No matter how vital, no matter how essential, how delicate our senses are, rarely do we really take our time to appreciate them, until we start to lose them. When the auditory perception stars to deteriorate, our social life stars going downhill as well. Self-confidence quickly evaporates among all of those “Say that again!”, “Would you mind repeating the last part?” and those half-heard, misunderstood words and sentences.
Hearing loss in adults is generally caused by damage that has occurred to the inner ear, where tiny hair cells transform sound vibrations into impulses that are carried to the brain by nerve cells. The most common cause of hearing loss is, well, getting older. Often exposure to loud noises is also very damaging to the auditory perception and if you have a history of hearing loss in your close family and you are male, chances are, you will suffer from this disability sooner or later in life.
Luckily, with a little help from hearing aid devices, you can find your lost conversations and all the mumble and the murmur will again be transformed into clear and coherent messages. Although you cannot bring dead hair cells back to life, you can easily revive the audible world around you once again. There is a whole variety of online hearing aids to choose from, you just need to carefully scan what’s right for you. The newest hearing helpers fall in several main categories.
In contrast to older hearing aids that used to amplify the volume on everything that surrounds the person (including the confusing and usually annoying background noise), the newest digital models include microphones that carry the sound to a computer chip, which balances the volume and strengthens the frequencies needed to help hearing clear sounds near you. You can easily program them not to pick up certain sounds, such as wind, or you can get sound notifications for the messages that arrive on your smart phone. The options are many and are constantly improving you just need to do a thorough search on online hearing aids offers.
An additional benefit for people with hearing aids is a new technology called the Hearing Loop. It works by providing a magnetic signal that’s picked up by a miniature coiled wire in the hearing aid, that serves to transmit the sound into the person’s ear. You can find these devices in some sports and concert venues. It seems like the smaller the better has become the latest motto. If you do a quick internet research you can find and order from the comfort of your home, online hearing aids that fit in the ear canal and are barely visible. Prices vary a lot due to different degrees of sophistication, so you can find digital hearing aids that cost from $1000 to $6000.
These products can be found almost everywhere and are much lower in price, however, their features and functionality are somewhat lower too. Being called over-the-counter products, they are also being criticized a lot for not providing the level of safety according to the standards of hearing aids. Their prices range from $25 to $500.
If all you need is just a minor help with hearing, there are a lot of of inexpensive devices you can get. They come with apps that let you set the sound through your smart phone. There are also many flashy, vibrating devices that replace the basic versions of telephones, doorbells or alarm clocks. Prices may vary from $80 to $900 for the listening aids for smart phones about $40 to $300 for the flashy, vibrating items.
Selecting the right hearing aid for you is not a simple process and in certain cases it’s not a cheap one either, but it does pay off to be able to say “I’m all ears!” once again.
