It comes as a shock to many people that they need time to adjust to wearing hearing aids. They think that adjusting to wearing new hearing aids should be like putting on new glasses—instant clear sight.

The truth is, you need to give your brain time to relearn how to hear and process all the new sounds it is now hearing—especially if your hearing loss was gradual. You gradually lost certain sounds. Now, when you put on hearing aids, all of a sudden these sounds blast your ears and you are overwhelmed.

It takes time for you to get reacquainted with the sounds you haven’t heard well for decades. This does not happen in a day or even a week. Your brain needs anywhere from 30 to 90 days or even longer to complete this process—so if you give up before this time, you will think hearing aids don’t work for you and you could be very wrong.

This information is supported by a study published in the Aug 2011 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience where researchers found that people with hearing loss experience less brain activity when focusing on complex speech. In addition, the study also indicates that the areas of the brain responsible for auditory responses have less gray matter for those with hearing loss of long duration.

On a more positive note, several studies have also suggested that the ability to hear well in noisy environments is initially stable after a hearing aid fitting. Yet, as the brain begins to “re-wire”, the ability to hearing in noise often times continues to improve over the course of six to twelve weeks.