Open Fit Hearing Aids: Just In Time For The Boomers

08/16/2007 - Wellness and Diet If you are one of the millions of Baby Boomers working on their sixth decade on planet Earth, you may have noticed that the sounds of birdsong and children shrieking in glee are not as clear as they once were. If so, you are experiencing high frequency hearing loss, which is a normal accompaniment of the aging process.

But if your hearing has deteriorated to the point where you cannot hear the doorbell and the telephone ringing, or the teapot in the kitchen whistling, you should consult an audiologist to determine whether or not you are a candidate for a hearing aid.

If you are ready for a hearing aid, don’t despair. Hearing aids are no longer the bulky, uncomfortable and very obvious devices you might remember having seen in your youth; the 2005 introduction of open fit hearing aids changed that forever.

Open fit hearing aids are tiny devices which rest outside and behind the ear, with no ear canal-occluding earmold. Open fit hearing aids instead have extremely thin, nearly invisible "sound tubes" and are so lightweight that their users often forget they are wearing them.

Open fit hearing aids are available in two designs; the speaker-in-ear, or SIE models, and the acoustic tube models. The tube model open fit hearing aids have all their electronics housed in the small plastic shell which lodges behind the user’s ear. Sound first gets processed in the behind-the-ear casing, and then moves along the acoustic tube and enters the ear canal.

The SIE open fit hearing aid, however, takes its speaker out of the plastic shell and moves it to the end of the thin tube, where there is a sound tip. SIE open fit hearing aids, therefore, do not need as much gain directly at ear level to provide the same amount of sound output within the ear canal. This makes them more suitable for a broader range of hearing impairment than the acoustic tube models, which work best with high frequency hearing loss. For more info see http://www.firsthearingaids.com/comparereviews/custom_hearing_device.html on hearing device.

Open ear hearing aids are available with directional microphones, which allow those wearers in nosy environments to point them directly at a speaker for better sound clarity. Their biggest drawback is that they are automatic, and do not have any adjustable volume control.

If you are at the age where you think you high frequency hearings not quite what it once was, make an appointment with an audiologist to determine the degree and cause of your hearing loss. And if you are in need of hearing aids, open fit hearing aids may be a very pleasant surprise!