Well what a weird Saturday morning that was. I noticed some blocked ear behaviour in my right around midweek, which by Friday was pretty severe. I’ve had earwax removed a couple of times before, so booked myself into Harborne Specsavers yesterday. Did I know they could do a free NHS hearing test? Did I want one? Well of course I’ve reached that part of life when any kind of testing is a tasty offer. Of course I would.
We’ll pass over the earwax removal, with objects that belonged in a David Cronenberg movie coming out of my ears. But it absolutely did the trick and agreed that having it done annually was probably for the best. The hearing test was very thorough – sat in an isolation booth and pressing a buzzer when a variety of very faint tones came out of left and right, with a conductive part.
We looked at the charts on the guy’s laptop and it starts well on the left and trails away as it goes across, more marked on the right than left. It appearsI have classic age-related hearing loss in the treble with a touch of mid loss in the right as well. Mids and bass are compensating for the treble loss.
So he can fit me some hearing aids right now, I would definitely benefit from them. They’re free on the NHS. I have to say I was a bit stunned. I have for many decades known that glasses are on the horizon, with one short-sighted and one long eye compensating for each other, but to go thinking a bit of wax unblocking will absolutely restore those transients, to having aids fitted in twenty minutes was a bit of a blow. RIP my view of my hearing as absolutely fine.
I did think of turning them down, but checked myself. That was dad’s view, absolutely refusing to bow to anything that would make life a bit better (a hip replacement, a stairlift, home helps). So I wore my brand new danalogic ambio 77’s out of there and suddenly I was a man with hearing aids. Some adjustment required.
So a few questions for those already rocking these little pink beauties – or similar – in the comments, along with some more considered thoughts.
So a few questions for those already rocking these little pink beauties – or similar – in the comments, along with some more considered thoughts.
Questions:
I clearly should wear them all the time, apart from sport, showers, sleeping. Where I’m at psychologically is that I’ll wear them around the house but at work and going out – given the fact that nothing about being out and about and at work suggested I had anything wrong with my ears – I’m not quite ready. Maybe the cinema or theatre.
What about headphones? The audiologist said that overears like my beloved Sony XM5’s would interfere with the aids, so am I better off taking the headphones off, or playing through these new audio interlopers.
In convos with my optician she was very clear that once I started wearing glasses my eyes would adjust within a few months and going back would then be a difficult option. Will something similar with my ears – having got used to all this treble help will they come to rely on it?
For those with Danalogic models what does the app do? Can see the use in adjusting volume without reaching behind your ear but anything else? Again, can see the phone call integration helpful for those with less hearing left.
Any other top tips now I’m the world of my very own in-ears, almost like Michael Stipe .
Had I come out of the opticians with glasses I don’t think it would have hit so hard. The world is full of teenagers wearing them. There have been been ridiculous crazes for wearing them with clear glass. Whereas teenagers with hearing aids is a vanishing small minority. Almost as surely as posting on here, hearing aids are an age marker. The only fashion icon who has ever affected one is of course Morrissey, not exactly a ringing endorsement of chic anymore.
We had some friends round yesterday evening (didn’t wear them) but did discuss. His view was that if all that’s wearing away in our sixties is the sharp edges of our eyes and ears we’re doing OK. And of course writing this is a form of therapy, as are all your comments and thoughts, part of my eight little things that get me through the day.
If my eyes are anything to go by (I’m moderately long-sighted in one eye) I can go without specs for about an hour in the morning. Then I start to go boggle-eyed. Once I put on my VDU specs, I need them on for reading, or for screen use, for the rest of the day.
The following morning, I’m back to 20/20, for a while at least.
My prescription has barely changed for about 20 years.
Was there a noticeable difference after the wax removal, because that’s something I have been considering trying at Specsavers.
There’s a complete difference – it is remarkable, halfway through the sound of the vacuum they use doubled in volume and everything sounds sharper.
It is recommended you fill your ears daily with olive oil ( eg earol at boots) to soften the wax for 5 days before the appointment.
Be prepared for gross items to be extracted..
It’s a problem that I have from time and removing it makes a huge difference. You have to put olive oil in the ear twice a day for at least a week to soften it for removal. I did discover when housebound during Covid that after 3 weeks it removes itself, which will save you £60.
Yes having your ears cleaned does make a difference assuming there is a build up of wax in the ear(s). It should be made clear that you need to use medical grade olive oil drops in your ears prior to having the ear(s) cleaned and not the olive oil you’ll have in your kitchen cupboard!
The only olive oil I recall growing up was the small bottle of olive oil b.p. in the bathroom cabinet for putting in the ears.
Certainly none in the kitchen.
We had a bottle of that too. I can’t remember it ever being opened. It just took up space in the bathroom cabinet for about thirty years.
Olive oil ot of the cupboard worked fine for me
I’ve been told by a couple of audiologists that domestic olive oil is fine.
I was told by my GP’s practice nurse the opposite.
Paradoxically, I suspect that the purer first pressings are less effective, as they carry more debris. The cheaper filtered blends are probably fine.
This ⬆️
I guess if you buy olive oil from a chemist then it will be pure olive oil. There are brands readily available in supermarkets which are blends, but they don’t tell you that. The nurse’s advice was sensible.
In Nurse Mwambingu I trust. I use Earol.
I’ve just bought some sodium bicarbonate ear drops, gives you that warm fizzy feeling.
I’ve been using the sodium bicarbonate drops and a silicon screw thread tool to remove the wax, the audiologist couldn’t complete the tests as my left ear was thick with wax.
Just removed a rather large build up of wax in both ears though I’d not reached Father Jack territory it was a goodly (if not bigly) amount.
Like anything you buy in the supermarket, you look at the ingredients list.
Blended olive oil must, by law, be labelled as such, somewhere on the packaging.
I have a nearly full bottle of Olive Oil B.P. 1973 (bought from Boots long ago by my late mum) in my bathroom cabinet.
Use by 09/2009, it says on the edge of the label…
Probably a significant percentage of oxidation products in there after this length of time – so maybe no longer strictly pure…
Yes. Probably only fit for skin softening use now.
I can’t help with your questions but I am on the same path. I had my ears de-waxed last week for the third time in my life. I’m booked in at my local opticians for a full hearing test on Wednesday morning. Obviously at the age of seventy I’m fully expecting to find that my hearing is compromised. It will be interesting to find out how badly and in what way. As for hearing aids I’ll cross that bridge as and when but it will be via the auspices of the NHS not privately.
The aids I were given were NHS – free to me, batteries free (not clear whether they become a prescription) etc. But if you lose you have to pay to replace.
There is a little bit of me that says unless your graph demonstrates ideal form, the answer will be a hearing aid, as I am guessing the NHS pay Specsavers per test/aids dispensed. And a bit like statins why not?
I’ve had to cancel my hearing test due to stupidly breaking the little toe on my right foot on Saturday morning. After months of being laid up recovering from a THR I’m now laid up AGAIN!
Hope you’re up and about soon.
Condolences to you and your toe.
Thanks both. I’m assuming it’s fractured because I’m a pessimist, it may be just very traumatised. I can’t get to my GP as that would involve walking and buses and the nearest A&E is twenty miles away. It’s badly bruised and more painful today than it has been for the previous two days. I can move it and walk on it albeit painfully and it’s not bent out of shape or badly swelled up. I caught it on a speaker stand as I walked past it on Saturday morning barefooted so it’s my own stupid fault.
To be frank, there isn’t a great deal you can do about a broken toe even if your suspicions are confirmed except give it time to heal. My commiserations though, I know from experience how sore they can be.
I know. I’ve been elevating my leg and putting an ice pack on my foot intermittently along with taking paracetamol and gently rubbing ibuprofen gel onto the sore bit. It’s painful when I flex my toes apart from that and the bruising it’s fine.
What Gatz said. And treatment is the same whether bust or bruised, ice and elevation.
The perils of being a Hi-Fi buff. Get well soon!
Diolch Dai. I must admit that very thought has crossed my mind.
I’ve whacked my little toe a few times on furniture at home. Always the left one, for some reason. Not as badly as you seem to have done, though the last incident left it sore and swollen for the best part of a week. As Gatz says, all you can do with a broken or bruised toe is wait for it to sort itself out. Too many fiddly little bones down there for doctors to do anything with them.
Ibuprofen gel works.
I need to get my eyes tested fairly soon, as I’ll need to renew my driving license soon and I’ll need an eye test certificate when I do that. New UK rules.
I haven’t had an eye test or a change of my spectacles for quite a few years. Might as well get my ears done too, I’m thinking.
Oh no! Sorry to hear that P.
Thanks @Twang it’s still sore and bruised but I think it’s very slowly healing.
I’ve had aids for over 10 years, first in just my right ear and then in both. I thought it was ear wax to begin, but tests plus the emergence of tinnitus and more tests said otherwise.
My dad was prescribed aids and mostly never wore them. The TV had to be at a volume that parted your hair, he rarely heard anything said to him, and mostly missed out on anything going on around him unless told directly, face to face and at volume. I decided not to become that guy, so wore my aid(s) from the day I got it for just about every waking hour.
Initially the improvement was marked, but it wore off a bit over time. Not the fault of the aids, just aging really. II wasn’t bothered about being seen wearing them – I was fed up with not catching what was being said, or shut out of conversations in pubs, restaurants etc.
Initially I took them out to use headphones but because was loss was unilateral (at first) it sounded lop sided and I discovered I could mostly leave them in. After around 10 years of NHS aids I decided to go private and got higher spec aids that adjust on the fly, and blue tooth to the tv, my phone, laptop etc. That’s been a big help albeit the sound quality is thin. For podcasts it’s ideal.
Occasionally I leave them out – if I’m heading out for a swim, on flights, first thing in the morning, but increasingly my hearing improves so much when I plug them in that I don’t benefit from waiting. Once in I barely know they are there.
I’m tested every 18 months or so, and the settings are revised to tackle wheat ever the results show. I’m losing top end in both ears but it’s going faster than normal for age on the right. The aids can also be tweaked for certain types or words or sounds, as conversation can still be patchy in busy places.
I’d rather I didn’t need them, but the alternative would much worse. I was all in from day 1, but I appreciate not everyone might want to do that.
I definitely have some hearing loss but haven’t been tested yet and I’m not sure it’s bad enough to need aids. My wife has had poor hearing ever since I’ve known her and has had aids in both ears for over 10 years. They are Opticon, via the NHS. She doesn’t find them that good in pubs or similar environments and doesn’t really bother with the app much. However, we do intend that our next tv will be able to give sound to the room as well as her aids via Bluetooth so that’s something you may want to consider in the future. If she’s watching something on her iPad she still uses over ears headphones although I shudder to think how loud they are.
@fentonsteve can you weigh in pls on the hearing aids/over ear headphones – the audiologist said there would be ‘interference’
My understanding of how hearing aids work is that they boost the missing treble and apply some dynamic range compression and/or limiting to boost quieter sounds without making louder sounds painful.
I can’t think why over-ear cans would “interfere” with the aids, but most of us listen to music on headphones at louder than background level. So they might trigger the dynamic range limiting function.
It might seem counter-intuitive, but try wearing the aids, wearing he over-ear headphones over the top, then turning the volume *down* to let the aids do their stuff without making everything sound like Death Magnetic.
The alternative approach would be to get hold of a multi-band graphic equaliser. If you have the frequency plot of your ears, apply that in reverse to compensate for the HF loss.
EQ units work on Line-Level signals, and headphones need a low-impedance amplifier. So the signal chain would be source – pre-amplifier output – EQ – headphone amp. Or, if your amplifier has a tape monitor loop, you could put the EQ in that, listen to the EQ’d tape loop, and use the amp’s in-built headphone amp.
I would not listen to speakers through lots of EQ HF boost, as tweeters are quite delicate things and could easily burn out with all the required extra treble energy.
Offspring the Elder wears aids because she’s completely deaf in one ear. A mic in the aid in her deaf ear transmits by BlueTooth to the aid in her working ear, so she is able to hear sounds coming from both sides. She finds them more trouble than they’re worth in noisy environments, eg when in town (e.g. traffic noise gets boosted).
My wife’s aids squeal if covered, rather like a lapel mic would if you cup your hand over it in an attempt to not be heard. I assume that this creates feedback as the aids have both a mic and a tiny speaker.. On the ear cans would presumably have the same effect.
Feedback was common if I put over ear phones on with the aids – as you say, mic and speaker start to loop. It doesn’t happen on my new ones – out and about today the right hand one which does more heavy lifting hummed a bit but didn’t manage the full Hendrix. I think this is because they have some kind of anti feedback technology.
I put this on a couple of weeks ago on June’s hearing aid post from 2023 so I’ll repost it here.
Took delivery of my new hearing aids on Friday, moulded to my lugholes they fit perfectly. I’ve had the weekend to try them out and bluetoothing them to my tablet means I can control the volume much easier. I tried them out at a woodwind concert yesterday muting them and unmuting them. On mute the flute was all but inaudible
Unlike my previous ones I can keep them in all day and forget I’ve got them in. I’d only used my previous ones at concerts or the cinema but I was told I needed to keep them in all the time (obviously taking them out at night and for showering etc) to train the brain to adapt to the sound from them.
Very happy and thank you NHS.
I was given a bag with 6 months supply of batteries and a card to take to the doctor’s saying I could get more bags when needed. Different trusts have different ways of dealing with getting batteries etc.
I never asked about using headphones but I have to have yet more wax removed from the ears as the audiologist was unable to complete the tests after fitting because of the build up (hopefully not of Father Jack proportions).
Not free but for about £200 you can buy the latest iPod air pro 3’s.
They have hearing aid assistance.
You can take a hearing test through the iOS app and easily make adjustments to suit your hearing requirements. They produce excellent results.
Oh, I forgot.
The earbuds also play music would you believe. Their sound quality is fantastic.
But don’t people see you and think “He’s listening to music and not me?”
https://www.theguardian.com/thefilter-us/2025/oct/31/airpods-pro-3-hearing-aids?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
The biggest disappointment I had with my new aids was the piss poor quality of music. Not least after trying a make endorsed by Steve Lukather as the “musicians choice”.
The bloke who fitted me out with my aids said ear buds have much bigger “speakers” which delivery more fidelity, but aren’t designed to be worn all day, and are far more obvious. And whilst he would say this, he also reckons the software carried by aids is far more sophisticated than anything offered by Apple. Which was sort of evident when he tweaked mine based on words I found I could hear less well than others. Pity he couldn’t get any bass into “My Woman From Tokyo”.
As I’ve said on here before, I lost around eighty percent of the hearing in my right ear following a very painful ear infection back in 2003. Following that, I experimented with a hearing aid but had mixed results. The original basic NHS one was alright I suppose but it always felt very bulky behind the ear, especially as I also wear glasses. I tried a private, completely “in ear” one, which sounded tinny and like a cheap old transister radio, so that wasn’t a brilliant experience either. The biggest problem though has always been the amplification of background noise, which quite frankly is tiring and tiresome. After about 3 or 4 years of trying to get used to it I just gave up, instead trying to be much more mindful of where I sit myself in order to try and use my left side more. I used to love pubs and restaurants but try to avoid them now, unless its with immediate family who are all very accommodating. I am fed up with being in this situation and having to depend on the kindness of others so am trying again with the NHS route, and will persevere a bit more this time. I’ve had the full audiology test and am going back for a fitting in a couple of weeks. My local hospital’s Audiology department are completely hopeless though, and have cancelled three appointments in a row, meaning I have been waiting for this fitting since February when my original appointment was. I’m now strongly tempted to ask for my audiology test results and just go to Specsavers!
My sister who is eleven years my senior, a fact I never tire of reminding her about has a pair that cost her north of £3,000. It’s safe to say that she is far from impressed with them saying that the most useful thing about them is being able to surreptitiously turn them off whenever my BiL is waffling on annoyingly a situation that is so common they must be in absolutely pristine condition.
My mum who was hard of hearing from middle age and pretty deaf without aids by her sixties often had selective deafness where my dad was concerned…
I ‘eard that! Pardon?
Well update this evening is I have spent 15 mins with aids in/aids out while listening to Spotify lossless through my XM5’s focusing on trebles.
In the intro to Unfinished Symphony there is glockenspiel type tick-tick rhythm behind the main elements and I could hear equally well with and without.
In the intro to Happiness Is Easy I could hear all the drum elements equally well that start it, and perhaps – and perhaps – the trebly bit of the piano sustain is brighter with aids in.
But it’s all really marginal.
Whereas the telly commentary of Brazil/Japan, the commentators sound a lot more trebly. Can here it perfectly well, but the treble range in the voice definitely comes through with the aids in.
Which I think shows that NHS hearing aids are made to make voices clearer over background noise, as that is what most people want and need. Optimising your hifi treble transients is clearly a lesser priority.
Well, at least you didn’t hear howling feedback!
I think it goes to show that your hearing loss is fairly marginal. I used to be able to tell if a CRT telly was on by the 15.6kHz scan whistle, I’m not sure I would nowadays. Now my TV is an OLED.
On ghost sounds. My first proper job in the late eighties took me somewhere where for several weeks I was convinced that there was a train tunnel under the building. There was this faint distant noise that sounded exactly like train whistles. One afternoon i walked into a room where this noise was, to see it was this piece of newfangled technology called a fax machine.
That “scan whistle” from the old tellies – that’s essentially where my tinnitus is pitched.
Which begs the question, if your tinnitus was, say, 30kHz, would you hear it?
Well, if a tree falls in the woods…(cont’d pg 94)