Hearing aids and Tinnitus — not for me, but maybe for you
This is a follow up from my previous article on Hearing aids and Tinnitus — you can read that here if you’d like. Also, as with anything medical, talk with an audiologist, ENT, or other hearing professional before deciding to use hearing aids. They might or might not work for you depending on your specific situation.
I received my Lively hearing aids a few days ago, and have been using them almost non-stop since then to get an idea as to if they will work for my tinnitus and Central Auditory Processing issues. The overall summary is that, despite some benefits around reduction of tinnitus, there were enough things that bothered me about hearing aids that I’m not going to use them. I’ll cover some of the pros and cons (and some neutral things) that I discovered so you can help use what I found to make a decision if hearing aids are a possible solution for helping your tinnitus.
Pros
There were definitely some pros I experienced when using hearing aids. If some are specific to Lively, I’ll make sure to note those:
- Hearing aids did actually help my overall tinnitus. I still had noticeable flare-ups (especially in my right ear which has always been worse), but the reduction was very noticeable compared to wearing them vs. not wearing them.
- If your hearing aids are Made for iPhone (MFi) hearing aids, the support on an iPhone is fantastic. You can easily change volume, adjust the program that’s currently enabled, see battery status, and enable/disable Live Listen. It was nice not having to open the dedicated app for my hearing aids just to adjust the volume a bit, or quickly change the program being used. Additionally, if sound started playing on your iPhone, and your hearing aids are hooked up to it, the sound would automatically start playing in your hearing aids.
- Non-streaming sound quality was overall very good on the default programs. I could clearly hear sounds around me through the hearing aids, and they sounded very clear and accurate. Watching TV with hearing aids was just like having the volume up on the TV slightly, which was great.
- (Behind-the-ear hearing aid specific) They are as discrete as advertised. While discreteness wasn’t a full on requirement for me, I was pleasantly surprised at how hidden they truly were — the tube that holds the wiring blended in nicely, and the behind-the-ear components sat well hidden behind my(admittedly large) ears.
- (Lively specific) The staff at Lively is super responsive and helpful. They answered any questions I had (even on a weekend) and were knowledgable about how my specific case could be helped with hearing aids.
- (Lively specific) The app is nice. You can easily customize certain programs, enable things like speech clarity and noise filtering, fine-tune sound using an equalizer, and submit any feedback on your hearing directly through the app. I’m assuming other Bluetooth and app-enabled hearing aids would have similar functionality, at least around the programs, speech clarity, and noise filtering.
Neutrals
This is a list of things that didn’t really weigh in as a pro or a con, just a note that I thought was worth mentioning.
- If you do not have any hearing loss, it’s likely you’ll hear additional sounds through your hearing aids that are a side effect of the microphones picking up the audio. This of course totally depends on the type of hearing aid, and if you do have hearing loss, it’s likely you won’t notice it. I noticed it (it sounds like static / white noise), and while sometimes it was distracting, other times I think it actually helped my tinnitus. It may be something that you could overlook, or appreciate since it would help your tinnitus.
- (Possibly Lively specific?) When switching a program, or when you start listening to audio on your iPhone when you weren’t previously, there’s a noticeable one second silence when the hearing aid itself is switching over. It was easy to get used to, but it has the potential to get annoying if you’re randomly browsing on your iPhone and an app wants to play audio, so your hearing aids suddenly switch programs and they go silent. You can disable the iPhone automatically playing audio on your hearing aids unless you tell it to, and you likely won’t be switching programs constantly during a conversation, so this is not really a negative thing, just something to note.
Cons
These are the things that ultimately made me pass on hearing aids. These negatives are more specific to my needs, and may not be a reason for you to pass on hearing aids, it’s just things that bothered me to the point that I couldn’t see using them long term.
- They are uncomfortable. Lively gives you a variety of earbuds to try out which is really nice, however I was never able to get a fit that felt perfect, and could always notice that they were in my ear, even after hours of continuous usage. I also had an issue where my ears would start itching to the point where I had to take them out — Lively recommended a solution to help, but it didn’t quite help me like I wish it would.
- (Behind-the-ear hearing aid specific) While behind-the-ear hearing aids are nice for being discrete, I wear glasses daily, and I could never get my glasses to stop interfering with the microphones. If I was sitting still, I could often get them in a position that wouldn’t cause a rustling noise, but when I was moving around, I would hear the rustle frequently. Enabling noise filtering mode did help reduce it, but that also made all sounds quieter in general, so that defeated the purpose. If you wear glasses, it’s worth keeping this in mind, and possibly pursuing other types of hearing aids.
- Streaming sound quality was sub-par. This is something that I’ve read about with even some of the most high-end hearing aids, and as someone who listens to music quite often, the difference between hearing aids and even my phone speaker’s quality was so striking that I would remove the hearing aids any time I wanted to listen to music through my headphones, instead of just streaming the music via the hearing aids. Again, this might not be as much of a difference if you are already suffering from some form of hearing loss, but for those that don’t have any hearing loss yet, you will definitely notice a (negative) difference in sound quality. I feel like this also affected the tinnitus treatment app that I used — I’ve used it in the past before hearing aids, and I felt that it did a better job treating my tinnitus than when I was wearing hearing aids. I feel like I could never get the volume or pitch correct enough when I was using my hearing aids to get to the level that will help with tinnitus (almost masked out, but not fully masked out).
- Hearing aids in general tend to be sensitive to moisture, and can have their life shortened if they get too wet too frequently. I tend to sweat easily, so I definitely started being more conscious about if my hearing aids were getting wet, and felt like I needed to micromanage them. Having said that, there are solutions to help dry them out when needed.
- This con is more of a misunderstanding on my part, at least when it comes to behind-the-ear hearing aids — I feel like they don’t block out enough outside noise. Despite the noise filters, speech enhancers, and other tweaks you can make to the hearing aids, I feel that I never got enough of a boost in hearing to help with my central auditory processing. If there was a complete block of outside noise, and some additional audio filtering, I feel like that could have made hearing aids more appealing.
- Considering all of the above cons, I felt that the cost wasn’t worth dealing with the cons to get a few of the pros. While Lively hearing aids in particular are on the cheaper side ($1650), I still feel like the cost + cons doesn’t outweigh the benefit.
Overall, despite them not working out, I’m really glad I tried hearing aids. I’ve always wondered if they would help, and the fact that they last all day (for days even if they’re non-rechargeable) was always intriguing. However, I just couldn’t get used to them, and couldn’t get around the cons that I mentioned. If I did have some hearing loss, or was able to try a different type of hearing aid, I would have likely experienced more benefit that would have outweighed even some of the strongest cons.
I hope this helps you decide if hearing aids are right for you. Like I mentioned earlier, this is just my experience, and you could have a way better or way worse experience than I did.
My next step on this journey into helping out my tinnitus and central auditory processing is trying out other types of hearables — I’m going to be trying out the Bose Hearphones next, and will definitely be talking about my IQBuds2 Max when I receive them.
