North Dakota Assistive

ND Assistive | Assistive Technology Blog

Simple Trick Extends Hearing Aid Battery Life

Hearing Aids with batteriesIPAT works with many people who experience hearing loss, and as a result wear hearing aids.

As a hearing aid wearer myself, I am familiar with the need to frequently change batteries and the corresponding cost. When information about an 8th grader’s discovery to extend the life of hearing aid batteries was shared with IPAT, I decided to put the discovery to the test.

The discovery was the result of a study done by Ethan Manuell, of Rochester, Minnesota. He looked into the effect wait time has on the life of hearing aid batteries. For those not familiar with wearing hearing aids, wait time is the time between removing the sticker on the battery and placing the battery in the hearing aid. He found that waiting 5 minutes between removing the sticker and placing the battery in the hearing aid improved the battery life up to 80%.

I have put his five-minute-rule to the test for over a month, and discovered I too extended the life of my batteries! I use between 8 and 10 batteries per month, so when I can get an extra day or two from each, that five-minute wait represents a significant cost savings over the period of a year. So if you wear hearing aids, or know someone that does, pass on this little trick and save them some cash.




Further Reading

Is Your Cell Phone Hearing-aid Compatible?

Land-lines are going the way of the dinosaur, and as the number of people with hearing loss grows, so does the need for cell phones to be hearing-aid compatible (HAC). The Federal Communications Commission...

Is That a Banana In Your Ear? Understanding Hearing Loss

Hearing loss is not the same for everybody. For individuals with any degree of hearing loss, it can be very difficult trying to explain their loss. Some find that their friends and family with “normal”...

Hearing Aid Collecting Dust? Put it to Use!

IPAT often fields calls from individuals looking for a place to donate used hearing aids. This blog provides a non-exhaustive list of organizations that recycle used hearing aids in North Dakota. HERO...

Having some hearing loss?

Assistive listening devices can  help those of you with hearing loss to hear better in situations where there is a lot of background noise, like at work, at school, or at home. They capture and process...

Comments are closed.