Ear Health And Hearing Aids: How Your Ear Hygiene Habits Makes A Difference In Hearing Aid Effectiveness
Hearing aids are very effective at helping you hear better and clarify sounds and voices around you. However, if you begin to hear muffled sounds and voices, you may want to take a closer look at your own ear hygiene habits. (This is more likely the cause than any psychological problem, and easier to address.) The following highlights some common ear hygiene problems that effect your hearing aids' clarity.
Excess Hair in the Auditory Canal
As people age, some experience excess hair growth in the auditory canals and near the openings of the canals. Men especially have this problem. If you have excess hair growing in your ear canals or near their openings, it can block the movement of sound waves through the hearing aids into your ears. A personal trimmer made for hair removal from the nose and ears can help correct this problem. Once or twice a month should prove effective, but if your hair grows really fast, you may need to perform this hygiene task more frequently.
Excess Wax in the Canal and in the Hearing Aids
Excess wax in the ear canal builds up and blocks off access to your ear drums. This is a problem even when you do not need hearing aids. When you wear hearing aids, this wax can transfer into the openings in the parts of the hearing aid that go into the ear canals. You probably clean and clear your hearing aids regularly to keep the ear wax out of and off of the hearing aids themselves, but if you are missing the big piles of wax in your ears, then you could be blocking off your natural auditory reception too. There are kits in most pharmacies that can help flush this excess wax out safely, or you can visit your audiologist to have the excess wax removed.
Cotton Balls and Other Common "Ear Stuffers"
Some people try to block out extra noise or muffled sounds at night when they are trying to sleep and only want to hear absolute quiet. On occasion, pieces of the cotton balls, bits of tissue, etc., can get stuck inside the ear and cause the same problems that excess hair and/or excess ear wax does. If you have already trimmed the hair from your ears and you have attempted to flush out the wax but find that you are still experiencing blocked hearing and muffled sounds/voices, you may have a build-up of the items you used to block out sound at night. Your doctor can help you carefully remove these bits of stuff from your ears.
To learn more, contact a company like Abingdon Falls Plaza Hearing Center.
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