Coping with hearing loss during the holiday season can be especially difficult.
While you may honestly prefer to NOT hear a few of your relatives, the conversations you do want to take part in can be stressful. And because most large holiday gatherings tend to be loud, it can be nearly impossible to concentrate on any one person or conversation.
In order to participate in conversation, you have to cope with background music, people talking all at once around the table, and the Thanksgiving football game blasting in the background. This produces an impossible situation that can make you feel detached and excluded.
Short of making everyone repeat themselves or remaining silent, what are your options?
Truthfully, 10 years ago you didn’t have many. The older analog hearing aids could amplify speech—the issue was that they also amplified everything else, including background noise. Since all sound was just made to be louder, it didn’t help a great deal with understanding the people you were conversing with.
But hearing aids have changed, and for the better. In particular, contemporary hearing aids have two functions that can salvage your holiday season: background noise reduction and speech focus.
Background noise suppression
Older analog hearing aid models were in truth very straightforward gadgets. They consisted of a microphone, an amplifier, and a speaker. Sound was acquired by the microphone, amplified, and sent through the speaker to the ear.
The issue was, however, that the hearing aid couldn’t distinguish between vocalization and background noise. The amplifier made every sound louder, so unless you were in a tranquil environment, you had a tough time hearing voices.
Because holiday gatherings are anything but quiet, what you actually require is a hearing aid that can differentiate between sounds—which is exactly what modern digital hearing aids can accomplish.
Digital hearing aids, combined with containing a microphone, amplifier, and speaker, also contain a digital processor. That means sound can be transformed into digital information that the hearing aid can utilize to distinguish between various types of sounds.
By differentiating and tagging different kinds of sounds, modern hearing aids can be programmed to amplify only sounds with selected traits, including all of the frequencies you have trouble hearing. Background sounds, on the other hand, can be conveniently recognized and silenced.
Speech focus
In addition to restraining background sound, modern hearing aids can also recognize and focus on speech.
Speech has a distinctive property in that it is made up of chiefly of high-frequency sounds. This makes it simple for the digital processor to distinguish between speaking and background noise, which is mostly low frequency.
In addition, digital hearing aids have what are called directional microphones, which can detect the direction of sound. Some hearing aid models can even focus the microphones in targeted directions, like the direction of the person you’re speaking to.
Schedule Your Hearing Test and Enjoy the Holidays Again
Are you ready to get back your holiday season?
Contact us today and we’ll assist you to select among the extraordinary digital hearing aid technology available to you. After that, with your new hearing aids—complete with background noise suppression and speech focus—you’ll have the ability to hear all of the conversations with comfort and clarity.
As for the relatives you don’t want to hear? Not to worry, the hearing aids also come equipped with an off button.