How to Charge and Clean Your Hearing Aids

When you have hearing loss, a hearing aid is essential. It can compensate for pitch, loudness and sound location loss. As a result, it is critical to your overall well-being and safety. As a result, you should take the greatest possible care of your equipment, as detailed below.

You depend on your hearing device and therefore need to look after it. Keeping it clean is a good start but making sure you don’t lose charge is just as important. However, there are right ways and wrong ways to go about these, and your hearing instrument specialist (HIS) can help.

Why Hearing Aid Maintenance is Important

Keeping your hearing aid clean and charged is essential to help it work better for longer. Like any electronic device, hearing aids are sensitive and can become broken if you don’t look after them. Some of the issues are beyond your control. But they can get dirty from things like sweat, hair and wax buildup.

Fortunately, you can easily clean your devices yet a dead hearing aid isn’t going to do you any good. And you could put yourself in danger without one. So, you need to keep them charged and clean if you want to get the best out of them.

Keeping Your Device Charged

There are many types of hearing aids, and they require rechargeable batteries or disposable:

• Rechargeable hearing aids: Rechargeable batteries offer the convenience of never running out as long as you keep them charged using the charging dock that comes with them. However, they require nightly charging.
• Battery-operated hearing aids: Disposable zinc-air batteries are commonly used in standard hearing aids. These begin to drain power once a factory seal is removed, and they provide consistent power until they die.

Whether you want rechargeable batteries or not is a personal preference since each type has pros and cons. Most people tend to choose based on their lifestyle and personally preferred convenience.

What You Need to be Aware Of

Standard zinc-air batteries don’t last long and can run out pretty quickly, depending on their size. Therefore, rechargeable hearing aids are becoming more popular with younger people. One of the reasons is that you charge them using a dock similar to modern devices like iPhones.

However, you need to be aware that you must charge your device every night to avoid it running out on you. However, the range of models that can accept these batteries is limited outside of behind-the-ear (BTE) devices, and you will need a HIS to replace the batteries every five years.

Reasons to Keep Your Hearing Aid Clean

Hearing aid maintenance, of course, extends to cleaning your devices as well as charging. Not looking after your device can cause many issues that can reduce the lifespan of the model, exacerbate health issues or break it entirely. Here are some reasons to keep your device clean:

• Bacteria can build up and cause infections.
• Your ears can have excess wax that causes an ill-fitting device.
• Debris can get inside the sensitive device and damage components.
• The overall effectiveness of your device will become compromised.
• Your quality of life depends on your device working correctly.

All of these can negatively impact the effectiveness of your hearing aids. However, you can get them cleaned by a hearing instrument specialist if you aren’t confident doing it yourself. Fortunately, however, it isn’t too much of a challenge to clean your hearing device unaided.

How to Clean Your Hearing Aids

Cleaning your hearing aids is pretty straightforward. But it’s slightly different for each model. You will also need some special tools such as a wax pick and a micro brush.

Cleaning In-the-Ear (ITE) and In-the-Canal (ITC) devices

Separate the components and clean gently using antibacterial wipes. Use a cleaning brush to remove dirt, wax and debris from the tiny openings. Leave to dry for one hour.

Cleaning BTE devices

Remove the earmold and the cable tube. Examine your BTE processor housing for visible dirt and gently clean with a clean and dry cloth. Use a micro brush to remove debris from the unit.

Cleaning earmolds

Once separated from the processor, you can clean your earmold. Place the mold and tube in warm soapy water and gently clean away dirt and debris. Ensure it’s fully dry before reattaching. Cleaning your hearing devices is easy and should be done often. However, it requires you to detach parts on some models. Your hearing instrument specialist can help if you need it.

Getting in Touch with The Center for Better Hearing

Keeping your hearing aids clean and charged is vital for continued and optimal use. Ensure you charge your device each night and clean it as often as possible. Center for Better Hearing is always here to guide and advise you. And our expert team can clean your devices if you feel you don’t have the capability. Please get in touch with us through our friendly support team by calling us today at 510-768-7091