Just like when you have hip/knee surgery, you must do physical therapy to rehab that new joint and improve function. The same is true when treating hearing loss.
Purchasing and wearing the hearing aids aren’t enough to improve hearing, especially for severe losses or for those who want to hear in the most challenging environments. This is why rehabbing the ear-to-brain connection is so important.
Ear-to-Brain Connection Rehab
Read Out Loud
A great way to start out is reading out loud to yourself for 10-15 minutes a day. Once that gets boring, (usually this occurs around 1-2 weeks), I recommend graduating to audiobooks.
Audiobooks
Get the print copy of the book as well and follow along with the reader. This is excellent for your brain—hearing the speech sounds and connecting those sounds to what you see on the page helps improve the connection between sound and meaning within the auditory cortex.
Read to Someone Else
Or, if you have a roommate or spouse, both of you should have a copy of the book and take turns reading to each other! With either approach, make sure to practice with both a female reader and a male reader.
Have Someone Read to You
Once you master the audiobooks, you may move on to more challenging tasks, such as having someone read to you while the radio is on softly in the background. Keep turning up the radio to make it more challenging—or go to a coffee shop and try the same thing!
For some, streaming the audiobook to their hearing aids while in the coffee shop could also be a good activity. Be sure to ask your hearing healthcare provider about this to make sure your streaming settings are set correctly.
Computer Games
Computer games can also be helpful for the hearing impaired. One favorite I recommend is Angel Sounds. You must download it to your computer, and the website looks very babyish, but it is a very good program that yields results for those who struggle with speech comprehension.
100% Speech Comprehension
How much auditory training is necessary depends on the person’s hearing loss. For those with 100% speech comprehension (amplified condition), you may only need to do a few sessions of reading out loud to yourself to become acclimated to your hearing aids and hear well in all environments.
Less Than 80% Speech Comprehension
For others that have less than 80% speech comprehension, your outcomes will be poorer, and you will need to complete more training to hear well in challenging environments such as restaurants or parties.
If you find you are not making progress, reach out to your hearing healthcare professional. Have them perform verifications on your hearing aid settings, such as real ear measurement testing, to confirm that your hearing aids are appropriately working and correcting your hearing impairment.
If you are wearing hearing aids that are not fully treating your hearing loss, you are not going to hear as well as you should.
Contact Us
Please feel free to reach out to our office at 712-775-2625 for more information on how you can use these hearing rehabilitation tools and exercises to improve your speech comprehension!
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Videos
Watch my May 2025 video on the topic of improving your hearing through audiobooks and computer games.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel for additional information and helpful videos!
Read more:
- The Link Between Untreated Hearing Loss and Social Isolation
- The Impacts of Untreated Hearing Loss
- The Stigma of Hearing Loss
- Troubleshooting Tips for Dead Hearing Aids
