer boosters that we'd have on home stereos, where you can boost set frequency ranges. For those not familiar, it's like bass and treble controls but with a lot more granularity. The audiogram tells you what frequency ranges you have trouble hearing and to what extent. Having the ability to boost these specific frequency band ranges is the main difference between a real hearing aid and just a sound amplifier.

I'm so far liking my second set, which was a behind the ear type made by Earrck. They were only $300 for the set on Amazon and are way more comfortable than the in-canal ones. They have a bluetooth app that allows the hearing aids to do a hearing test. The test produces an audiogram and the app allows you to automatically set up the hearings aids based on your audiogram.

These hearing aids have dual microphones and 4 environment settings (quiet indoor, loud indoor, outdoor, music) and 10 levels of volume that you can adjust with the app or with buttons on the behind the ear piece.. The environment settings try to optimize the input based on the setting to bias what the hearing aid thinks is the audio you're likely trying to hear. They are exceptionally sophisticated for a $300/set hearing aid.

What the more expensive units seem to have are sophisticated AI chips and directional microphones that bias towards the sounds you are likely trying to hear. They also tend to have better battery life that allows for streaming audio directly to your hearing aids from different inputs (i.e. phone, TV, etc). Also, when you get into a more expensive set via an audioligist, the cost includes a service to make sure you get the right hearing aid and set-up for you.

My investment into hearing aids has so far been minimal and has been worth the knowledge (to me) that I gained on this topic. The sum total invested is less than half of what a higher end single hearing aid would cost. If you only have hearing loss in one ear, you can purchase a single left or right ear hearing aid.

While hearing loss is more common with age, it affects every age. Conversation becomes more difficult to interpret, and hearing aids are a blessing. We would add that "walls of sound" encountered in restaurants that lack textiles on surfaces, loud music, and so on degrade one's ability to sort out what the person across from you is actually saying. Acuity is both sensing and processing --and when both degrade, it's a problem.

Men are particularly reluctant to accept hearing aids, with a typical 7-10 year gap between the time the need is apparent and the time the need is actually met.

This can be complicated as to the cause, but there are hearing aids that will improve your hearing. It is important to get your hearing in order; otherwise, it will slowly degrade, and it will start affecting your inner ear more as you get older because the brain will slowly start to move resources away from hearing regions over time.

Also, there is no magic pill or remedy. In some cases, if it's autoimmune related they'll give you short term steroids, and hopefully that'll help a little, but that's about it unless the area of the brain has cancer or the person suffered a stroke in the hearing region.

A fairly large # of people are affected by hearing loss and tinnitus, with me being one of them. There are lots of claims for cures, but many seem to fall under the same realm of things a guy can do to increase his dick size ;-) I'm at an age where I am experimenting with hearing aids.

One thought about tinnitus is that your brain is filling in for sound signals it no longer receives. Not sure if hearing aids actually help, but after a couple of weeks of using hearing aids I can tell you I've noticed little to no improvement with tinnitus.

I do find this field fascinating, to say the least. It's generally not that you can't hear someone as much as it is that you can't actually understand what someone is saying. The reason for that is that certain consonants tend to be in the higher frequency ranges that are most affected by hearing loss. Hearing aids can boost the volume of those higher frequency ranges.

Another theory is that tinnitus has to do with a change in the neurotransmitter make up in the brain. This suggests that supplements can help, but I remain skeptical. Just curious to see what others have found regarding hearing loss/tinnitus mitigation.

For now, the only sure fire impact is through hearing aids (that I'm aware of) when it comes to hearing loss. Anyone else have any different results/comments?

FWIW - I had considered putting this under the Senior Swingers forum, but hearing loss/tinnitus is not necessarily just an issue with aging.