Hearing Aids and Earwax

Hearing aids aren’t very fun at the best of times. When they constantly stop up with earwax they can be downright maddening! Take heart, this is a universal frustration and, for the most part, can’t be helped. Your ear produces wax as both a skin conditioner and as a defensive mechanism to prevent the intrusion (or expedite the removal) of foreign bodies. When you wear your hearing aids, the ear produces a little more wax than normal and the presence of the aid will often prevent the normal evacuation of the wax; it’s an earwax catch-22!

Take heart, most hearing aid manufacturers have developed some ingenious systems to prevent the earwax from ruining the delicate electronics. Most of these systems include a little filter that is placed on the tip of the hearing aid that sits in your ear. Your audiologist should provide you with as many of these filters as you need. Some of my patients change the filters as often as every couple of days and others never seem to need to change them. Either way, find a frequency that works for you and you will find yourself doing a lot less maintenance and a lot more hearing.