Hearing aids, as with lots of other devices, are getting smarter, more inconspicuous and more stylish every day, and just in time. The U.S. census documents that the average American is older as the population as a whole ages, and loss of hearing is, sadly, very common, especially in older adults. About 37.5 million adults in America and rising say they have some amount of hearing loss.
Luckily more possibilities for treating loss of hearing are available due to exciting breakthroughs in recent hearing technology. Some of the developments coming our way are presented here.
Hearing Aids That Track Your General Health
Did you know that hearing aids can keep track of some important vital signs as well or better than a fitness tracker? Not only can it track step count, how many calories were burned, the total number of steps you took and heart rate, it also checks the time in between heartbeats to help detect any cardiovascular worries. They’re also developing technology that can evaluate other significant vital signs including blood pressure and oxygenation of the blood. There are other potential benefits that come with hearing aids, including the ability to help drown out tinnitus and will enhance your social life by bettering your general hearing. Actually, social interaction is another metric we should pay attention to because it has been connected 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 music.
Smarter and Easier Streaming
Staying connected to your virtual assistants like Siri or Alexa is getting to be more important as people get more attached to these features. Even if you defy the enticement of talking directly to these assistants, hearing aids that have Bluetooth provide key features including streaming music directly from a smart device like your phone or even streaming directly from your smart TV. Imagine the benefits of this: You can steer clear of getting yelled at for having the Volume too loud while watching this year’s Super Bowl in a room full of screaming friends. Being able to directly stream music, phone calls, shows and more right to your ears not only helps you hear and appreciate them more, but it will help you manage 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 enjoy reading? Or how all your favorite kinds of things get promoted to you by Amazon? That’s because big data and artificial intelligence are very powerful. Modern hearing aids harness this type of intelligence and use it to make changes according to how you reacted in the past. It will remember that you turn the volume down when you go into the train station and do that automatically the next time it detects you’ve entered the station (or any other circumstance with to much background noise). They are expanding this technology to include crowdsourcing also, allowing information from other users to inform your hearing aids that you’re approaching 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 Little 312 Batteries?
Who wants to continuously 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, truth be told…it’s still costly and aggravating. Better yet, they are working on technology to recharge hearing aids without even needing to take them out.