How to clean your hearing aids at home, step by step

Beltone Imagine: how to clean your hearing aids (in Spanish)

A hearing aid works tucked inside a warm, damp canal that produces earwax. It is the worst possible environment for a piece of electronics, and it spends twelve or fourteen hours a day there.

That is why, when someone comes in saying their hearing aid “has stopped working” or “sounds weak”, the first thing we look at is not the electronics. The American national institute on deafness puts it without decoration: earwax and ear drainage can damage a hearing aid.

The good news is that almost all the maintenance is done at home, in under two minutes a day.

What you need to have

• A dry microfibre cloth. One for the hearing aids and nobody else’s.
• The small brush that came in the case. If you have lost it, a new, dry, soft-bristled toothbrush will do.
• The cleaning tool with a wire or loop for the sound outlet.
• A hearing aid dehumidifier, either with a drying tablet or electric.
• Spare wax filters for the exact model of your hearing aid.

What you do not need: cotton buds, liquids, wet wipes or any kind of spray.

Daily routine: two minutes at bedtime

Do it at the same time every day and over a folded towel, not over the sink or a tiled floor.

1. Take the hearing aids out and let them rest for a minute on the towel. They come out warm and with condensation on them.
2. Wipe the dry cloth over the whole body of the device, paying attention to the point where it rests on the ear.
3. Clean the part that goes into the ear: the dome, the mould or the tip of the in-the-ear aid. That is where the wax is. Dry cloth, and if needed the brush, with the device face down so that whatever comes off falls out rather than in.
4. Open the battery door or put the device in the charger. The American national institute on deafness recommends turning hearing aids off when they are not in use and replacing dead batteries immediately. An open battery door also airs out the inside.
5. Put them in the dehumidifier overnight.

That last step is the one that prevents the most breakdowns and the one most people skip. On the Mazarrón coast, with the relative humidity we have, it is not an optional extra.

Weekly routine: five minutes

• Brush the microphone grille. It sits on the upper part of the hearing aid’s body, it is tiny, and it blocks up with dust, sweat and traces of cream. Brush it dry, with the device face down.
• Check the sound outlet with a magnifier or with your reading glasses. If you see wax, use the cleaning tool, never a pin.
• Look at the wax filter. If it is dark or blocked, it is time to change it.
• Check the dome or the mould: it should not be stiff, cracked or yellowed.
• On behind-the-ear aids with tubing, hold the tube up to the light. If there are water droplets inside, or it has gone yellow and hard, ask for a replacement.
• Clean the charger or the case. Dirty contacts cause incomplete charges that later get blamed on the battery.

Monthly routine

• Change the wax filter if you have not done so already. Each filter is changed with the tool that comes in the packet itself: one end removes the used filter and the other fits the new one.
• Change the silicone dome if your hearing aid uses one.
• Wash the custom mould, and only the mould. This applies exclusively to behind-the-ear aids where the mould comes away completely from the device and the tubing. Lukewarm water with mild soap, rinse, and twenty-four hours of drying before putting it back together. If a single drop of water is left inside the tube, the sound will come out muffled.
• Renew the dehumidifier tablet as the manufacturer says.

By type

RIC (receiver in the canal)

The most widespread. The weak point is the receiver that sits inside the ear: it is the part most exposed to wax and moisture. Its wax filter is the barrier that protects the speaker, and changing it in time is the difference between a replacement costing pennies and a repair.

Never pull on the wire to get it out of the ear. Hold the body of the hearing aid and take the whole assembly out with a gentle twist, outwards and upwards.

Behind-the-ear with a custom mould

The most robust and the easiest to clean, because the mould separates. All the serious maintenance is in the mould and the tubing, which are cheap replacement parts.

Tubing hardens and yellows over time. Hard tubing carries sound less well and makes the mould work loose.

Behind-the-ear with thin tubing

Thin tubing blocks more easily than a mould does. Here the wire cleaning tool is essential, and it goes in from the device end towards the ear end, never the other way round.

In-the-ear: ITE, ITC and CIC

The whole device is inside the ear, so the whole device is exposed to wax. They need more daily cleaning, not less.

Pay particular attention to the wax filter and to the microphone grilles, which on these models face outwards from the ear and collect dust and sun cream. And check the removal cord or handle: if it breaks, taking the device out stops being comfortable.

The American national institute on deafness warns that these models can be difficult to adjust and to remove. If you struggle to handle them, say so at your review, before it turns into a reason to stop wearing them.

What you must never do

• Water on the body of the hearing aid. Not a jet, not a quick rinse, not “just a little”. The only washable part is the custom mould separated from the device.
• Alcohol, acetone, bleach, disinfectant or hand sanitiser. They attack the casings, dry out the tubing and ruin the coatings.
• Microwave, oven, hairdryer, radiator or the car dashboard in the sun. Heat warps the casing and ruins the battery. A wet hearing aid is dried in the dehumidifier, with the battery door open, not with heat.
• Cotton buds. They leave fibres inside the microphone grille and push wax further in.
• Pins, needles, paperclips or cocktail sticks in the sound outlet. They puncture the speaker membrane.
• Cleaning sprays, lubricants or wet wipes.
• Hairspray and salon products with the hearing aids in. The American national institute on deafness points this out specifically. Hairspray is one of the most common causes of a blocked microphone.
• Storing them in the bathroom. It is the dampest room in the house.
• Leaving the battery in for weeks if you are not using them. A forgotten battery can leak and ruin the contacts.

The wax filter, in detail

It is a tiny plastic part that covers the sound outlet and lets sound through but not wax. It costs little and it saves the speaker.

When to change it: there is no calendar that works for everybody, because it depends on how much wax each ear produces. Some people change it monthly and some get three months out of one. Change it when any of these happens:

• The hearing aid sounds weaker from one day to the next for no reason.
• The sound is muffled, as if it were under a blanket.
• It stops working altogether, but when you take it out of your ear you hear it whistle if you cup it in your hand. That test tells you the electronics work and the problem is at the outlet.
• You can see the filter is dark when you hold it up to the light.

If you change the filter and the hearing aid is still the same, do not carry on dismantling it. Bring it in.

When cleaning is not enough

There are three signs that call for a visit to the hearing centre rather than more cleaning at home:

• The hearing aid whistles with the device correctly in place. It may be a mould that has worked loose, a dome of the wrong size, or a plug of wax in your own ear.
• The sound comes and goes when you move your head or chew. That is usually the wire or the tubing.
• Your ear is uncomfortable or hurts. It is never normal, and it is never solved by getting used to it.

At the centre we do a clean that cannot be done at home: suction probe, new tubing and moulds, a check of the actual sound output and an inspection of the ear canal itself, because a wax plug of your own produces exactly the same symptoms as a dirty hearing aid.

At MODALENT we check and clean hearing aids of any make, whether you bought them here or not. If you have been hearing worse for months and have assumed your hearing loss has progressed, it is worth ruling out the cheap explanation first.