Caring for your hearing aids likely seems simple enough. When you initially got your hearing aids, you most likely got a set of care guidelines, after all. With regard to routine hearing aid maintenance, the majority of hearing specialists will give you a step-by-step instruction tutorial. But it’s quite likely that you may forget some of that information that you got all at once. So you may still have questions like, how often should I clean my hearing aid? What about my service schedule? How can I make my hearing aids last as long as possible?
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 function better longer.
Tip #1: Keep your hearing aids dry
Moisture and electronics don’t really get along that well. Although your hearing aids may provide a certain degree of water resistance, you generally want to keep them dry. Here are several ways to do just that:
- Keep your hearing aids someplace cool and dry. Many people question what the best way to store hearing aids is. So the steamy bathroom won’t be a great place to keep your hearing aids. And in order to keep track of your hearing aids, keep them in the same spot every day. In the same way, don’t leave your hearing aids just lying around, dogs like to eat them and cats like to play with them!
- When you have your hearing aids in your ears, avoid using hair care products. When you’re going to utilize hair spray or gel, remove your hearing aids. Your hearing aid can really get gunked up from these kinds of products.
- Keep a dehumidifier running during those more humid months. Even inside, high humidity means your hearing aids could be more damp more frequently. And the fragile electronics inside of your device can be damaged. If you want to get the most longevity out of your hearing aid as you can, get that dehumidifier going!
Tip #2: Check (and clean) those earwax filters
The human body naturally produces earwax in a healthy way. Hearing aid designers are well aware of this. As a result, most hearing aids are created to deal with a modest amount of earwax.
Your job is to make sure your hearing aids don’t become inundated with ear wax. This means checking and replacing the wax guards when necessary (and making that part of your hearing aid cleaning routine). You can invest in and use special cleaning tools for this, depending on what model you have (ask us for recommendations here).
How often should wax guards be swapped? Well, for the majority of models, it will be about once every month or so.
Tip #3: care for the batteries
Your Hearing aids depend on your batteries for power. The healthier your hearing aid batteries are, the longer your hearing aid will last. So there are a few battery-care steps you can take:
- Don’t forget to shut off your devices when you aren’t using them. This just kills the battery for, well, no good reason. And that means your hearing aids could quit working when you least want them to.
- Keep all of the contact points on the battery clean and dry. You can wipe them down with a clean cloth if they aren’t. As with most electronics, moisture will lead to a bad time here.
- Invest in a rechargeable device or a battery charger: That way, you won’t be throwing 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 be in your ears most of the time. But they depend on you to put them in. You use your fingers to put your hearing aids in, and those fingers could contain all kinds of things (salt, maple syrup, Cheeto dust, and so on). Your hearing aids are delicate devices by design, so crumbs aren’t really very good for them.
It’s essential that you don’t handle your hearing aids with dirty 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
You might think that you won’t need any help from us once you’ve purchased your hearing aids. But… this is not normally correct. Here are a few very good reasons why scheduling regular appointments with us is still important.:
- To track and monitor the progression of your hearing loss.
- To help make sure your devices fit well.
- Cleaning and maintenance.
When something breaks, what should you do?
Sometimes, 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 you can.
If your hearing aid requires any repairs, or you need a new one, we can help with that.
Schedule an appointment with us today to talk about your current or next set of hearing aids.
