How to keep your hearing while wearing hearing aids

As a caveat I am sharing my experiences. Depending upon the type of hearing loss and its cause your experience might be different.

I worked starting with my father summers from ages 12 to 17 and a while when I was 21 as an electrician. I started out at age 12 as an Electrician's Helper. But I was still exposed to various loud noises that one is always surrounded by in the building trades. Then when I was 32 I built a house at 4000 feet on Mt. Shasta using a Chain Saw and didn't always find or have my ear plugs to protect my hearing. So, if I couldn't find my ear plugs that day (since I was at least 10 miles from the nearest gas station) I simply plugged my right ear with my left hand finger and used my right hand to run the saw. So, this made my left ear hearing worse than my right. But both ears lost a good deal of hearing in the upper 20% of ranges. So, High voices and high sounds I couldn't always hear after that, especially women's voices in restaurants.

So, when my daughters and wife finally insisted I get hearing aids last fall it took a lot of getting used to all the situations I was then confronted with and all the psychological and physical changes this brought into my life.

Here are some of the things I have learned to keep your hearing while wearing hearing aids:

1. take your hearing aids out if you want to open the window or windows in your car. Otherwise it will damage your hearing. So, only leave your hearing aids in when the windows are up and only then if your vehicle isn't making loud noises.

2. take your hearing aids out if you are driving a motorcycle because this could really cause you hearing problems because the loud noises of the motorcycle will definitely damage your hearing when amplified through the microphone and miniature speakers directly into your ears.

3. Take your hearing aids out before using a blender or other loud power tool or mechanism.

4. Take your hearing aids out before going to a movie. Even now, most of the time the sounds in the movie are just so very loud I have to not only take the hearing aids out but also I stuff my ears with paper napkin to deaden the sound. Even with my ears stuffed with paper I can usually hear most of the dialog.

As I was learning what not to do slowly I think I damaged my hearing more. For example, before I got my hearing aids I could hear the high pitched sound of a kettle boiling without hearing aids. But now, I can't hear that unless I have my hearing aids  in. So, though hearing aids are helpful in not going deaf you also have to be smart not to damage your hearing further in certain situations.

Another situation is that if you have teenagers or young adults in your life they always want to have loud music going in your car while you are going anywhere. So, remember to take your hearing aids out immediately at this point if they turn loud music on even if you have to hold them in your hand and drive with the other hand. However, if you hear them squealing then you need to move them farther apart from each other because this just runs down your batteries and doesn't help the mechanism either.

Hopefully, you will find what I'm writing about here helpful.