Cleaning and drying

I do the same thing with the plastic earmold and air tube attached, and have done for years. About once a week. Daily I inspect, clean with special toothbrush, remove any wax manually, and place overnight in dryer. If you live in a humid climate, a dryer is more important, because if you sweat near the HA, it can rust inside, as I learned the hard way when gardening in summer. Remove HAs before such activity!

I have a couple of old pairs of HAs that are good enough to use for hiking or biking or even gardening. There are things to hear in all those activities. I wear hearing aids to the beach so I can hear the birds and the sound of waves breaking. I can hear very little of nature sounds without them. There’s no reason for me to go without aids unless my ears need a rest. Anyway, everyone who has worn HAs for a while has a bunch of old aids in the drawer. --Steve

I have worn hearing aids since 2016 and have taken a different approach than what I’ve read here. I’m fastidious about cleaning my ears in the shower every day. I use one of those bulb syringes to irrigate my ears, about 4-5 irrigation’s in each ear. I then use soap and lather up the parts of my ear that I can reach with my finger, to include behind the ear where the unit rests. Then I rinse that soap off (and out if any got down my ear canal). The soap seems to further remove much of the oily stuff that drains out.

Doing this routine, I have had zero issues with wax. And I feel a little bad about saying this (like I’m neglecting something), but I’ve only changed those wax traps on two occasions since 2016 (only as a preventative maintenance measure albeit at a neglectful frequency), and have changed the rubber things 2-3 times since 2016. Every time a doctor looks in my ear, he/she comments on how clear/clean it is - no wax at all.

When I irrigate my ears In the shower each day, the fist 2 times, what drains out feels oily. The 4th or 5th irrigation feels less oily.

When I am drying myself, I’ll then use toilet paper to dry my ears, to the extent they can absorb water down my canal. I’m not stuffing the toilet paper down my ear canal, like with a ramrod, just however far my index finger can get it to absorb with the toilet paper just flat against it. I’ll do that 2-3 times in each ear until it no longer shows that it’s wet (using different places of the sheet doubled over until it is dry each time.

My ears are tremendous wax producers. Before hearing aids, every 1-2 years, I used to need intervention to remove wax build up. I would wake up and feel like I had one of those foam ear plugs in my ear. I’d go to the corpsman and they would do what they could to mine the wax out, to include irrigating it. After much effort, clumps of ear wax would drop into the pan. The chunks were so big, I could actually hear them drop, and the “miners“ were amazed.

For “sanitation” peace of mind, I’ve found a translucent bulb syringe that will come apart so I can clean and inspect it. I worried about what may grow inside those things. Again, the bulb syringe is what I use to irrigate my ears.

Recommendation: To irrigate your ears, don’t just grab the bulb syringe used to clear mucous from your child or grandchild‘s nose. Get a new one!

Kevin

Great advice. I’ll start paying more attention to that. --Steve

Kathy,

Welcome to the group. Let us know how you do with your new hearing aids. Please keep posting and add your audiogram if you have a chance. We all struggle with the same problems.

Using a dryer like the Perfect Dry Lux is a good idea. That said, everybody doesn’t need to do it regularly. I think it depends on humidity as well as how much a person sweats and things like that.

–Steve

Obsessively cleaning and drying hearing aids, like obsessive car washing, fills an important need for some people. If it doesn’t harm anyone, I say let them do it.

i have bte quattro’s, prior to these, rexton. the latter were with moulds so required little maintenance other than a nightly wipe down with a microfiber cloth and a straightened paper clip for the vent hole.

the quattro’s have soft, double ridge domes which i simply wipe down every night with a microfiber cloth, a visual check to see that the mesh covering the receivers (speakers;-)) isn’t contaminated, and when in the charger, i place a small silica gel pack. so far so good.

i think commonsense is the key to cleaning and drying, both aids and ears.

You must not live in a humid environment. At times just walking outside or opening a car door can cause sweat to run down my ears and neck

Wow, cvkemp, that’s not for me!

rural australia - just emerging for a 4 year drought, so yes, a pretty dry environment

that said, i often worry that my sweat might have an adverse effect on my aids, so i try and avoid wearing them when doing heavy manual work in the paddock.

@leslie.wand said:

there’s not a lot to hear in the paddock

slithering snakes?

more likely drop bears

funnily enough this is first year i haven’t seen a singe snake anywhere - drought or general climate change, hard to know. if they don’t come back i won’t be sorry.

meanwhile, we have a few locus, again, hopefully, it’s not another plague to have to deal with;-)

@leslie.wand said:

hopefully, it’s not another plague to have to deal with;-)

Here’s hoping for a good year. You’ve waited long enough.

can we reinstall 2020? i think there’s a virus in it;-)

have a good one too, and stay health…