What a Hearing Aid Does

Series Summary

Everyone relies a great deal on their hearing. If a person can’t hear well, his ability to communicate with others is significantly hindered. This can lead to seriously negative repercussions in all areas of one’s life, from work and home, to friendships and safety. Having one’s hearing tested on a regular schedule is therefore very important.

Hearing aids are small items for ears that can make life easier for people with hearing issues. In this free health video series a professional audiologist will tell you what you need to know when considering a hearing aid. She will teach you what a hearing aid does and the parts that make up a hearing aid. You will learn how to choose a hearing aid according to your needs and the styles available. She will inform you about hearing aid sizes, advances in technology, fitting and cleaning. Finally, she will give you tips on additional devices that augment a hearing aid, such as alarm clocks and telephones.

Video Transcript

"When someone has a hearing loss, the most common type of hearing is what we refer to as sensory neural hearing loss. What that means is that that's hearing loss at the level of the Inner Ear or the Cochlea. If it's hearing loss at the level of the Cochlea or it's damage to the nerve or the sensory fibers. What a hearing aid does, is it amplifies sound. So that it will create larger waves within the fluid of the Cochlea, so that, that sound can be detected. One of the biggest challenges that people wear hearing aids have is hearing in noise. Up until, you know, the last decade, there weren't a lot of very good solutions for dealing with the issue of hearing in noise with a hearing aid. Over the last few years, there have been a couple of developments that have really improved that situation. Perhaps the most significant development is the directional microphone. The directional microphone allows the hearing aid wearer to pick up sounds in one direction more than in any other direction. If you were at a restaurant for example. The hearing aid will pick up sounds in front of the listener better than what's going on behind or beside the listener. If you're sitting across the table from someone in a restaurant, you're going to hear the voice of the person you're talking to loudest, then the noise that's happening beside or behind you. "