How to Make Your Hearing Aids Work For You

Transcript:

Making your hearing aids work for you. That's our topic today on Ask The Hearing Doctors.

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Hi, I'm Jim Cuddy. And this is Ask The Hearing Doctors. And today I'm joined by Dr. Ana Anzola, Dr. Linda Himler, doctors of audiology with Hearing Doctors, the Washington DC area's highest-rated audiology practice with over 1500, five-star reviews. Ana, Linda, great to see you both as always. Great to see you. All right. So, today we're here to talk about making your hearing aids work for you. Where does that start?

Four P's. Patience, Practice, Positivity, and Persistence. 

So, patience?

Yeah. Patience for the patients. Exactly. And we talk about this with the family members and our patients themselves to just be patient with yourself. You know, you, haven't not done this in a long time. You're not used to wearing anything in the ear, over the ear or around it. First week is new. It's very new. You're not used to hearing. You're not used to hearing. At least not as well as, as, as you should be. Right. So that's a big one. 

All right. Another one you mentioned was persistence. How, how is persistence, uh, a key in making your hearing aids work for you?

Persistence is an important part. They need to, your brain needs to hear that sound every day. So you have to wear it every single day to get your routine down, but also to let your brain have the same information and you'll find it'll be second nature. So. Once you get used to it. The hearing aids in every day, all day, as much as possible? In every day, all day, they're your new ears. Okay. 

Now practice. What are we practicing?

Your practicing to hear. So, how do we get really good at anything you practice every day. You put them in all the time and you practice putting them physically putting them in the ear or over the ear. It takes a little bit of time. Just getting used to the actual, putting the hearing aid into your ear. And then just the routine of it. I know for me, you know, you start off as a two-handed person and now I pretty much can do everything with one hand. So practice makes that part easier, which then makes it easier for you just to worry about hearing better. And you're less likely to lose your hearing aids if you're doing the same thing every day, I guess, too. Right? Okay. 

And now positivity, talk about how positivity is a, is a big thing in, in making your hearing aids work for you.

Sure. So, you want to be positive at anything if you want to make anything work for yourself or for the family. Um, but mostly for yourself, you know, have that. I want to do this every day. I want to hear, and your brain is starving by the way. Um, and it wants that information so it can learn how to process. And you want that ability to communicate with everybody back. Whether it's your friends or your family, or just the grocery store clerk, or just being out in public. You, it gives you, um, encouragement. It gives you strength and a little bit of courage. If you know, you can survive and hear your people. 

That would make a lot of sense, the four P's making your hearing aids work for you. Ana, Linda, thank you so much for your time. 

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