{"id":864130,"date":"2025-07-22T00:13:39","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T05:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/22\/this-life-changing-piece-of-health-tech-is-getting-cheaper-and-more-advanced\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T00:13:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T05:13:39","slug":"this-life-changing-piece-of-health-tech-is-getting-cheaper-and-more-advanced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/22\/this-life-changing-piece-of-health-tech-is-getting-cheaper-and-more-advanced\/","title":{"rendered":"This life-changing piece of health tech is getting cheaper \u2014 and more advanced"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hearing aids, like canes or orthopedic shoes, are something you don\u2019t think about a lot when you\u2019re young. But maybe you should.<\/p>\n

You probably either know someone who needs hearing aids, or you\u2019ll need them some day yourself. About 30 million people in the United States, aged 12 and older, have hearing loss in both ears<\/a>, and about two-thirds of people end up with hearing loss<\/a>, which can range from mild to severe, by their 70s.<\/p>\n

But talking to your parents or grandparents about getting hearing aids can be tough \u2014 I\u2019ve done it. They might not like the idea of sticking things in their ear canals or confronting the difficult realities of aging and health. They surely shy away from the price tag of hearing aids<\/a>, which can cost thousands of dollars and are not covered by insurance or Medicare<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But plugging tiny and exorbitantly expensive speakers into your ears isn\u2019t the only way. Your mom might already own hearing aids without even knowing it.<\/p>\n

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User Friendly<\/h2>\n

A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/form>\n<\/div>\n

Hearing aids have never been more accessible \u2014 or futuristic. In April, a company called Nuance started selling glasses that double as hearing aids<\/a> thanks to microphones and beam-forming speakers built into the frame. Although at $1,200, they\u2019re not cheap, they cost far less than a pair of prescription hearing aids<\/a>, which tend to range from $2,000 to $7,000.<\/p>\n

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The Nuance Audio glasses joined an increasingly crowded market of FDA-regulated over-the-counter hearing aids that includes everything from the latest Apple AirPods Pro<\/a>, which gained the capability through a software update<\/a>, to bean-sized buds from Sony<\/a>. Prices for these devices start as low as $100<\/a>, and you don\u2019t need an audiologist to help set them up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Hearing aids have never been more accessible \u2014 or futuristic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

You can also buy something that\u2019s legally considered a personal sound amplification product<\/a> (PSAP), which is not designed to treat hearing loss but does make things louder. Some of them can play music and handle phone calls too. In the age when earbuds are ubiquitous, these devices appeal to all ages.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good that we\u2019re seeing people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, talking about it, because it\u2019s totally changing the paradigm for them of engaging in hearing care earlier,\u201d Nicholas Reed, a faculty member at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told me.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a millennial, but I\u2019ve also dealt with hearing loss my entire life. A bad stretch of childhood ear infections left me mostly deaf in one ear and pretty spotty in the other. I learned to read lips as a teenager and avoid conversations at loud parties in college. Some surgery in my 20s<\/a> brought me closer to normal, but I could still use a little help.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent the past few weeks trying out the Nuance Audio glasses in various settings. They\u2019re remarkable, not only because they feel almost indistinguishable from my regular glasses but also because I forget they\u2019re hearing aids. Made by EssilorLuxottica, the company behind Ray-Ban and dozens of other glasses brands, the Nuance Audio glasses employ some of the same technology that the Ray-Ban Meta glasses<\/a> use to play music and help you talk to AI. And while the Nuance Audio glasses don\u2019t currently offer the option to stream audio, they do help you hear what your friend is saying in a loud bar.<\/p>\n

The AirPods Pro 2, which retail for $250, work equally as well. After Apple announced last fall that a software update would unlock an accessibility setting \u2014 it\u2019s appropriately called Hearing Aid \u2014 I started using it all the time, toggling between listening to podcasts to ordering cold brew in a crowded coffee shop. In instances where I may have needed to ask people to repeat themselves in the past, I hear them fine the first time. I just have to wear AirPods all the time, which makes the glasses solution even more appealing.<\/p>\n

For most people, hearing loss typically starts in your 50s and gains momentum in your early retirement years. If you\u2019ve ever been to a busy restaurant with your parents or grandparents, you know this can be alienating for the person left out and frustrating for the hearing person, too. The social isolation can lead to loneliness<\/a> and anxiety, which can hasten cognitive decline<\/a> and lower life expectancy.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, neither traditional clinical hearing aids or the newer category of devices are easy fixes. Once you start wearing any sort of hearing aid, it takes time to adjust, and you might need help tweaking the sound as you get used to it. That\u2019s one reason why so many people avoid it<\/a> \u2014 only one in five who need hearing aids<\/a> actually have them. You can\u2019t put them in your ears and immediately have perfect hearing. Your brain adjusts over time, and so it may take weeks or months to adapt to the new frequencies hearing aids help you hear.<\/p>\n

Still, it\u2019s a worthwhile project.<\/p>\n

\u201cSensory input is so key to our existence, but we just sort of overlooked it for so long,\u201d Reed said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that\u2019s vital to your existence and how you connect with other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear how the latest hearing aid innovation will move the needle on adoption. Even though over-the-counter hearing aids have been available since 2022, when the FDA implemented new regulations<\/a> for the devices, it\u2019s still an uphill battle to get people to wear them.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSensory input is so key to our existence, but we just sort of overlooked it for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Nicholas Reed, faculty member at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe are not seeing large increases in hearing aid uptake since over-the-counter hearing aids have become available,\u201d said Tricia Ashby, senior director of audiology practices at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). \u201cAnd I have to say that mimics other countries who had over-the-counter hearing aids before the US did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given the fact that the older people who need them most are potentially less likely to try the latest technology, it might still take a few years for over-the-counter hearing aids to go mainstream. Given the precedent set by companies like Apple and Nuance, though, it\u2019s possible that more devices will add hearing assistive features to existing products.<\/p>\n

You can imagine a future where you wear earbuds that are the interface for your voice assistant as well as your lifeline on a loud plane. You might have glasses that project walking directions onto your field of view and help you hear which direction traffic\u2019s coming from when you have to cross the street. These kinds of features together only get more important as you get older and need a little more help.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in an age now where you\u2019re thinking about optimizing aging, and how do you do it?\u201d Reed said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s things like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

A version of this story was also published in the User Friendly newsletter. <\/em>Sign up here<\/strong><\/em><\/a> so you don\u2019t miss the next one!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Adam Clark Estes
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hearing aids, like canes or orthopedic shoes, are something you don\u2019t think about a lot when you\u2019re young. But maybe you should. You probably either know someone who needs hearing aids, or you\u2019ll need them some day yourself. About 30 million people in the United States, aged 12 and older, have hearing loss in both<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":864131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76194,1010],"tags":[133382,11583],"class_list":{"0":"post-864130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-life-changing","8":"category-piece","9":"tag-life-changing","10":"tag-piece"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}