“I take them out when I’m home because I don’t really need them there”.
“I don’t take them with me when I go for a walk because I don’t really need them”
“I put them in my ears at about noon because I don’t need them in the morning”.
You get the idea. These statements, are all pointing to the same point, which is that the presumption that the only thing you need to hear is speech. If you have hearing aids, it’s because you need them. Whether you want to wear them is another story. I often don’t want to floss my teeth, but I still need to.
What is important to remember is that hearing people is a nice benefit of using hearing aids but there is so much more going on in the brain when hearing aids are used consistently. We hear with our brains, our ears are merely the vehicle by which sound travels to the brain. The auditory cortex has a memory of about three years. This means that with the onset of hearing loss, the brain still remembers the sound even if it isn’t getting the exact stimulus. Hearing aids not only help you hear better in the moment, they help your brain to remember sounds in our environment.
One of the primary reasons to use hearing aids is not just to hear people, but to keep the auditory nerve fibers and auditory cortex stimulated. Use it or lose it as the famous saying goes. A lot of research has emerged over the past 3 years about the correlation between hearing loss and memory loss. We want to keep all channels of sensory input to the brain working at optimal levels so that they brain may quickly process the environment around us.
So, wear your hearing aids. All day. They work better that way. If for some reason you are unable to, then come see us, we can fix that.