I'm not yet 49, so that's surely still mid-forties, but by golly do I feel old now. And typing this the keys are weirdly loud. This thread is eight years old -- is there any newer advice for the newly-NHSed?
1 in 5 of the adult population have hearing loss above 25dB now - it used to be 1 in 7. The prevalence increases with age so you're just slightly unfortunate in having it, but lucky to have it picked up with plenty of time with a young(er) brain to acclimatise to hearing aids.
In particular, I do sweat like billy-oh on the bike. Is this likely to be a problem, and if so how do I (a) mitigate it (b) resuscitate the aid if it gets wet?
Ear Gears are your friend and you could do worse than buy from Connevans themselves who are a smallish company who I have a lot of time for. They'll keep your hearing aids from ping fuckit-ing off somewhere too.
You may also want to look into a
Drying Box of some kind which will dry it out overnight and reduce moisture build up etc.
You can also click up the hierarchy on that page and see all sorts of (largely unnecessary) hearing aid care kits.
I haven't had ear moulds since 1987, but I always cleaned them regularly to reduce risk of ear infection and cos they felt horrid if not clean. You can probably clean modern domes in an ultrasonic cleaner and dry them out overnight etc, or have 2 domes on the go with one resting/drying to reduce mankiness.
And is setting it up to listen to the radio / podcasts while riding likely to be a bad idea?
I don't see why not - its very handy.
If you let me know what make and model your aids are I can point you at appropriate instructions and or gadgets that may or may not be needed.
Increasingly hearing aids will bluetooth directly to stuff IFF the right programme is selected, so you have to ask audiology on that, but they SHOULD be reviewing your hearing aids at 4-6 weeks for fit and sound quality etc and possibly even reviewing loudness as they tend to under-volume till people acclimatise.
