In regards to DIY. . . There’s a way in which it’s a bit like physiotherapy after injury. Some people can do it themselves and get full function back, whereas others would not. If one has been living with a hearing loss for a long time, how one “likes” to hear is not always ideal. I don’t “like” to lift heavy weights, but without doing it I will stay weak. I typically think skipping straight to DIY can be a bad idea for new users, whereas experienced, adapted users who have already BEEN in well fitted heading aids will do better.
It also IS possible to damage your hearing with hearing aids, even modern wdrc hearing aids, which is why prescription is a protected act. It’s unlikely if one is happy walking about underfit, but if someone was pushing to optimize audibility then they need to take some thought on what the limits are.
Agreed @d_Wooluf, copying your original settings & saving them, is perhaps mandatory for the “DIY’er”, any mistakes are easily rectified by reverting back to your original saved settings, it couldn’t be simpler… Cheers Kev
Something else is when you get programming figured out you can buy used aids off the net saving huge money. This is what I did from the get go.
Just remember the software flows to program aids.
If you do buy from Costco the aids will be programmed with REM. They just might be fine but it’s always nice to be able to look at how they are programmed.
Genuine question. For the person who’s been in hearing aids for a while, whose aids have been competently fitted and who dabbles in doing their own tweaking, wouldn’t they be much more likely to selectively adjust gain downwards rather than up?
Yeah well the thing is there’s not one shred of fact based evidence that anyone who’s ever programmed their own HAs has done this, it’s all hearsay evidence, always “noted” by the industry as a fact, but there’s plenty of evidence from right here on hearingtracker how successful DIY can be, I’ve yet to see a single post stating they damaged their hearing from a DIY project, of course it’s completely possible to do by someone… somewhere… I put this in the same bucket as “hearing aids only last 5 years or less” etc nothing at all to be concerned about.
No, some wearers are sound junkies. Unlike being addicted to calorific food or something else, you get no immediate evidence of the damage you are doing. Long term you do further damage to your hearing, get more recruitment and potentially permanently increase the decline in your retro-cochlear function.
And some of us are worried about the A.uD’s setting’s Stephen, when a warning on Target flags up, you are exceeding 132db MPO, and every time I ask my A.uD, she says it’s fine…Mind you, there isn’t much left too damage on the left, but it still disturbs me! Cheers Kev
On the same general theme then, and hopefully keeping things civil…
We all have buttons on our aids that change the volume up or down. And to me the aids at top volume always sound pretty damn loud. So, a risk to our hearing or not? And if the answer is yes, are we just supposed to use common sense?
Yeah, that’s an interesting question, cause, apparently, each volume tap on Phonak hearing aids increases the volume by 2 db (some even say 3!), so you get +/- 10db out of volume adustments. Which is a lot!
This is a point that says so much.
If a person follows the Target software for example, there really isn’t any way to damage your hearing. Target is throwing up warnings to help save your hearing.
I personally pushed gains to improve speech. I was told most DIY fittings are under fit. Doing this I did see warnings at times from target so adjustments were made to clear these warnings
MPO is one of those settings I never changed to protect the hearing that was left.
Regardless of what aids you get, they truly are useless if they are not properly fitted to your hearing loss and your needs. This takes time and effort. I have been wearing aids for 20 years the first 15 years my aids were fitted with very little effort on my audiologists or my part and the aids were barely useful. Then I moved was introduced to my present audiologist that didn’t worry about the time spend and through his help and my willingness to spend the needed time and efforts my aids were adjusted to my real needs. It took 15 appointments over an 18 month period of time. And I was given therapy to help me cope with the volume that I needed to truly understand speech. At times it was painful. But in the end it was well worth it.
Not quite. Target is throwing up warnings based on it’s best guess about how the hearing aids are behaving in your ear. But at this point hearing aids cannot measure that and because the size and shape of your ear canal and how it interacts with your acoustic coupling impacts dB SPL at the eardrum, target doesn’t know. I would agree that most first fits are under-fit. But not 95% most. Someone with mild to moderate loss is pretty unlikely to be getting into trouble, but the more severe the loss and reduced the dynamic range, the more chances go up that you might be entering into that danger zone.
Despite common beliefs on this board and even across clinics, MPO is not a safety limit. MPO is a loudness dicomfort limit. Damage is going to depend on the average daily dose, not on the MPO.
IMO no audiologist can properly set up hearing aids for all real world situations no matter how long they spend doing it because unless you A/B settings in real world situations it’s hard to tell if the changes are having a positive effect or not. They can get to a good starting point (especially if they spend time doing it) which will be ok for many people. But if you are a demanding client and really want to get the best out of your aids, you need to be able to DIY so that you can test changes yourself in the appropriate environment. For example, I am still trying various changes to get the optimum setting for listening to music while driving.
So IMO the best option is a good audi that really knows their stuff that spends time to understand your needs and builds a good starting point which you then optimise through DIY. I work with my audi so that when I go back for a regular visit we discuss what I have done and he can also check that I have not gone crazy… Even though I have spent many hours DIYing (and even found some things my audi did not know about) I still would not want to setup a pair of aids from scratch.
I get a hearing test every 6 months. My hearing has been stable now for 5 years. My aids are set for about 110% of my audiogram, just so I can understand speech. So many never have their aids set for more that 80-90% of their audiogram. Other might have 100% audiogram settings. So many just want comfort disregarding being able to truly understand speech.
Yeah, i understand but based on the fact that DIY might cause some damage if pushed too hard (it’s unlikely but can still happen), I wanted to know if there are common symptoms (like headache, nausea) related to overturning and exposure to excessive sound that can be an alarm…
