Caring for your hearing aids likely feels simple enough. After all, you were probably given a set of care instructions when you first bought your devices. With regard to routine hearing aid maintenance, most hearing specialists will give you a step-by-step instruction tutorial. But it’s quite likely that you might forget some of that information that you got all at once. So you might still have questions like, how frequently should I clean my hearing aid? What about my service schedule? How can I get the most life out of my hearing aids?
These five, simple-to-follow tips can help provide some answers, as well as simple ways to help in taking care of your hearing aids so they work better longer.
Tip #1: Try not to allow your hearing aids to get wet
Moisture and electronics don’t really jive. Hearing aids are slightly water resistant but aren’t at all waterproof, so they should be kept as free from moisture as possible. Beyond the obvious, this means you should do things like the following:
- Find a dry and cool place to keep your hearing aids when you’re not using them. Knowing the best way to store your hearing aids can be a bit of a challenge for many individuals. So the steamy bathroom isn’t going to be a very good place to keep your hearing aids. And in order to keep track of your hearing aids, store them in the same spot every day. By the same token, don’t leave your hearing aids just lying around, dogs like to eat them and cats love to play with them!
- When you’re wearing your hearing aids, don’t use hair care products. That is, take your hearing aids out before utilizing a lot of hair spray or hair gel. These types of products can really gunk up your devices.
- Keep a dehumidifier running during those more humid months. When it’s really humid, your hearing aids can have more moisture than you would want even indoors. And the fragile electronics inside of your device can be damaged. Prolonging hearing aid life may mean keeping that dehumidifier running.
Tip #2: Check (and clean) those earwax filters
Earwax production is a healthy and normal thing for the human body to do. Hearing aid makers are well aware of this. As a result, most hearing aids are designed to deal with a modest amount of earwax.
Your job is to make sure your hearing aids don’t become inundated with ear wax. So make swapping out your wax guard, when necessary, a routine element of your cleaning regimen. Depending on which model hearing aid you have, you can get specialized little tools for this and we can help you with that.
How often should wax guards be swapped? Well, for the majority of models, it will be around once every month or so.
Tip #3: Keep your batteries charged and fresh
Your batteries keep your hearing aids going. Your hearing aid will last a lot longer if you keep your batteries fresh. The following are a few tips for battery care:
- Make certain all of the battery contacts and components are dry. You can wipe them down with a clean cloth if they aren’t. This is yet another place in your device where moisture is the enemy.
- Remember to turn off your devices when you aren’t wearing them. This just drains the battery for, well, no good reason. And that means your hearing aids could quit working when you least want them to.
- Invest in a rechargeable hearing aid or a battery charger: That way, you won’t be chucking batteries (and money) away over and over again.
Tip #4: Only use clean hands to handle your hearing aids
Your hearing aids are going to spend most of their time in your ears. But they depend on you to put them in. You use your hands to put your hearing aids in, and those fingers could contain all sorts of things (salt, maple syrup, Cheeto dust, and so on). By design, hearing aids are really delicate and probably won’t do well with things like crumbs.
In general, you should only touch your hearing aids with clean hands. So before you put in or take out your hearing aids, give your hands a quick wash.
Tip #5 Stay in touch with your hearing specialist
It might seem like, once you purchase your hearing aids, you can just forget all about your hearing specialist. But… this is not normally correct. Here are a number of very good reasons why scheduling routine appointments with us is still significant.:
- To help you ensure your devices fit well.
- To clean and maintain your hearing aids.
- To keep track of and monitor the development of your hearing loss.
When something breaks, what should you do?
Occasionally, something could go wrong (perhaps you accidentally step on them) in spite of your best effort. When this occurs, you should get in touch with us as quickly as possible.
We will be able to help you repair your devices, or get new ones if necessary.
Want to talk to us about your next pair of hearing aids? Make an appointment today!
