How do hearing aids work? Are they just blasting what they hear directly into the ear potentially causing more damage?

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How do hearing aids work? Are they just blasting what they hear directly into the ear potentially causing more damage?

In: Biology

15 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Imagine there are strings of different length inside the ear that vibrate to a well defined frequency and transform the signal to a nerve impulse that the brain interprets as sound.
When those strings snap we stop hearing sounds in that frequency, a hearing aid just “translates” those missing frequencies into ones that the person in question can hear

Anonymous 0 Comments

For starters, I work as an Engineer for one of the largest hearing aid manufacturers in the world, although in the Quality & Regulatory Affairs side of things, so I’m not as well-versed as a member of R&D would be.

I’ll cover the second point first, Power and Super Power hearing aids intended for those who have severe and profound hearing loss can be amplified to the extent where they would cause damage to those without hearing loss or with moderate loss.

As such, any hearing aid should always be programmed by a hearing care professional (audiologists and hearing aid dispensers in the UK) prior to issue, as they ensure that the hearing aid is programmed on safe settings. DO NOT buy hearing aids via mail order or over the internet, as the face-to-face consultation and fine tuning is essential for ensuring safety and maximising performance/troubleshooting.

Effectively, your hearing doesn’t get damaged because the only time a hearing aid should put out potentially damaging volumes is at frequencies where the damage has already been done.

As part of your hearing aid fitting the HCP (Hearing Care Professional) will perform a hearing test, which produces an audiogram detailing your hearing loss at various frequencies, typically up to 8 kHz. This audiogram is then used to determine which hearing aids (if any) are suitable for your hearing loss – typically the less severe your hearing loss, the more options you have as the smaller, custom instruments typically produce less powerful outputs.

If you are getting an off-the-shelf hearing aid, either called a behind-the-ear (BTE) or receiver in-the-ear/canal (RITE/RIC) with no custom ear mould this can be fitted to you the same day as your test, but if a custom hearing aid or mould is chosen there’s usually a 1-3 week turnaround for the aid/mould to be manufactured.

When the finished product is available the HCP will program the device to suit your hearing loss – in broad terms it will amplify frequencies which you don’t hear well and leave frequencies which you can hear un-amplified, which is why another person’s hearing aid won’t work for you. Newer hearing aids also perform frequency transposition, where high frequencies (such as the letter “S”) that patients can’t hear well, or at all, are changed to a lower frequency to allow them to hear it.

In crowded rooms basic hearing aids in a pair will also evaluate the sound that you are hearing to allow you to focus on a single person. This is typically done by determining if both hearing aids are receiving speech at the same volume, as that indicates that you are facing the source of the speech. When this occurs the rear microphones are made quieter to allow you to focus on the person you are facing.

More advanced hearing aids will scan the room hundreds of times per second to allow speech from all around you to be cleaned up and give a more realistic experience in a crowded room.

On top of that you have bluetooth functionality, connectivity to phones, TVs, mobiles, FM adapters (primarily in schools), but they don’t have any real effect on the basic functionality of the aid.

Please note, this is a very simple take on a really complicated subject, so there may be sections which aren’t 100% correct, but are worded in a way to make it easy to understand.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I have hearing aids, generally no, they don’t cause any more damage and my hearing is at the “severe” level (before profound/deafness.) hearing aids work by picking up sound in the microphones usually located on the rear and top they send the sound through the tube and into the ear. They also use batteries and I think some are actually rechargeable but mine are not. But I will say that they do blast anything they hear into the ear unless you alter them at a doctors not to, but the result of filtering out sounds to get voices better will lead to a shitton of jumpscares. As a result, hearing aids mostly blast everything they pick up into the ear without discrimination.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Hearing aids vary. The higher end ones with a good audiologist can even help with tinnitus. My hearing aids from Costco have the feature disabled because Costco only wants to sell to people with mild loss that they can fit and be done with. But the technology with a good team can do wonders.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I have wore hearing aids for the last 15-16 years (since I was 16, 31 now). A lot of people have explained this a lot better than I have, but wanted to chime in anyway.
Like others have said, hearing aids just don’t make sounds louder. Little microphones are constantly going on and off and making the sound…sound right. Example, high pitched sounds are really hard for me to hear. My current pair of hearing aids have a program that take those high pitched sounds and bring them to an octave I can hear. An audiologist tests my hearing, and programs the hearing aids to my level of high pitched loss. Same goes for lower, bass sounds.
Probably not the place of this, but I really need to get it off my chest: I firmly believe those who buy an OTC hearing aid are going to have a bad time. “Professional” hearing aids cost a lot (don’t get me started on that), but they are custom programmed and fitted for me, and not my mom.