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Do I really need hearing aids? test results included

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I’ve seen an audiologist and hearing test results below. Of course the audiologist tried to sell me the most expansive pairs of hearing aids. Do I really need them?

I find that sometimes in loud environments, it maybe difficult to hear speach and also, if I have to concentrate on listening to speech for 1-2 hours (e.g. in a lecture) my brain tunes out. While listening to music I can definately hear that for the high frequencies it is a lot more duller in the left ear. And also, I have constant tinnitus in both ears.

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And below are the results from the Air Pods Pro 3

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16 people in this conversation9 min readJump to latest

(1) The main difference between the high-tech levels and the entry level ones is the performance in complex noisy environments.
(2) Costco sells high-tech level HAs for $1600 (same hardware as the major brands but rebadged for Costco ).
(3) The shows mild hearing loss but audiograms don’t always show the whole picture . Do you need them? Try them and see if they are helpful, it’s the only way to find out.
(4) Some fitter’s salary depends on the sales commission , they have to pay their bills :slight_smile:

We can’t say whether it will be helpful enough for what they cost, any of them, for your situation and finances. My help me so much that I feel at a real disadvantage without them. It helps with tinnitus without tinnitus masking. Just bringing sound levels up for me helps me not be conscious of it most of the time. I get occasional bouts where it bursts in very loud, or when someone brings it up, like now, when I again become aware of it.

Even people with mild loss sometimes find they are worth it. Sometimes with much worse hearing find them useless. Or not worth the money. The noisy situation like a restaurant is the classic situation. The long lecture issue is in part due to extra effort your brain makes to make sense of what is being said.

WH

My is similar to yours in the sense that most wouldn’t recommend hearing aids based on it. I’m fine in quiet settings, but like you, have a lot of difficult in noisy environments - much more so than would be expected for my audiogram. I got hearing aids for that purpose, and they helped enormously. YMMV, so if you’re not sure they’ll be helpful, try to get some sort of trial period.

I’d suggest starting out small and cheaper first. aids are made for an audio gram like yours. The Elehear Beyond Pro is only $599, less with the frequent discounts they give and you’ll have 45 days to try them out. Why spend thousands before checking out cheaper alternatives first?

Also, the tinnitus may never go away. The Elehear has a built in therapy program, but getting tinnitus to go away is very difficult no matter what you do.

Basically your call. Your loss is pretty mild. Does your loss bother anybody you’re close with? (Are you having to ask them to repeat themselves a lot?) Do you Airpods 3 help you? I’m biased against most aids because I think they’re either similar to or not as good as your Airpods 3 or expensive enough that the additional service one would get by going to Costco don’t make them a good value. Any improvements are likely to be subtle.

The bad thing about over the counter aids is you are pretty much on your own concerning setting up and maintaining the aids. Whereas if you went through a licensed fitter you get support. This is where prescription aids at Costco shines.

The only way to tell if aids help you is to try them. Looking at your I can see aids helping you but you just have to see for yourself.

You have lost some hearing at the higher frequencies, which is fairly common. When in a noisy environment, will apply very modest amplification, but emphasize the frequencies that you lost. So, in essence they will mostly engage in noise canceling, then reproduce the sound in a way that better suits you- including the high frequencies that you need to understand speech. This sophisticated sound processing comes, alas, at a price. I don’t think the Airpod Pro 2/3 can do this.

So, as others have pointed out, if insurance/your costs can support it, do try a good HA, like a Phonak or Oticon.

Hearing aids usually help,sometimes a lot, with tinnitus. So that is a great reason to get hearing aids. Another is that research is showing that treating hearing loss at the earliest stage is one of the most modifiable of dimentia risks. Also, You list the difficulties you are having, so I think that answers your question that you will benefit. I agree that the hearing aids with highest level of tech is needed for noisy environments and meetings. Costco provides that at the best price and with 180 day return policy. Pick a brand with dood accessories such as remote mics as that helps a lot in meetings, especially the table mics.

In my opinion you will likely not benefit from the sophisticated noise cancelling systems some hearing aids have. The reason is that you have pretty good low frequency hearing. That usually comes with an open fitting, meaning a lot of your sound is coming to your ears directly and bypassing the hearing aids. No fancy tech is going to fix that. Some people work around this by using a relatively closed fitting, but have to deal with occlusion.

@djd_oz Do you have a conductive hearing loss? Otosclerosis? I’m asking because that’s what I have, and your appears to show an air–bone gap. If it is otosclerosis, there may be another option to consider: a stapedectomy. Some people have really good results with this procedure, although that wasn’t my experience.

@WhiteHat said:

My HAs help me so much that I feel at a real disadvantage without them. It helps with tinnitus without tinnitus masking. Just bringing sound levels up for me helps me not be conscious of it most of the time. I get occasional bouts where it bursts in very loud, or when someone brings it up, like now, when I again become aware of it.

Exactly. I honestly don’t know what my life would be like without hearing aids after more than 30 years of 24/7 tinnitus. My really help push this noise into the background of my mind/awareness.

Not a doctor

Have you noticed a decline in your hearing abilities recently or over the years?

If you think your hearing is only going to get worse then you might want to venture into the hearing aid world sooner rather than later.

Be realistic when evaluating your interactions with people and if you catch yourself saying what a lot and/or not hearing everything that is said and just nodding. It might be time.

Costco makes it easy so hopefully you have that as an option

I have similarly mild/moderate hearing loss and have been absolutely life changing for me. Not only can I hear voices (high frequency) better, but my memory has drastically improved. My brain was working so hard to hear what people were saying that there was no RAM left to process it, so to speak. I thought I had cognitive decline at age 55, but no.

Like others have mentioned, at Costco you can get a free, high tech, hearing test, unbeatable prices on hearing aids made by the same manufacturers as the super expensive ones. There’s a SIX MONTH trial period, free repairs, maintenance, and replacement for 2-3 years (I don’t recall exactly) and you can go to any Costco for that. You have really nothing to lose.

The best part is I’m no longer on edge and resentful that people are constantly mumbling and I have to constantly say “I can’t hear you!”.

Mild hearing loss is still hearing loss. A person might get glasses if they were ‘only’ having trouble seeing street signs when driving. That’s mild, too, but a real nuisance and possibly dangerous.

In reply to @OcramSagev

The price may include fitting and professional tweaking….which is critically important to a user’s success (IMO). In Massachusetts, you can try a pair for 30:days and return for $100 if not satisfied. Maybe your state has a similar law?

The only way you will know if they are helpful is to try them….and then tweak the programming as needed.

This is not a simple yes/no question.

If your hearing is bothering you best try out hearing aids with a free return period. If hearing isn’t bothering you just leave it for awhile . If you want to try hearing aids checkout discount audiologists, same hearing aids can be half the price of a full price audiologists. Some suppliers like Amplifon do not discount, they actually don’t make hearing aids, they rebadge hearing aids made by other major manufacturers.

My graph looks rather like yours of 25 Dec and of course the most expensive recommended plus Roger, Acessories etc. I have tried the Phonak and am currently trialling Starkey. In UK over £5000. They are simply not delivering. Also Phonak totally kills the iphone alerts, notifications etc. Starkey seem better but I have Eustachian ear problems/glue ear? which are sort of overlooked by the audiologist and it seems I am always at fault, Totally fed up with it all, when the cheapo NHS HA work OK. Obv. not the same quality but…. I have made the mistake of putting the audiologists on an almost equal footing with Doctors etc. But in the UK the Audiologists are in Business. So that is why they are recommending the most expensive HA and then justifying their choice with ‘your’ hearing problems. This really wont wash with me any longer. I dont object to paying big bucks but they HAVE to deliver.

In reply to @MDB

@MDB said:

That usually comes with an open fitting, meaning a lot of your sound is coming to your ears directly and bypassing the hearing aids.

It’s true that that’s the standard recommendation for that type of loss, but as far as I can tell (someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) it’s just based on the assumption that most people would prefer to have as much natural sound as possible. If that approach doesn’t work for someone, they can still have a closed fitting if they prefer it. Or they can get Phonak’s ActiveVent receivers and split the difference.

Yes, it’s personal preference, and ActiveVent is definitely a possibility for Phonak users. For a new user who’s debating whether they need hearing aids or not getting an occlusive fit seems a lot to ask of them.

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