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Dramatic hearing loss overnight – filter?

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Edited

How often does a wear out over, say, 2-3 months? Does this happen slowly, as the mucous membrane builds up until the end of the cycle, or can the filter cause sudden hearing loss at a certain point? Has anyone had this experience?

PS: after replacing the filters, everything returned to normal, thankfully.

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are there just for the tje reason to trap wax. They don’t wear out they trap the wax and the wax in the wax traps can block sound to your ears. I change my wax guards every 4 to 6 weeks regardless if they look like they need to be changed or not.

Edited

In reply to @cvkemp

@cvkemp said:

They don’t wear out

Yes, but as I told some kind of film collects on the surface of the mesh—I don’t know exactly what it’s made of. It’s this film that causes the filter to need regular replacement, even though it looks clean.

I’m still curious about this sudden hearing loss phenomenon…

We all have ear wax that is a normal process to protect our ears. Some have more ear wax than others.

Edited

Thank you for this important information, I’ll know for the future.

Anyway, Critical Gain curve returned to the earlier shape without cleaning my ears. @cvkemp, can you explain this behaving why?

No that could be anything from medication, sinus issues, even weather conditions. Or even hearing aid battery charge levels. You need to also talk to your audiologist.

Of course, I can consult an audiologist, but I thought I could find professionals and many practitioners here who could explain this phenomenon to me. So far, I’ve learned that I need to clean my ears :rofl: .

PS: No medication, sinus problems, weather conditions, or battery charge can cause sudden hearing loss when everything returned to normal after replacing the filter. I wrote about that, after all.

If your hearing returns to normal after the filter, , are changed. Then the wax guard was stopped up. It happens to me every now and then. The wax guard will stop up because of ear wax. The wax guards don’t have to even look like they are stopped up to be stopped up. During cold weather I change mine every 6 weeks to 2 months when it is hot and humid and I am sweating from activities I sometimes change them every other week.

For quite a time I thought my Rextons were faulty until I started changing my filters every other week. One particular cause is I find that quite often after a shower where I clean my ears, I can dry them as much as I want but after about 2-3 hours a filter will get blocked with wax and the aid goes to about 20% volume. I just assume that the wax is warmed and flows. I use a magnifier app on my phone and you can see the wax film across the filter.

Some people are just a bit waxier then others, but how do you know it suddenly became “blocked” overnight if you didn’t check it before? like it would of built up over time without you noticing.. until you did, so it’s obvious wax is your problem, not some kind of totally “unheard of or strange” episode of sudden hearing loss, your coming across as neurotic!

Edited

I apologize for my “neurotic” behavior, but I didn’t think I’d be misunderstood, despite my clear description. I greatly appreciate all the comments regarding monitoring and using filters for contamination. Let me explain again so I don’t come across as a novice unfamiliar with filter issues:

  1. The filter was clean to the naked eye (using a magnifying glass), meaning there was no trace of earwax that could suddenly cause hearing loss.
  2. The coating slowly covering the mesh, always invisible, couldn’t have suddenly caused poor hearing.

I conclude that my case is an isolated incident, so I suspect sudden filter damage (crack), perhaps caused by excessive strain during insertion having been done weeks earlier.

Best regards :slight_smile:

@Janeo said:

How often does a wax filter wear out over, say, 2-3 months? Does this happen slowly, as the mucous membrane builds up until the end of the cycle, or can the filter cause sudden hearing loss at a certain point? Has anyone had this experience?

@Janeo Lets quickly rewind the discussion. Sorry to say, but it was you to bring up the topic in the first place, so no wonder people addressed wax filter :slight_smile:

First statement: your fax filter has NO impact on your hearing loss. Your hearing loss is your hearing loss, technically speaking.
A wax filter gradually will be filled, usually you will NOT hear the difference. Only the moment it clogs completely, it will suddenly reduce the amplified sound –> hence you don’t get the amplification you need –> hence you may think your hearing loss increased while actually you just miss amplification. Raplacing the filter (plus cleaning the dome!) will solve this. Don’t forget the dome (or whatever ear coupling you have). If the output and/or vent is filled with wax, it won’t work either, regardless of the filter.

And back to your other question of hearing loss:
Whether you had a sudden hearing loss (and its potential root cause) can only (and only) be diagnosed by a professional, with proper equipment. Sudden (additional) hearing loss does exist! Don’t underestimate this, get it examined if you think that you suffer from it. Remote diagnosis via forum can give you a lot of good information, but if it is serious, then double check.

I’m sure I’m not the only one on this forum who has had exactly that experience: sudden hearing loss in one ear that responds miraculously to cleaning the filter and dome. All snark aside, your explanation of the mechanism of hearing loss is spot on. Gotta admit that I was totally skeptical when the gal at Costco said, “oh, you just need us to clean your hearing aid”, but it worked!!

This used to happen to me every 7-10 days changing the filter and suddenly could hear again, it never appeared as a gradual loss.

I now use easyguard domes and have not changed a filter in over 3 months, so issue solved for me.

Yup, me too. Take out the perfectly working hearing aid, put it back in, it’s dead. Replace the , it’s back. Kind weird, but it always works.

Edited

It could have happened this way. As I’ve learned, this sticky, invisible membrane on the mesh grows and causes a nonlinear loss of sound parameters—slowly at first, but as it grows, it suddenly reaches a critical threshold and audibility collapses. I suspect this happens more often with fine-mesh, traditional screens in I used as equivalent. This is, of course, a hypothesis I haven’t yet had the chance to check in practice.

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