Skip to content
HearingTracker
Log in

My hearing loss feels worse after using hearing aids

This topic is closed.

17 replies3.1k viewsLast reply

Link to this topic
Edited

Its about three years i have been using hearing aids. But now whenever i take out my hearing aids or i am without hearing aids i feel that i have lost some power of my hearing that i was having before using aids three years back. But my hearing tests result is almost same that was in 2017 and 2019.

14 people in this conversation6 min readJump to latest

I’ll tell a “story” of what might be going on. When we are not wearing our hearing aids, we have to pay a lot more attention to hear and understand. After we’ve been wearing hearing aids awhile, I think we relax a bit and don’t have to try so hard. When we remove our hearing aids we’re shocked that we don’t hear as well as we remember hearing, but I think it’s because we’re not trying as hard as we used to have to do without hearing aids. Also, things are all of a sudden a LOT quieter. Quick changes in loudness take some time to adjust to.

MDB is correct. I’ll also tell a story. Somethings are more noticeable when they are taken away. My wife and I go for walks and when we get back home, our driveway is about 150 yards long uphill the whole way. When she gets to the driveway, she slows way down going up the hill. Often I will put my hand on her backside and give just a little push (similar to when you put on hearing aids and get a little boost), after a few yards I will take my hand way and it is like she hit a brick wall, she totally stops. The boost was helpful when applied but devastating when removed. When I had new patients with only a high frequency loss, I would tell them to listen to music and after about 15 minutes slip the hearing aids out of their ears and hear the difference. It is much more noticeable when the boost is removed than it is when first putting the instruments on.

“It is much more noticeable when the boost is removed than it is when first putting the instruments on”

yes I definitely notice more difference taking my hearing aids out at night than putting them in when I get up (except the birds that suddenly appear outside the bedroom window!) My brain kinda goes “ooof” for a second or two when I take them out or the batteries run out

I do not like taking my hearing aids out, because then I cannot hear or understand any speech, and my tinnitus goes into high gear. If my tinnitus wasn’t so bad without my aids I would enjoy the quiet every now and then.

It is pretty amazing how flexible the brain is. With hearing loss we adapt to hear better by putting a lot of energy into hearing. It can be very tiring.

When we get our first hearing aids all the new and loud sounds can be overwhelming. For some it takes longer than others to acclimate to all these new sounds.

When we do acclimate to all these new sounds and remove our hearing aids it is like the opposite effect of when we first got hearing aids. The world becomes very dull, muffled and quiet. But the tinnitus continues loud and clear.

Interesting, I have had the opposite experience. When I wear the for a week then take them off I hear better. Its like the HA allows my brain to hear things it had forgotten about and when I take them off the brain will again hear them for a couple of days till I again have to put them back on again. This is useful for going into a restaurant where the background noise is a problem. Removing the HAs allows me to hear better for the few hours I am there.

There was a time that worked for me but no more. With out my aids on it is like a have a cotton ball stuffed in my ears then ear plugs on top of that. I hear nothing but my tinnitus screaming at me.

I even have ear plugs made for me that I can kill work noise from chatter. Some people don’t care about noise they produce, be it work or non work related. Like talking quietly isn’t in their software.

My related issue is that when I undergo testing or talking about tinnitus, my tinnitus becomes noticeable.

For quite some time it sounded exactly like those tones they use for testing. I usually stop hearing it after some time after tests. However, while they test and put the headphones on my ears, I hear constant noise, like the one which they use to mask better ear. Not helping for tests :rofl:

I am retired now but I worked in a phone support high tech shop. Once that I was told that I spoke to loud and that made me realize it was due to my hearing loss. I always thought I talked way to low, as well as everyone else. after getting my hearing aids, I could point out the ones that had hearing loss, and some of them even got tested by the company I worked for. After getting my hearing aids and getting use to them then people would complain that I talked to quietly

The problem is literally “between the ears”, in your brain. I intend to emphasize frequencies on/around the tinnitus frequencies in the hope my brains start to turn the volume down, thus reducing the current tinnitus…

yes it is due to our hearing being so bad that the brain is trying to create its own noise to compensate for what the ears are not give it. My tinnitus is just plan old white noise, no true tones at all.

Is it that over the last three years your brain has become accustomed to you wearing hearing aids? When you were fitted with hearing aids for the first time, did your audiologist/fitter explain that it might take you some time to adjust to wearing hearing aids? Now three years later your brain has made that adjustment so much so that when you don’t wear your aids then you feel that you don’t hear as well as you used to do before you had your aids.

I can relate to this…exactly the same scenario…

Why the test result is almost the same when I feel like i have lost some power of my “natural” hearing after using the hearing aid for a few years?

This country s normal nice you get use to the amplified sound of your aids, and you take them out.

I think of this as being used to see in the dark for some time where you can make things out with some difficulty but then when you are exposed to the light your eyes adjust but then when you go back to the dark you can’t see anything for a while…

Not sure that is actually what is happening but sounds reasonable :slight_smile:

That would also suggest that after not wearing for a while your perceived hearing would return to prior levels… still not being able to hear correctly but “better”… I haven’t tried this hypothesis and wonder if anyone else has….

I was forced into this situation. We are on holiday and I left my charger at home. Luckily I got my daughter to post it on, but in the meanwhile I needed to preserve my battery life. I over reacted and removed both aids 5 hours early. The next day I fitted just one and it dropped only to 25%. The following day the other was at 45% and became the active aid.
With no aid I certainly listened harder. With one. audio was OK. When I knew the charger had arrived I switched the other on. Immediately I noticed that adequate hearing became much brighter with both.
Yes, I could manage with none or one but two was much better.

Related discussions