Hearing aids, as with lots of other devices, are getting smarter, less conspicuous and more stylish every day, and just in time. The average American is older, reports The Us Census Department, as the population as a whole ages, and hearing loss is, unfortunately, extremely common, particularly in older adults. Roughly 37.5 million American adults and rising say they have some degree of hearing loss.
The good news is hearing technology has had some thrilling breakthroughs recently that will offer more possibilities for dealing with loss of hearing. A few of the inventions now available are presented here.
Hearing Aids That Track Your General Health
Hearing aids are as good if not better than a fitness tracker at keeping track of many vital signs. Not only can it track step count, how many calories were burned, the total number of steps you took and heart rate, it also monitors the time in between heartbeats to help find any cardiovascular concerns. They’re also working on technology that can assess other key vital signs including blood pressure and oxygenation of the blood. There are other possible benefits that come with hearing aids, including the ability to help drown out tinnitus and will help your overall hearing so that your social life will improve as well. Actually, social interaction is another metric we should look at because it has been linked to your overall health. With these new hearing aids, you won’t even need a fitness device or smartwatch because the hearing aids can sync to your smartphone so you can listen to your tunes.
Smarter and Easier Streaming
As we get addicted to virtual assistants including Alexa and Siri, being connected and able to communicate with them is becoming more important. Even if talking to these assistants is not your thing, hearing aids with Bluetooth offer key advantages including streaming music directly from a smart device like your phone or even streaming directly from your smart TV. Consider the benefits of this: You can avoid getting yelled at for having the Volume too loud while watching this year’s Super Bowl in a room full of loud friends. The ability to directly stream phone calls, music, shows and more right to your ears not only helps you hear and appreciate them more, but it will help you regulate your hearing loss inconspicuously.
Automatic Adjustments
Have you noticed that you get ads from Goodreads and they seem to already know what kind of books you like to read? Or how Amazon somehow know which items to suggest? This is the power of artificial intelligence and big data. Modern hearing aids harness this type of intelligence and use it to make adjustments according to your past reactions. As an example, if you lowered the volume the last time you visited the train station, your hearing aid will remember that and turn itself down the next time you go into the train station. They are extending this technology to include crowdsourcing also, allowing information from other people to inform your hearing aids that you’re entering a loud zone. Over time you can adjust quickly to variations in the hearing environment because your hearing aid will make suggestions based on all the information it has collected.
What? No More Tiny 312 Batteries?
Why would you want to constantly struggle with hearing aid batteries? You can now get rechargeable hearing aids. While you can do a lot to help increase the life of your hearing aids’ batteries, let’s be honest…it’s still costly and annoying. Even better, they are working on technology that will recharge hearing aids without even needing to take them out of your ears.