Is this true that if u dont wear your hearing aids you become more deaf?

[SteveAUD]

Hey guys. i was wondering since some man told me last week that since i dont wear my hearing aids i will become more deaf. how is that possible is that possible because im confused. I really want to know. I told him i have a severe hearing loss 80 db now i was born hh etc. hes like so your deaf. Im like im not deaf hes like same thing. IM like no two different things.




danielle

Will your hearing loss get worse by not wearing hearing aids? No, if it's going to get worse it's going to get worse, there is nothing you can do to prevent that (minus not taking up hunting or shooting guns). In the same token it could very well stay the same. There are two things we look at when we evaluate change in hearing. The hearing sensitivity (the thresholds for tones) and the word recognition ability (if speech is loud enough, how well do you recognize what you hear). The hearing sensitivity may or may not change on it's own, but wearing a hearing aid will not prevent anything. However, your word recognition ability can decrease. It's called auditory deprevation (if you don't use it, you may loose it). Of all the patients I've seen were they stopped wearing their aids, the word recognition decline, and then they went back to wearing their aids, only 4 of them had word recognition that didn't come back to previous levels. However don't let that give you a sense of relief. People do very well with hearing aids who have a severe hearing loss and their word recognition ability is 80%. They don't do so well with only 12% word recognition ability. If it stays at 12%, then expect to get 12% of the words that come thru that hearing aid (with no noise present). I can easily handle giving someone more power, I cannot easily give them back the ability to recognize or discrimate words.

Here's an analogy that I commonly tell my patients: A man is in a coma for 5yrs, do you think when he wakes up he'll be able to jump out of bed and start walking? No, but that's not to say he will never walk again. However, there are exceptions to every rule.

 

[HoHGuyOhio]

My audiologist told me that my speech discrimination scores were lower now because I haven't worn my HA regularly for several years...I usually only wear them when interpreting.

 

[Hear Again]

My CI audi encouraged me to continue wearing a HA in my nonimplanted ear right up until my second CI surgery in order to keep the auditory nerve stimulated. She explained that by not wearing the HA, it can cause atrophy making the adjustment to a second CI more difficult.

 

[aslpup]

hearing nerves

what this man was talking about is this:
If you have residual hearing and wear your hearing aids, the hearing nerves are being used and worked. If you stop wearing your aids, eventually the nerves will dies off and you will not be able to reverse the damage. I know this because I read this while doing research on the cochlear implant. That is why deaf adults who have never heard sound before, do so poorly when they get an implant. However deaf adults who have utilized their residual hearing and get implanted do much better. Their brain still reconizes sound. If you have a deaf child who has never heard before and gets implanted while the nerves are still intact can train their brain to hear. If the child is too old, after 6 or 7 and has never heard, the results are poor. If the child has residual hearing and uses it via hearing aids but then their hearing declines to the point where now they get a cochlear implant., they do well because their brain has already been taught how to hear and the nerves are still intact.
So to anwser the question.... if you dont exercise your residual hearing eventually it will go away. Studies have shown that it is possible to regrow the hearing nerves, but only if done early. The study was done by implanting deaf cats. do a search and you should find the article.
hope this helps.

 

[Liebling:-)))]

I think I know what he was trying to say and there is truth to his statement. He wasn't talking about losing more hearing either. That, of course, would be nonsense and it is.

What he meant was that hearing is like a muscle in which it must be used to get the maximum benefit from it. In other words, you need to continue to use a HA, CI, whatever device to keep what hearing one has left "sharp". As an extension to this thought, to hear and understand speech and by same token speech itself all require the constant exercise thereof to be good at it. So, if one doesn't use any kind of device to "hear" and exercise it, then one will become more "deaf". All senses must be used to be useful. One can't just turn it off for a while and expect it to be good as before when turning it back on.

A good analogy is somebody decides not to walk for a month and just use a wheelchair instead. At the end of the month, the person tries to get up and walk. Lo and behold, they find they are very weak and cannot walk very well. They will have to build up their strength and muscles before they can walk like they could before.

Yes that's right.

 

[hohDougRN]

very very interesting subject.......hmmmm, that weird but seem logical.