What are the downsides to having a hearing aid?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I’m pretty sure I would benefit from having a hearing aid in at least one ear, but possibly both.

For the record, I’m female and 33. I went to an audiologist maybe six years ago, and for pretty much every test I was in the below normal range, and for some, like the high frequency tests, I scored very low. I have Tinnitus (high pitched ringing in my ears 24/7) I remember the doctor asking me if I drove a motorcycle, had a noisy job, etc… (nope) because he was trying to figure out why I scored so low. He said he was 55 and had better hearing than I did, but some people are just more susceptible to hearing loss than others.

I had a few really bad ear infections when I was a teen. So bad that they started in my ear and spread down to my jaw to the point where I couldn’t really chew anything or move my jaw it hurt so bad. I think most of those were in my left ear which is the one I have the most problems with now, like Really bad earaches that feel like I’m being stabbed with an ice pick or something.

I feel like I’m at the point now where I would really benefit from hearing aids, but I was talking to my girlfriend about it yesterday and she thinks it might be annoying to have them. Like I’m looking at them as some cure-all for my frustrations, but having them might be just as frustrating. Like alot of noises might suddenly be Too loud, or having to adjust the sound on them all the time for different situations. I told her I’m not sure she really understands how frustrating it is for me now though.

I’m constantly saying “What?” or “Oh I thought you said…” If there is ambiant noise in the room I have to Really concentrate on what the other person is saying. If you’re looking away from me, or in another room, chances are I didn’t understand what you said. It’s not like I’m reading peoples lips when they talk to me, I think it’s just that when you’re facing me the sound is directed right At me, so it’s easier for me to catch.

I hate hate hate talking on the phone for that reason too. I wear earphones while on the phone to make it easier. (Well that and my phone gets a better signal if it’s laying down.) But even with the earphones, I have to Really concentrate to make out what’s being said. It takes me a few seconds to work it out in my head what I’m hearing.

If I’m watching a movie on my computer and there’s alot of quiet dialogue I have to turn it way up or I can’t hear it, which makes it kinda annoying to anyone around me. And I don’t like wearing my headphones while watching movies because I get horrible earaches afterwards. It feels like my ears swell up and I can just feel them thud thud thudding after.

So… to make a long story short, I’m annoyed and frustrated Alot about not being able to hear well, and I guess I Am looking at hearing aids as being some kind of wonderful cure-all for me, but what are they Really like? Is it worth it?

Do you have to adjust the level of sound on them all the time? Is everything too loud now? And what was the whole process for getting them? I don’t have health insurance right now, so it would be out of pocket.

So tell me the pros and cons of having hearing aids…

2

My knowledge of hearing aids is limited, but I’ll be happy to tell you what I know until someone more knowledgeable comes along.

First, most health insurance doesn’t cover hearing aids anyway, so there’s not much difference whether you have health insurance or not.

Second, there are a number of different types of hearing aids out there, different ones suited to different problems and of differing quality and sophistication. Only someone trained to analyze your hearing problem and fit hearing aids will be able to tell you what is out there for you.

Yes, some people do find out that the world is a noisier place than they remember and can have problems with ambient noise being too loud. That is one reason hearing aids are removable and/or have an off switch and/or are adjustable. The more sophisticated hearing aids are less troublesome in that regard, but they are not perfect.

Let’s be frank here - no hearing aid is as good as perfect, natural hearing. The issue, of course, is that you don’t have good natural hearing, for whatever reason. The question is whether or not for you the benefits of a good hearing aid will outweigh the drawbacks of one.

The closest direct experience I have is poor vision. Yes, glasses are a hassle in many ways - they cost money, require replacement, they fog up, get dirty, and they aren’t as good as being naturally 20/20… Thing is, my vision isn’t naturally 20/20, it’s actually pretty freakin’ bad without assistance. For me, the benefits glasses give me vastly outweigh the drawbacks. If my natural vision was 20/30, though, not so much. Ditto for any other vision correction method, it’s always a trade-off between the improvements and the drawbacks.

Likewise, in your case, a hearing aid would likely be a good thing but a cochlear implant would be overkill - too many drawbacks for not enough benefit. And a lot of it is motivation. If you want a hearing aid then the drawbacks may not bother you as much. And you’d still probably want to make use of other strategies that you’ve been using for years because, as noted, hearing aids don’t solve everything.

So really, the only thing you can do at this point (other than continuing as you have been) is to talk to an audiologist (I think that’s the right specialist) and see what technology is out there for your particular problem(s) and how much it costs. Then you will have to decide if it’s worth it to you. I’ve known some hard of hearing folks who sank a lot of money into aids and really felt they were useful. I’ve known others who hated them and refused to bother with them. I think this is an area where personal preference and perception counts as much as technology does.

3

I am almost completely deaf in my right ear; I hear real high and real low, but the midrange is almost completely gone. My left ear has always been dominant, but I started noticing that I was losing my hearing in it about 5 years ago and had been doing so gradually for quite some time before, so I got hearing aids.

It was a shock to find out how damn loud the world really is. And that is the problem with hearing aids. Even though they tune them to your audiogram, they are still really nothing more than microphones.

In a crowded environment, I have trouble hearing. I depend on reading lips, so I try to position myself in front and slightly to the right of the person I’m speaking with.
Wearing my hearing aids increases the volume of their voice, but it also increases the volume of the background noise as well, so it’s almost a wash. I still wind up positioning myself and reading lips. I guess I could say that I spent $4k for maybe a 10% or so increase in hearing. It wasn’t worth it.

4

4K? Damn, I wasn’t expecting that.

5

As someone with good hearing (so far), I find it annoying to have to turn up my own volume when talking to friends who I know are hard of hearing. It is hard to carry on a conversation with them unless they are looking directly at me and are very “aware” of the elements of conversation.

So I will begin speaking, and a half-sentence later, my friend, who didn’t hear me, begins speaking.

Get a hearing aid, Dude!

6

A few things I learned from my ex-wife, who was an audiologist…

On the pro side, today’s hearings aids are incredibly small. Some fit completely in the ear canal, and are unobtrusive. The days of Grandpa’s big, clunky, boxy hearing aid are over.

Perhaps more importantly, advances in technology have created a hearing aid that can be programmed to your specific needs. Amplification can be given to certain frequencies, while others will be left alone. Filtering can deal with background noise, and other technologies help with listening to the telephone. Various fitting types (e.g. an open fitting) can address other needs. Today’s aids are a long way from the “amplify everything” approach old aids took.

On the con side are the expectations raised by all this technology. Yes, they will do what they promise, but they never promise to restore the quality of your hearing to its pre-loss days. What you will hear through them will be somehow different from what you remember, and they take some getting used to. Most people do report that they help, however.

Their size–remember, they’re now quite small–plus their cost (in the thousands of dollars), together mean that losing one, or damaging it somehow, can be a very expensive proposition. Most manufacturers offer a basic loss and damage warranty in the initial cost, with extended warranties available, and this basic warranty is actually pretty good: if you lose it somehow, they’ll replace it; if you damage it (say, by stepping on it), they’ll fix it. But do something to it after the warranty period expires, and you’re looking at a very expensive repair or replacement.

I’d suggest consulting a reputable audiologist, and seeing what options there are, and how they might address your needs. You’ll pay for the appointment, but you should be under no further obligation to purchase anything; at least, not if you go to a reputable audiologist. Unfortunately, as in any line of business, there are some that are not so reputable.

On preview: $4000 sounds about right.

7

From my anecdotal experience the key to benefitting is to use them as directed. The downside of this must be considerable because I have yet to meet a person who wears them who follows the doctor’s orders to the letter.

8

Afterthoughts.

Or:

Everyone I know who wears a hearing aid is contrary.
Or has purchased cheap ones which don’t work well.
Or none of them work very well.
Or they are unable to hear, understand or implement the instructions on how to use them. Heh.

9

I have had them for about fifteen years and wouldn’t be without them. They make a tremendous difference in my ability to hear, especially in noisy environments.

When you first get them the world does seem like a really noisy place. You are hearing sounds you haven’t heard for years (in many cases). I recall wondering why my wife was rattling the newspaper so loudly and then realizing it was a normal sound.

The good news is the brain adjusts. It takes from a couple of weeks to a month or so for it to happen for most people.

The cost varies but $3000 to $3600 will get a good quality pair.

The smaller the aid generally the more often the batteries will have to be replaced. The hidden in the ear types seem to need new batteries every three or four days while the larger in the ears ones like mine will last ten to fourteen days.

The new behind the ear (BTE) types are almost invisible and I am considering those when I get new ones. My current ones are eight years old and are due for replacement. I really don’t care if people can see mine but the BTEs are very comfortable and the size allows for some pretty complicated circuitry.

The only downsides I can think of are cost and having to have a device so you can hear when the rest of the world doesn’t.

10

I’m in pretty much the same situation as the OP, although my insurance will pay $500 per ear towards my hearing aids. I pretty much watch TV with the closed captioning on all the time, although the volume doesn’t have to be up all the way - sometimes I just don’t get the words people are saying without the CC. At work I’m the constant butt of jokes because my hearing is so bad, but I think in some ways it allows me to focus better than those people who are listening to the person in the cube next to them.

When I went to the audiologist, he said the hearing lost *didn’t *come with a loss in understanding, but is very significant and would be helped by hearing aids. My personal experience that tells me I have trouble actually differentiating sounds, particularly amplified ones. I’ve put off buying hearing aids because the price is too high for something I’m not sure will fix what I perceive the problem to be. I don’t just want louder - loud noises are often very annoying to me. I want clearer. Do I want to make a $3000 gamble?

StG

11

Well, I might be SOL after reading about the costs here. I don’t know what I was expecting the costs of hearing aids to be, but I Know I wasn’t expecting $3000 to $4000 for them. There’s no way I can swing that.

Isn’t this supposed to be the age of technology damnit? I know I can’t have flying cars right now, which I was totally promised would be a reality by now when I was a kid by the way, but Sheesh! I woulda thought these things would be cheaper now, having been out for years.

It seems I have been mistaken…

12

You might want to take a look here. I hve no idea how good they are, but the price is right, and they got good reviews from users. I think I will try a pair.

13

The difference is that good hearing aids are little mini-computers; the audiologist creates an audiogram from your hearing test and then sets the hearing aids to boost the weakest spots in your audiogram up to the level of your strongest spots. That technology ain’t cheap, and the cost isn’t going down because they keep refining and improving it. My aids were absolute state of the art four years ago and they are obsolete today.

14

It looks like the OP has high frequency hearing loss (HFHL), which is more difficult to deal with than regular hearing loss.

For regular loss, simple amplification of sound would do the trick, but for high frequency loss you’d need to amplify specific frequencies you’re having trouble with. That means you can only get the aids that go behind your ears, so that that hearing aid doesn’t block the frequencies that you can hear well.

I’m in the same boat as the OP. I have HFHL as well as tinnitus and I’m 24 years-old. The most annoying thing about HFHL is that you can’t be sure whether you didn’t hear something or you just weren’t paying attention. You can hear people make noise while speaking, but since you can only make out their low frequency sounds, you can’t understand the words that come out. That’s exactly what it sounds like when you don’t pay attention - you hear the noise, but you don’t understand the word.

It sucks when you say something to someone and don’t hear their answer. That can kill a lot of conversations.

I paid 3k for my hearing aids. They’re not perfect, but they’re a lot better than not having any hearing aids at all. I also had to make several trips to the audiologist to have them readjusted. It’s no trouble for the doctor to make things louder, but it’s difficult to pin down the clarity, especially when I can’t tell if I missed a word because I didn’t hear it or because I just wasn’t paying attention.

I didn’t buy the best hearing aids out there. The best cost around 6k and the next step down is 4.8k. I could only afford the 3.8k (with insurance covering $800). I think that getting the 4.8k pair would have made things a lot better for me, but I’m not too sure. I’m in law school now, which is why I could only afford the 3K pair. When I get a job I’ll save up for something better and see if that works.

I had to get them because when I first took an office job, I couldn’t hear most of what was said because of the quiet environment. I was previously getting through life by ignoring everyone I couldn’t hear, but now my job required that I pay attention to certain people, so I finally gave in.

Super Van Uber, if you have a job that you can do without hearing aids then I guess you can put off buying them. I would have never bought mine if I could have gotten away with it. But keep in mind that theoretically you’re missing out on a lot of sanity that comes with not worrying that you won’t understand the next person you talk to.

15

The thing is, I can get away with not having them right now because I just work in a department store, but it’s Seriously annoying all the time now. I’m just tired of missing Alot out of so many conversations.

And I know it’s annoying for people to have to repeat themselves up to 3 or 4 times for me to to get what they’re saying, especially if they’re not looking right at me or have an accent of any kind.

I’m thinking of trying out what KlondikeGeof posted a link to above. They’re under $200 and I can eventually afford that. But I do plan on going to the audiologist first to be tested again.

That got me thinking though, they must get a kick-back of some sort from the hearing aids they sell. So they wouldn’t really want to reccomend that I get a cheap set off the net for less than $200 when they can sell me a set for at least $3000 through them. At least that’s just what I’m guessing.

Ugh… I dunno. I might just have to continue to deal with it. Anyways, thanks for all the replys so far guys. You’ve definately given me some things to think about.

16

I’ve had a similar hearing profile since I was about 20 (I’m 50 now). I had an ear infection with temporary total hearing loss in the right ear. The right ear has about a 50 decibel loss with much of that in the higher frequency range. The left is above average in sensitivity. Tinnitis in both ears with the right much louder than the left. A high pitched tone that varies in frequency from mid to high at about 60 decibels.

I have similar trouble getting conversations. In a busy restaurant, unless you’re across from me, forget it.

I don’t have a hearing aid, but that is by choice. In addition to the other issues, when I hear things in the right ear, I get a resonant frequency that sounds like a broken speaker. A hearing aid would just make that worse.

I would suggestion a thorough exam from a specialist. Make sure you tell the specialist everything you’ve noticed about your hearing experience. For example, if louder sounds tend to get your tinnitis more active, that could be a potential problem. It does for me such that the base tone and intensity of the tinnitus changes, which means that I go from having habituated to it, to noticing and/or being bothered by it.

If it’s possible, get a thorough exam and not just an audiogram. I was lucky at the time I had the hearing loss that I was still covered under military dependent medical care and I got every test under the sun, including an ABR (auditory brain stem response) and Electronystagmography or balance test (ENG). In addition to the other hearing issues, they found that my sense of balance was impaired, with a 20% “drift”, which translates to me tending to nudge people off a sidewalk when walking beside them.

It’s also important to factor in your subjective experience. If you feel isolated by your hearing issues, that would be a factor supporting getting a hearing aid. Tinnitis can already impact your affect, so this isn’t a trivial thing.

17

One thing about the hearing aids is that they won’t heal tinnitus. If you have a constant buzz in your ear, it will still be there with the aid.

I’m planning on getting some as soon as they can make a difference, but that’s partly from how literally painful it is to be in the same room with my grandmother or my mother when the TV or the radio are on, partly from how much of a PITA it is to have a conversation with either one (even worse on the phone, of course) and partly from the experience of getting glasses when the doc said they were barely needed and OMG!Treeshaveleaves! (previously I had not been able to make out individual leaves on trees, I thought the leaves flaked off from this big solid thing which was the treetop when they fell). Mom’s been told her hearing is “good for her age”… when mine gets there, I am getting aids.

18

I thank the OP for starting this thread.

I also have tinnitus. And the frequency varies. How do you fine tune something that constantly changes? I’m doubting that an aid can help with that.

I have been to an audiologist, and am on the cusp for needing aids. I’ll get them in a few years I suppose, but I also balk at the cost. I suspect that the tinnitus was caused by a fall a few years ago. Nearly knocked myself out. I’m 49 closing fast on 50 years old.

I hate that I have the TV louder than I’m sure my wife would like, but it does not seem to bother her too much. One of the biggies is work. I sit in a cube between two others. When they ask a question from over the cube wall, I almost always have to have them repeat it or just get up and go see them. I am the unofficial lead for this small group, and while I understand it’s my problem, I wish one in particular would be kind enough to speak up just a little bit. Stop mumbling please.

There is plenty of info about using phones with hearing aids. I wonder though if an app could be written to just use the phone as an extra ear and run it to an ear bud or bluetooth. Just a simple amplifier. Set the phone near the TV for example, and have its microphone pick up sounds, boost them and send them to me. I’m not a mobile device programmer. But I am a programmer. It’s seems that all the hardware is in place to do this. I might have to try to write something. Not sure where to get started though. If any mobile developers have any ideas, I’d love to …. em, hear them.

After a little bit more digging, it does seem that such an ad-hock hearing aid has been developed for the iPhone. $9.99. SoundAMP Perhaps that could help some folks. It’s only 10 bucks. If the app was available for BlackBerrys, I would certainly give it a try.

Sort of ironic as personal listening devices are probably causing a lot of hearing loss. That’s not the case for me though.

19

I’ve wore hearing aids for over 30 years now and didn’t care for them at first because they were the bulky behind-the-ear type.

The ones I wear now are computer-programmed for my frequency loss ( I can’t fully hear normal to low tones, but can hear a dog whistle!) with a button so I can switch from normal conversation to a noisy environment. I can also use a telephone with another press of the button.

Since I was a Voc Rehab client at the time, I didn’t have to pay for them, but I do know it was in the $4000 range.

20

The hearing aid does not help with the tinnitus. It’s for hearing loss, not for tinnitus.

Unlike your tinnitus, your hearing loss doesn’t change frequency over short periods: that’s the “tuning” people in this thread is talking about.