When Should You Avoid Wearing Your Hearing Aids?
Hearing aids are important devices that, while worn, help individuals with hearing loss regain and maintain their hearing ability. For many, they are a lifeline to communication and are meant to be worn all day long. Hearing aids by manufacturers like Phonak, Starkey, Oticon, Widex, Bernafon, Unitron and Signia are designed with a protective moisture-repelling nano-coating, wax guards and mic guards to extend their longevity and help them withstand the wear and tear of everyday use. Nevertheless, there are times when you should take extra care with your hearing aids to avoid unnecessary damage and subsequent repairs.
Below are some of the activities that you should avoid while wearing your hearing aids.
1. Showering and Swimming
Showering and swimming directly expose your hearing aids to water. Hearing aids are electronic devices, which means they do not handle exposure to liquids well. Showering and swimming can expose them to direct contact with water, shampoo and soap, which can seep into the internal electrical machinery, causing damage. Therefore, take them out while swimming or showering.
2. Contact Sports and Intense Exercises
Don’t wear your hearing aids when engaging in intense exercise, playing football, hockey, and any other high-impact contact sports. Perspiration can cause moisture-related damage to many styles of hearing aids. When exercising, moisture collects behind the ear and in the canal and damages the exposed electronic components. Often, with moisture-related repairs, we find corrosion on the battery contacts, defective mics and receivers. Be extra cautious when engaging in aggressive and high-speed contact sports. Hearing aids are made out of acrylics and other light plastics. Their outer shell is thin and not designed to withstand being banged around and dropped on hard surfaces. The internal components, like the processor, are easily susceptible to impact shock. Use common sense, and whenever possible, take out your hearing aids before getting on the field or ice.
3. Sleeping
Hearing aids are meant to be worn all day long. At night they should be turned off and put away. Your ears deserve a rest as well. It is a good idea to use a dry-aid kit, a hearing aid drier at night to help remove excess moisture that may have collected inside your hearing aids during the day. Some people with severe to profound hearing loss, due to safety concerns, chose to sleep with hearing aids on, sometimes alternating one ear over the other. For most hearing aid wearers, nighttime is when hearing aids rest in their box, dry-aid-kit or charger.
4. When Going Out in the Rain
Even though many modern hearing aids do have water-resistant nano-coating on their housing, they are not waterproof. Just like with showering and swimming, you should use extra caution when wearing your hearing aids when heading out in the rain. With heavy downpours, rainwater draining from your hair may slowly drip into the aids causing machinery damage. As such, always have an umbrella or a hat to protect these delicate devices. Alternatively, you can opt to remove them altogether.
Book an Appointment with Bravo Hearing
Hearing aids are indispensable to many people with moderate to profound hearing loss. They help us to communicate and interact with one another. Worn daily, they become a part of us, enhancing us in ways that bring us closer to one another. For these reasons, it is important to take good care of them and take extra caution when engaging in the above activities. When your hearing aids stop working, it is often an emergency. You need it back as soon as possible. Here at Bravo Hearing Centre, we service all the makes and models of hearing aids, including Phonak, Starkey, Oticon, Bernafon, Unitron, Widex and Signia. We offer immediate same day on-site service for quick, as you wait, wax guard and mic guard replacements, receiver changes on most RIC style hearing aids, and BTE tube changes. We also provide standard 3-5 day manufacturer repair turn around and, upon request, two-day manufacturer rush repairs. Please contact us to schedule an appointment or call us at 647-694-4626 now.
Also Read:
