How can Listening to Audiobooks Help with Hearing Loss?

In order to guide yourself towards healthier hearing try listening to an audiobook. 

It's important to realize that adapting to hearing aids takes time, practice and patience. If you waited for a very long time to get hearing aids, you are going to hear sounds that you have not heard in many years. Hearing rehabilitation is necessary in order to acclimate your brain to hearing familiar sounds again when you wear hearing aids. Luckily, modern digital hearing aids allow users to stream audiobooks directly from their smartphone to their hearing aid devices. 

Auditory rehab can be challenging without the proper care. Take care of your health and well being each day with a good regimen of diet and exercise. Doing so will improve your hearing health, your mood, and overall health. 

How can Audiobooks Help?

There are so many useful things that you can use right at home, but audiobooks are highly recommended. Listening to an audiobook, is just another way of experiencing oral storytelling - a long practiced tradition in all cultures and throughout history. Hearing an audiobook gives listeners that sense of connection - minus the background noises or hearing problems that may occur in everyday conversations. You can control the volume level, and direct your undivided attention to the spoken words. 

Due to the clarity and convenience of audiobooks, they are a great tool to use for anyone with concerns in regard to their hearing health. Audiobooks are available in many formats, including easy-to-follow story plots to more complex themes. All of these formats can aid in gradually improving hearing comprehension and the abilities to follow along during a discussion. Audiobooks are a one-sided conversation, where you can practice listening and learn how to discern a singular voice, before going into the real world and communicating with others.   

You can use audiobooks, or engage in your own form of hearing rehabilitation. Select audiobooks that you would enjoy listening to make each rehab session not only constructive but also entertaining.   

A Guide on Audiobooks for Rehabilitation Purposes

1. Choose an audiobook that has a coherent, recognizable, and easy-to-understand voice. Make sure there isn’t background noise or music playing during the reading. From then on, you can gradually build your collection to voices with various accents, or some that are somewhat more difficult to understand. This will help you simulate real-life conversations, and allow you to practice listening to them. 
2. If you have good eyesight, read along with the audiobooks. It exercises the brain so that it can make correlations between what you read and what you hear. Try listening to a variety of subjects in order to give yourself a wider range of information to process and work through during your rehabilitation. Begin by listening to a book that you are already familiar with, and then slowly build up to new material. 

Get the Most out of Listening to Your Audiobooks

The improvements from listening to audiobooks will not be the same for new hearing aid users. Some might find it difficult to focus, and others will instantly pick up the concept of audio. There is no right or wrong way to approach this method, so go at your own pace. 

It is recommended that beginners simultaneously listen to an audiobook and read along with the corresponding book. Take a break when necessary. After you feel comfortable doing this, try to listen to the audiobook alone, while focusing on the storyline. This can be done in short segments and then gradually increase. Listening to audiobooks for extensive periods of time is the last phase of rehabilitation.  

Audiobook Resources

Check out your local library for audiobooks. You can also use online resources from iTunes, Google Play Books, Audible, LibriVox, or Many Things for audiobooks that can be downloaded. 

If you, or a loved one, are in need of hearing aids, please contact us at Pure Sound Hearing Aids for a free hearing test and consultation.  

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