Hearing aids?

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Wow

I have tinnitus and high frequency hearing loss, I also have two hearing aids. I never wear them, because  it turns out that cannot stand anything in my ear canal. Who would have thought that an autistic person might have over-sensitivity?

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Cranking up the volume if you don’t have a flat audiogram does not help the clarity at all. I have normal low and very high frequency hearing it’s the middle I struggle with so there’s a 40db difference which makes everything muffled. I started off turning up music because it didn’t sound very clear but it was just loud and still not clear! Even at a concert having a closed dome and turning my hearing aids down to the lowest volume is much clearer than not wearing them

Thanks for your interesting reply, though I don't have the mould-type of hearing aid.  I suppose I could be allergic to the plastic tube/domes but it's more likely the itching and occasional infection is caused by abrasion with my very narrow ear canals.  Unfortunately, I don't own (by choice) any mobile phone - or earphones - but that sounds like the best reason I've heard for having one!

My hearing therapist told me Leeds University have done a lot of research into listening to music with hearing aids.  Quite a contrast to one audiologist who told me the only solution was to remove the aids for listening to music and crank up the volume!

Have you asked to have the moulds  made again in a different material? I know someone who is allergic to some of the plastic. I have domes on my hearing aids I do find they also get quite a lot of wax on them but I don’t have to change the filters too often. If there’s a lot of wax stuck I put in some Otex drops to help clear it a bit. I understand what you mean about the radio being picked up more than people and music having too much treble. I have a phone app for my aids where I can set an equaliser for them but still sounds like listening through cheap headphones! If you have an iPhone you can put your audiogram in and it will adjust when playing music through Apple earphones, it sounds amazing.

Have the moulds got a large hole though the middle, as this allows air to pass though ,causing less infections.

This helped my daughter.

Mine are Corda aids (that sit behind the ear) supplied freely by the NHS, who programmed them to boost the upper frequencies I've lost in my 50s.  I was only given a choice of these or moulded aids.  The Cordas were very effective at first, at least for speech in quiet environments, but as my hearing deteriorated further they had to replaced - surprisingly by a new set, not just readjustment - and now even these are not always effective at normal levels. 

I can increase the volume but an irritating side-effect (even at normal volume) is that noises are boosted and often drown speech.  I cannot bear to be near a boiling kettle and flushing the toilet sounds like Niagara Falls.  I suspect they are contributing to the sensory (in this case auditory) overload associated with autism.  I can't filter out background noises so, even (perhaps especially) when wearing the aids, I'm unable to distinguish the voice among many I want to hear.  The worst case is when someone is speaking to me beside a radio that's on quite loud; the radio voices are clearer than the real one.  I can't hear more than about 50% of modern TV dramas where the acting and sound recording are "naturalistic"; fortunately, I much prefer old films and TV shows anyway when  actors had excellent diction and audio was cleanly recorded, usually post-synched.

The aids are also designed to suppress the highly irritating tinnitus that accompanies my hearing loss; in fact, this is more important to me than boosting voices as I spend 95% of my time alone.  On the whole, I'm reasonably happy with them, but they are not much good for music, which is often rendered shrill by the treble emphasis.  I have become obsessed with adjusting the aids, both the volume control and the plastic tubes which cause abrasion in my exceptionally narrow ear canals that I consequently end up scratching in my sleep, causing ear infections (as mentioned by "Just some guy").  Another problem is that the tubes clog up with wax and have to be regularly cleaned, needing full replacement after about a month (batteries need replacing almost weekly).  According to various specialists I've met, hearing aids with tubes also increase the amount of wax pushed into the ears, so mine need cleaning (by micro-suction rather than syringing) at least once a year.  

I'd be interested to know of experiences with other types of aids that overcome or mitigate some of these problems.

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My daughter has a rare reverse slope neurological hearing loss ,yes they can be programmed but it is very limited ,yes there are different types but it is mainly cosmetic.

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Thank you -that's helpful and I think confirms what I thought; potentially some benefit but nothing miraculous.

Modern hearing aids are programmable, which allows a couple of different things:

- they can be programmed to boost the specific frequencies in which someone has hearing loss, rather than just boosting all noise

- they can be programmed to boost frequencies associated with speech rather than ancillary noises

- they can be actually be programmed to boost a dominant voice above other voices, and/or a voice coming from the direction a person is facing

All of this is rather good and very useful for anybody with hearing loss.

However: My experience is that they still struggle with helping to pick out one voice over another, and to pick out voices over background noise (especially something like a pub).

(Mine also cause irritation to the inside of my ears causing fluid of some form to lubricate the ear canal, making the hearing aid itself slippery but also just being darned unpleasant)