Do you, like me, have a hearing aid?
My Name is Philip Housden and I am not only a Director at Just Ears Clinic, but I am a fellow hearing aid wearer. I’m not that old, but I am pretty deaf in one ear. That’s quite common in people my age – I know because I talk about it – and lots of the people I meet say it’s the same for them too.
Apparently I am in good company as around 40% of people over 50 in the UK have some form of hearing loss – and 2 million wear a hearing aid.
I recently went for a hearing test and took my hearing aid for a service. Guess what? The test wasn’t done because I had too much wax in my ear! That’s a waste of my time and money wasted – something I could have avoided if I had thought and planned ahead!
Ear Wax and Hearing Aids
Hearing aid wearers often report an increase in earwax when they begin to wear them. The hearing aids can stimulate the glands in the ear canal to produce more wax and block the normal movement of wax along the ear canal.
If you wear a hearing aid the build-up of ear wax can cause problems and this may have happened to you:
- Your hearing aid got damaged
- You had hearing aid feedback so it didn’t work as well
- And of course we’ve all experienced how ear wax reduces the effectiveness of the hearing aid by blocking sound
I have also learned that hearing aid manufacturers say that more than half of devices returned for repair have a problem that developed due to earwax. Over time, the acids in the earwax can degrade the components of our hearing aids.
So, if your earwax is not removed it will build up in your ear.
Ear Cleaning With Hearing Aids
But we hearing aid users face a dilemma when it comes to ear wax. Nobody should try to remove ear wax by themselves. If you ear isn’t cleaning itself out naturally, then don’t try to clean it out yourself! If you do you risk pushing the wax in more deeply, making it impacted.
But there is another option for hearing aid users and that is to make a trip to Just Ears so their healthcare professionals can check your ears for impacted earwax.
How Can Just Ears Help
To clear the wax, you’ll need to either use ear drops to soften it or have it removed via microsuction.
At Ears we have the very best microscopes so the highly trained staff see your wax clearly in 3D precision, which makes their clinics the safest place for your ears to be checked and cleaned.
Just Ears have now seen more than 20,000 patients over the past 5 years and are the only ear wax removal service in the south of England to be registered with the Care Quality Commission – that’s the ‘watchdog’ for healthcare.
To avoid a wasted journey when you are due to get your hearing tested or your hearing aid serviced and you think your ears may have excess wax – why not book an appointment with Just Ears first?!
Philip Housden BA MBA
Philip is a director of Just Ears Clinic