Direct To Consumer Hearing Aids
September 22, 2021

Purchasing hearing aids without working with an audiologist—the hearing health care professional with the most education and training to treat hearing loss—has become increasingly more main­stream. Consumers can find a variety of items billed as hearing aids through direct-to-consumer (DTC) methods. They might be marketed to consumers through television, print and digital advertising as well as found by way of internet searches and at your local pharmacy or electronic store.

 

These devices are then mailed directly to a person’s home or sold over-the-counter. While this may seem convenient, is buy­ing through these sources the best option? The answer is no. Here’s why.

 

Don’t be lured in by the “lower prices” promise

These sources often advertise hearing aids for a price lower than what you would spend when working through an audiologist. However, the amount you actually pay the DTC entity will likely be much higher than advertised. Most companies that deal in mailed devices charge additional or hidden fees for supplies, programming services, programming equipment, repairs and/or warranties. These addi­tional services are essen­tial for being successful with hearing aids and are typically included in the cost of a hearing aid purchased from your local audiologist.

 

An accurate diagnostic test of your hearing loss is imperative for hearing aid success
 Some DTC companies advertise “pre-set” devic­es and will “program” those devices without first obtaining a comprehensive hearing test by a licensed audiologist, instead having you take a hearing test online. Online hear­ing screenings cannot accurately diagnose hear­ing loss type or severity; they can only determine if a possible hearing loss is present. Your hearing loss is unique and cannot be completely generalized into a category of severity, as many DTC companies suggest.

 

Are they selling you an amplifier or a hearing aid?

If a DTC company attempts to classify your hearing loss based on your answers to a few questions or uses only one response from a hearing test to determine which hearing aid you need, you may actually be purchasing an amplifi­er that is being marketed as a hearing aid. Hearing aids are class II medical devices and MUST be pro­grammed specifically for you based on the results obtained during your comprehensive hear­ing evaluation. This is required for a precise and optimized fitting. If devic­es are not programmed in this manner, they will not provide benefit in difficult listening environments and overall sound quality will suffer. Obtaining a cur­rent hearing test prior to pursuing amplification is crucial to determining an appropriate treatment plan as well as a major factor in determining a person’s success with hearing aids. A new category of hearing devices that entered the market in 2022 is an “over-the-counter” hearing device. Learn more about the background and current status of this new categorization.

 

In-person appointments with your audiologist are a key to hearing aid success

DTC companies often boast that their devices will be sent directly to you. Keep in mind that means you are on your own when it comes to figuring out your new hearing aids. Having your audiologist as a trusted profession­al who will walk you through the process of hearing aid use, care, and cleaning and having someone to turn to as you adjust to your new hearing aids is vital.

 

Imagine this scenario: You are having diffi­culty communicating with your loved ones, or you are feeling isolated from your friends. You find what you think is a solution through DTC, order the hearing aids or an amplifier, and get excited that you will finally be able to hear better! The devices arrive and you pull them out of the box, but you quickly find that you don’t know how to insert them, don’t know how to change the batteries or seat them in a charging station, don’t know what all the parts do, and find that they just don’t sound right. Then, while trying to figure out how everything works, you drop one of your hearing aids and it breaks! You quick­ly become frustrated and have no idea what to do. You call the online com­pany where you purchased the hearing aids, but you are put on hold. You want to talk to a person face-to-face, so you stop by your local audiologist’s office for help. You find out that only very minor repairs can be made, because your brand of hearing aid is considered a proprietary device (belonging only to the online retailer you purchased from). Since it is a proprietary device, the hearing aids can’t be adjusted or programmed in this office, even though you have already identi­fied numerous situations where they are not helping you communicate. You are told that you will need to send the hearing aids back to the DTC company for programming adjustments, which does not allow for real time feedback from the you when the adjustment is made. You may even be required to send your hearing aids in multiple times before your concern is addressed. Unfortunate­ly, each time you return the hearing aids to the company, you will likely be required to pay for ship­ping and will be without sound until your hearing aids are returned. The investment of time and money is ultimately much higher than you anticipated when you purchased these devices based on low price and the “convenience” of having them mailed to your home. This is just one example experienced by a person who came to Johnson Audiology for help, after purchasing a set of proprietary hearing aids online.


Beware of well-known hearing aid brands you find online

Occasionally, online consumers are able to find a hearing aid from one of the ”Big 6” hearing aid manufacturers (Oticon, Phonak, Resound, Siemens, Starkey, and Widex) that are supposedly dispensed by an audiol­ogists; however, purchase of these devices online can be very costly and is not recommended. The major manufacturers do not authorize the sale of their products online and are warning consumers not to purchase hearing aids in this manner. Many manu­facturers will void the war­ranties of any devices pur­chased online, ultimately adding additional costs to the consumer’s perceived “low price.” Some manu­facturers are even recalling hearing aids sold by these online companies and have requested that the hearing aids be returned once located.


Scheduling an appoint­ment with and investing in hearing aid technolo­gy through an audiologist ensures that you are well-informed regarding your hearing health care, that your treatment plan is tai­lored specifically to you, that you are offered the latest technology, and that you have a trusted hearing professional close to home who is support­ing you every step of the way. Plus, any poten­tial medical components to your hearing loss will be recognized by your audiologist and a treatment plan mapped. Your ears and sense of hearing are important. Don’t trust this vital area of your health to DTC companies that are retail-driven entities rather than health care professionals who really care about your hearing.

Untreated hearing loss is changing your brain

By Jan Hollingsworth • May 16, 2024
Research reveals that hearing loss actually rewires your neural pathways Your Amazing Brain Your brain is an amazing organ! This wrinkly, reddish-pink mass weighs about the same as your two-slice toaster, tipping the scales at about three pounds. Acting as a master control center, your brain enables every thought, breath, eye blink, heartbeat, movement—everything—that happens in your body. Rivaling the world’s most powerful supercomputer, your brain can download, process, and react in milliseconds to the tidal wave of information coming from your eyes, skin, nose, tongue, and ears. Neuroplasticity and Your Sense of Hearing Researchers have discovered that the human nervous system—made up of the brain, spinal cord, and a complex network of nerves—has incredible capacity to modify itself, both in function and physical structure. This is called neural plasticity . Dr. Megan Johnson, audiologist and owner of Johnson Audiology explains, “Neural plasticity is going gangbusters in a child’s brain as the child develops and matures into adulthood. Based on years of brain research, we also know that the adult brain is far from being fixed. It, too, changes and adapts when you learn new information or skills or as a response to stress, hormonal fluctuations, drug interactions, injury, and much more.” Dr. Johnson also relates that “your brain displays neuroplasticity when you experience hearing loss.” By measuring brain waves using an electroencephalograph, or EEG, scientists have studied how the brain of a person with hearing loss functions compared to a person with normal hearing. The results are both fascinating and sobering as studies reveal that, in those with hearing loss, the portion of the brain devoted to hearing becomes reorganized. This can be true even with early-stage, mild hearing loss, and the process happens quickly, often in months rather than years. The Hearing Center of Your Brain and Beyond What is actually happening when this takes place? Your brain has a right and a left hemisphere and six major lobes. Think of your frontal lobe as your brain’s boss, where executive functions like decision making, emotion and impulse control, and planning occur. Your temporal lobe, which contains the auditory cortex, is doing the heavy lifting when it comes to interpreting sounds and assigning those sounds meaning. The temporal lobe processes speech and language, and it is where initial learning of new information takes place, which is the first step for logging that information into memory. Dr. Johnson goes on to relate, “When the delicate infrastructure of your ear has become damaged through noise exposure, infection, etc. leading to hearing loss, your auditory cortex cries out to your frontal lobe, saying ‘Help! Help! I’m not receiving any sound to process, so I feel lost.’ The frontal lobe ‘boss’ jumps to attention, and your occipital lobe, responsible for processing vision and touch, takes over the areas in which hearing is normally processed. In other words, your other senses seek to compensate for the deficit due to the loss of your sense of hearing.” Amazing, right? So, where’s the rub? Picture a car assembly line; each worker has an assigned task. One day, the worker who installs the windshields is absent, and the worker who attaches the rearview mirrors is assigned double duty, and a duty that was not part of job training. It is easy to see how the worker left juggling both jobs is compromised, and a car might slip through minus a rear view mirror. Similarly, the areas of your brain that are being taxed to make up for a lack of hearing are overloaded and less able to do their assigned responsibilities. “This explains why so many of my patients with hearing loss relate feeling exhausted and frustrated after a big family gathering—where multiple talkers and sounds must be interpreted—rather than happy and invigorated by the experience. We call this listening fatigue ,” states Dr. Johnson. Additionally, when left untreated long enough, researchers point to the brain’s reorganization due to hearing loss as a significant correlation with dementia. Hearing Technology and Your Brain “But here's the great news!” Dr. Johnson says. When a person is fit with hearing aids or a cochlear implant and sound is restored, the brain has the ability to adjust back—partially or completely—to proper function. How swiftly that happens often depends on how long the hearing loss went untreated and is why she encourages patients to treat hearing loss sooner rather than later. “Here is what I tell patients who are downplaying the importance of hearing: If you won’t treat your hearing loss for the sake of your ears, do it for your brain!”

Move from the Gunbarrel Road office to a new and larger office will allow Johnson Audiology to help even more people in the Chattanooga region

By Jan Hollingsworth • January 9, 2024
Johnson Audiology is pleased to announce that the practice will be moving one of its Chattanooga area offices from its current location on Gunbarrel Road to a new location at 6830 Lee Highway. The move will take place January 15. “We are extremely excited to be re-locating to a much larger space later this month,” Dr. Megan Johnson, founder and owner of the award-winning practice, says. “About a year ago, we realized that we needed more room to meet the needs of our growing patient base so we could help even more people with hearing loss. We sought a place that would allow us to stay in the East Brainerd/Hamilton Place area so that the office would still be conveniently located for patients. Our Hixson office will remain at 5617 Highway 153, Suite 203 and is also being upgraded with a second sound booth and beautiful new decor. These two strategically located offices mean that we can continue to serve patients who live east and west of the Tennessee River.” Dr. Johnson says that when she identified the building on Lee Highway, she knew it was an ideal site for this next growth leap. “Our company culture is anchored on the premise of always offering an exceptional patient experience,” she says. “Thanks to our wonderful family of Johnson Audiology patients, we have outgrown our current office and have found the perfect location for offering the best care to even more of our Chattanooga neighbors.” The new location offers many positive features that will benefit patients: The office is conveniently located off Lee Highway in the area between Shallowford Road and Hickory Valley Road, directly behind Dr. Keith B. Dressler’s orthodontic practice. It is a stand-alone office that is not shared with any other businesses. The building is more than 4,000 square feet, which is double the space of the current office on Gunbarrel Road. The added square footage will accommodate a spacious patient welcome and reception area, three sound booths for hearing testing, and a private area for patient check-out. The building has exam rooms for four full time audiologists and an audiology assistant, a large front desk area, and a sizeable lab for hearing aid maintenance and repair. The office has ample space for the practice’s growing Cochlear Implant (CI) Program with a dedicated sound booth and exam area just for CI patients. The building design allows for easy circular patient flow throughout the office. The building has a dedicated, 20-space parking lot just for Johnson Audiology patients and additional parking for Johnson Audiology staff. Dr. Johnson mentions that the building was a non-medical office previously, so updates were needed to bring it up to par for a bustling hearing health care clinic. It currently is being remodeled, and the parking lot resurfaced. “We have plans to transition to the new building by January 15 with some final touches to the office’s aesthetics continuing through the spring,” she says.  Dr. Johnson wishes to assure folks that measures are in place to alleviate disruption to the service patients receive during this time and thanks patients in advance for their continued support and understanding during the transition. “The new office is going to be incredible!” she says. Initial correspondence has been delivered to patients about the move. Dr. Johnson says, “Patients who have appointments scheduled in early January or those who need walk-in service for hearing aid maintenance and supplies from now until January 15 should continue visiting the Gunbarrel Road location.” Dr. Johnson says, “In February, we will invite our friends and neighbors in the Chattanooga community to an open house celebration, where we will do an official reveal of the new space!” Johnson Audiology has been faithfully serving the citizens of Chattanooga since the practice opened its doors on October 1, 2009. “As we prepare to celebrate our 15th anniversary this year, the new office location on Lee Highway and the upgrades to the Hixson office are evidence of our commitment to patients.” Dr. Johnson goes on to say, “Chattanoogans have named Johnson Audiology Best of the Best in the category of Favorite Audiologist and Hearing Aid Clinic for 11 years straight. And they consistently name Johnson Audiology in the top three in the category of Best Customer Service among all Chattanooga businesses. We seek to live up to those accolades daily!” Dr. Johnson concludes, “One of our patients, Mr. Van Tenpenny, recently had this to say about us: ‘My visit to Johnson Audiology has been life changing! After decades of hearing loss, I am able to hear normal conversations in any environment.’ It is our highest ideal to be here for Mr. Tenpenny and the thousands of other patients like him who prioritize their hearing for the best quality of life.” Do you want to get on the road to healthy hearing? Johnson Audiology is currently accepting new patients at all locations. Call today to schedule an appointment or book online at www.johnsonaudiology.com/schedule.
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