In the peace of mind of your own home, you may feel like you don't need to use your hearing aids all day long. However, audiologists warn that you shouldn't go for long periods without using the devices. In fact, you should use them every day during all waking hours, no matter where or how you spend your time. When I put my headphones back on, to have dinner at a table in the street, everything sounded too loud, like when I first bought the headphones 20 years ago and it was unbearable to use them on the streets of New York.
Apparently, six weeks was enough to affect the way my brain processes sound. If you have hearing aids, you should wear them during all waking hours, with a few exceptions. Doing so will help ensure that you get all the possible benefits from your device. If wearing them doesn't help you hear the sound that surrounds you better, of course, take them off if you want.
Ideally, you should follow your hearing health professional's recommendations regarding the usage schedule. Ultimately, you choose when you want to use them and when you don't, but you should keep in mind that if using your hearing aids is beneficial to you in certain situations, you should use them. If you have hearing loss, your brain needs to work harder to hear conversation and other ambient sounds, and this could also interfere with your balance. To get the most benefit from your hearing aids, we recommend using them every day, all day long, at least 8 hours a day.
A recent survey in the United Kingdom showed that patients were almost a third happier when they wore an accessory with their hearing aids. 26% of this is the accessory that I most prescribe. It's important that you wear your hearing aids every day so that you can wear them comfortably in any environment. I confess that when I started working at home years ago, I rarely put on my hearing aid from the moment I got out of bed until the moment I fell asleep.
If you leave your headphones turned off for an extended period of time during the day, as I did during my prolonged quarantine, your brain will adapt to the new conditions and you'll work harder to listen or you'll stop communicating. In addition to using headphones to keep your conversational skills sharp, there are other ways to compensate for this loneliness. Hearing loss can promote compensations such as interrupting, doing monologues, not speaking, or speaking too loudly or quietly. However, if wearing hearing aids all the time is overwhelming, it's perfectly acceptable to take them off and give your ears a chance to recover.
For example, if you're comfortable with video calls, they have the advantage of allowing you to wear headphones and adjust the volume. You've adapted to the world of hearing aids and your brain doesn't work as hard to compensate for hearing loss as it used to. Using hearing aids may not always prevent this process from happening, but it can slow it down.
