Taking care of your hearing aids probably feels simple enough. When you first obtained your hearing aids, you most likely got a set of care guidelines, after all. The majority of hearing specialists will give you a step-by-step how-to when it comes to routine hearing aid maintenance. Still, getting that much information at once means you probably didn’t remember some of it. So you could still have questions like, how frequently should I clean my hearing aid? How about my service schedule? How can I make my hearing aids last as long as I can?
These five, easy-to-follow tips can help give you some answers, as well as simple ways to help in taking care of your hearing aids so they work better longer.
Tip #1: Keep your hearing aids dry
Moisture and electronics don’t really get along that well. Even though your hearing aids might provide a certain amount of water resistance, you typically want to keep them dry. Beyond the obvious, this means you should do things like the following:
- Store your hearing aids somewhere dry and cool. Knowing the best way to store your hearing aids can be a bit of a challenge for lots of people. Well, don’t, for example, store them in your bathroom (which gets nice and steamy at least once every day). And in order to keep track of your hearing aids, keep them in the same spot every day. By the same token, don’t leave your hearing aids just lying around, dogs love to eat them and cats love to play with them!
- When you have your hearing aids in your ears, don’t use hair care products. When you’re going to utilize hair spray or gel, take out your hearing aids. Your hearing aid can really become gunked up from these kinds of products.
- When it’s humid outside, run a dehumidifier. Even inside, high humidity means your hearing aids might be more damp more frequently. And the delicate electronics inside of your device can be compromised. If you want to get the most life out of your hearing aid as you can, get that dehumidifier going!
Tip #2: Check (and clean) those earwax filters
Earwax production is a healthy and normal thing for the human body to do. It’s also something that hearing aid manufacturers recognize is going to happen. Consequently, most hearing aids are designed to deal with a moderate amount of earwax.
It’s up to you to be sure there isn’t too much earwax on your hearing aids. This means checking and replacing the wax guards when necessary (and making that part of your hearing aid cleaning schedule). You can buy and utilize specialized cleaning tools for this, depending on what model you have (ask us for recommendations here).
What is the replacement schedule for earwax guards? You will swap these wax guards about once every month on most models.
Tip #3: Keep your batteries charged and fresh
Your batteries keep your hearing aids working. Your hearing aid will last much longer if you keep your batteries fresh. The following are some tips for battery care:
- Get a battery charger or a rechargeable hearing aid: That way, you won’t be chucking batteries (and money) away again and again .
- Keep all of the contact points on the battery clean and dry. If they are dirty or wet, you can use a clean, dry cloth to wipe them. As with electronics in general, moisture will lead to a bad time here.
- When you’re not wearing your hearing aids, don’t forget to turn them off. Otherwise, your battery will just sit there and drain. Consequently, when you most need your hearing aids, they might not be charged enough to work.
Tip #4: Only use clean hands to handle your devices
The majority of the time, you should be wearing your hearing aids. But they depend on you to put them in. Your hands (which are required in order to handle your hearing aids) could be covered in all kinds of offending substances. Your hearing aids are delicate devices by design, so crumbs aren’t really very good for them.
It’s important that you don’t handle your hearing aids with dirty hands. So give your hands a quick wash before you need to take them out and handle them.
Tip #5 Keep up with your hearing specialist
You may think that you won’t require any help from us once you’ve purchased your hearing aids. Usually, though, this is not the case. Here are a few very good reasons why scheduling regular appointments with us is still important.:
- Cleaning and maintenance.
- To help you adjust your fit.
- Check the status of your hearing loss (making sure it’s not advancing faster than expected).
When something breaks, what should you do?
Sometimes, something could go wrong (maybe you accidentally step on them) despite your best effort. You should contact us as soon as you can in situations such as this.
If your hearing aid requires any repairs, or you need to get a new one, we can help with that.
Make an appointment with us today to discuss your current or next set of hearing aids.