Cooler weather is rolling in, and with it comes wind. Getting outside is great for physical and mental health, but windy weather can be complicated for hearing aid users. If you’re a hearing aid user, you’re probably familiar with wind noise.
What Is Wind Noise?
When the air hits your hearing aid, the airflow is obstructed and redirected. Picture a rock in the middle of a fast-moving river: when the water hits the rock, it swirls and makes eddies and small whirlpools. Your ears and your hearing aids are just like that rock. The turbulence in the airflow around your ear makes that uncomfortable and annoying wind noise.
Wind noise occurs whenever wind hits a device with a microphone. It can occur in any environment with fast-moving air, such as windy weather, cycling or driving with the car window rolled down. This creates a loud, constant whoosh in the microphone, which can drown out all other sounds, much to the chagrin of hearing aid users.
How Does Wind Noise Affect Hearing Aid Function?
Wind noise is loud and annoying, but more importantly, it can reduce the clarity of or even completely obscure speech and other important sounds around you. This can cause disorientation and difficulty following conversations.
Wind also brings other hazards besides noise. There are concerns about the wind blowing dust or debris into the delicate components of your hearing aids. If you’re tempted to take your hearing aids out to avoid wind noise, you risk dropping and losing or damaging them, and you decrease your ability to hear, once again causing difficulty and disorientation.
Does Wind Affect Some Hearing Aids More Than Others?
Behind-the-ear (BTE) and receiver-in-canal (RIC) hearing aids are particularly susceptible to wind noise because the hearing aid microphone sits behind your ear, exposed to the full force of the wind.
In-the-ear (ITE) and completely-in-the-canal (CIC) hearing aids will also struggle with wind noise, but your head and ear can act as windbreaks, decreasing the effect.
How Can I Alleviate Wind Noise?
One way to alleviate wind noise is to remove your hearing aids, but we do not recommend this. As mentioned above, doing this puts you at risk of losing your hearing aids and decreases your situational awareness by dampening your ability to hear at all.
The quickest fix to wind noise is to block the wind. Wear a hat, scarf or cap that covers your ears, preventing the whooshing air from creating turbulence next to your ear. There are also hearing aid wind guards and socks. Measures like these will also decrease the likelihood of dust blowing into your hearing aids.
Modern hearing aids have special features that can help with wind noise. Directional microphones are one such feature. These microphones focus only on sounds that come from in front of you. You can also use wind noise listening programs that specialize in detecting and minimizing wind noise.
If you are struggling with wind noise as the weather cools down and want to discuss wind noise programs or a different hearing aid style that is more conducive to wind noise, contact Bangor Audiology today. We can set up an appointment or answer any questions you have.