In today's video, I'm going to talk about five different hearing aid technologies.
Welcome if you're new, my name is Emily, I created Definite Hearing as a way to increase awareness
for the deaf and hard of hearing. I'm hard of hearing myself. I have a moderate to severe
sensory neural hearing loss in both ears. I wear hearing aids, and they helped me so so so much
without my hearing aids I would miss out on 99% , that's probably still generous, 99.9% of the sounds
that I hear every day and I am so grateful for my hearing aid technology. If you haven't already,
please like this video and subscribe to my channel. Don't forget to share this video as
well as you do we can increase awareness for the deaf and Hard of Hearing. Hearing aid technology
number one is wide dynamic range compression. What is this you ask? For a normal person they
have a wide range of sounds that they can hear a hard of hearing person has a relatively smaller
range of sounds that they can hear hearing aids offer a piece of technology called wide dynamic
range compression. This means that hearing aids understand that hearing people can hear this much
and the certain person wearing the hearing aid can only hear this much so when the hearing aid hears
a sound that's outside of that rage. It compresses it to be within the range that the hard of
hearing person can hear. Typically this is done by increasing the volume of sounds or pitches or
frequencies that are hard of hearing person cannot hear without their hearing aids. So with that
piece of technology, hearing devices can help hard of hearing people hear sounds they would not hear
otherwise without hearing devices. I love this and this is a huge element of my hearing aids.
When I put my hearing aids on it goes from quiet very silent. I can usually feel the humming of
sound, I can hear like a loud door slam but that's about it. And when I say I hear it, it's muffled
it's non-discernible. I just kind of have to use my other senses to understand what was that but
when I put my hearing aids in, I am more able, like clearly almost, to distinguish what the sound was
where it came from directionally and what object it was because I'm familiar with my environment.
So I'm really grateful for this wide dynamic range compression element of hearing aid technology. The
next hearing aid technology feature that I love is noise reduction. Hearing aids are like smart
devices. The technology is getting so much better, so much smaller, so much slimmer and smarter that
it's able to listen to sound and filter out what sound I would want to hear. For example, hearing
aids are able to reduce the noise of wind in my hearing aids or chatter in the background, if I'm
at a restaurant or the sound of say my dishwasher going on in the background a hearing aids are
able to say Emily needs to hear these sound and speech frequencies, if something is outside of that,
usually a humming fan or chatter or background noise, we can suppress that volume. So hearing
aids have that noise reduction technology to help filter sound because though I'm wearing
hearing aids, it is still hard to understand what I'm hearing. So this feature of noise reduction
is extremely beneficial because when a hearing aid just due to its smart device elements is able to pull
out that noise, it is less noise that my brain has to worry about filtering through and understanding.
The third hearing aid technology that is extremely beneficial is that of directional microphones. Now
I will say that of these hearing aid technologies that I'm mentioning in this video not all hearing
aids have all of these features. I highly recommend when you're shopping to consider what
features you want and make sure that your hearing aids that you're going to get invest in or want to
get have the features that you prefer. What are directional microphones? Well, the hearing aid
listens to sound and is able to pull where that sound is coming from and focus on that sound.
This is extremely beneficial for me when I may not hear a sound behind me but because my hearing aids
can hear all of these different sounds and it can understand that is coming from behind me it will
tune that up through the wide dynamic range of compression and they know that something's behind
me and I can look behind me it's incredible. I absolutely love it. This feature was also very
beneficial in college in lectures. My hearing aids were able to tune into the lecturers
voice and focus on that and reduce the other noise going on an additional feature of hearing
aid technology is the benefit of multiple sound programs. I have some buttons on my hearing aids
right here. And if I click them, my audiologist has programmed them to be different settings.
For example, one program or setting is a restaurant program. If I select that one, it will
suppress noise, background noise, even more than my normal setting does and increases the frequencies
in that the speech bubble or where people's speech frequencies lie. It's nice to have this setting. I
don't use it on a daily basis because I still want to consume the noise that's going on around me but
in the restaurant setting I definitely know I can turn that on, surpress background noise even more,
and bump the speech frequencies up even more so that I can understand better what I'm hearing in
that environment. Another program that's extremely beneficial is wind reduction. I am a runner I like
to run sometimes I can wear a hat when I run to reduce the noise but sometimes a hat doesn't work
based on how much my hearing aid is feeding back that day. So I can use a wind reduction program
and reduce the sound of the noise so I can enjoy a peaceful run without having the wind screaming in
my hearing aids the whole time. And last but not least, the fifth feature of hearing aid technology
that I absolutely love. And the reason why I got these hearing aids is the Bluetooth feature
Bluetooth connectivity in hearing aids is amazing. About 10 years ago Bluetooth wasn't really around
or enabled in hearing aid. The only option was a T coil or a copper coil and a hearing aid that would
connect with sound systems and microphone devices. Now Bluetooth features enable us to connect to
Bluetooth devices. Now this doesn't mean that if you're sitting next to someone you'll just
automatically get the sound from their device. But it does mean that you can connect your hearing
aids to your personal devices. It will connect sound from your phone whether it's on various
app or just through the speaker to your hearing aids. It's incredible because it enables you to
listen to sound on your phone without it having to be on speaker it's game changing for phone calls.
I absolutely love it especially since before I had Bluetooth phone calls were difficult. I didn't
like holding the phone up because it would make my hearing aids feedback. So I often use speaker but
then that meant that everyone around me whether I was at home, in the store or at school could hear
my conversation and not just me speaking but the other person as well. This Bluetooth capability
also enables specific hearing aid users to use additional hearing aid accessories I use a remote
mic is a microphone that I can pin to a speaker's lapel and the sound from their
lecture will go straight to my hearing aids. The sound clarity is amazing and I can cut out all
the irrelevant background noise in the distance from the speaker to myself. I love the Bluetooth
hearing technology. So as I mentioned earlier, I got my Resound Enzo 3Ds Because they had that
Bluetooth capability. I really wanted the Phonak Marvel hearing aid with the Bluetooth technology
but unfortunately at the time I was buying these hearing aids Phonak had not come out with their
behind the ear model or the model that I need with that kind of power and the Bluetooth connectivity
but since resound had a model with Bluetooth and the behind the ear model I decided to get
that and I am so so glad that I did so what do you think about these hearing aid technologies? If you
have hearing aids which of these do you love you probably use some of them more than you realize
if you're shopping for hearing aids, what is your list of priorities of these hearing technologies?
Which ones do you want to see in your hearing aids and if you're shopping for hearing aids,
I am so excited for you to try new hearing aids. Remember that in the United States,
you should be able to get a 30 day free trial to try your hearing aids. Try them don't be afraid to
try different hearing aids. And also remember that if you're spending more than $3,000 per
hearing aid, you should definitely shop around it's normal to spend anywhere from $1000 to $2,500
per hearing aid. Granted some hearing aids are more expensive because of the services
they come with. Whether that's a lifetime supply, a battery unlimited to change jeans and cleanings,
discounts on earmold impressions and so much more. If you have any questions please let me
know in the comments below. I look forward to making more great videos for you. And if
you haven't already, please like and subscribe. Stay strong, say amazing, and have a great day.