Can Audiobooks Help Exercise Your Hearing?

Audiologists often recommend a wide variety of hearing exercises to enable patients with hearing loss to reach a higher level of auditory clarity and focus. Listening to audiobooks is an effective and enjoyable exercise that can help you adapt to new hearing aids, better understand spoken language, and interpret subtle sounds that were previously difficult to hear. Here’s how audiobooks work to help improve your hearing and how you can get started listening today.

What Are Hearing Exercises?

A smartphone sitting on top of a book

Put simply, hearing exercises are activities you perform that can help to improve your hearing. For individuals with hearing loss, hearing and cognitive exercises often consist of activities such as listening to audiobooks, getting more exercise, meditating, or completing puzzles. Whichever hearing exercises you choose, you’re taking proactive steps toward maintaining your hearing health.

How Can Audiobooks Help to Exercise Hearing?

Listening to audiobooks is one of the most effective ways to help improve your hearing comprehension and understanding. In addition to letting you listen to multiple kinds of voices, audiobooks give you the ability to rewind and pause audio in order to practice. Audiobooks can be found on many platforms, including free downloads from your local library.

How to Get Started

There are thousands of intriguing audiobooks available to download. Follow these listening tips to help you ease into your first audiobook:

  • Choose a book you’re already familiar with
  • Begin with short listening sessions
  • Listen in a quiet room with minimal background noise
  • Follow along with a written version of the text

Stream Audiobooks With Bluetooth Hearing Aids

Many types of hearing aids have Bluetooth capabilities that allow you to use them as you would regular headphones. This lets you listen to audiobooks directly through your hearing aids. With Bluetooth technology included with your hearing aids, you can also connect to multiple devices at once, giving you more opportunities to try new hearing exercises.

When listening to audiobooks, either with our without hearing aids, it’s important to keep the volume at a level so as not to cause further hearing loss.

Stay on Top of Your Hearing Health with Our Audiologists

In addition to making hearing exercises part of your daily routine, visiting an audiologist regularly is one of the best ways to maintain your hearing health. At Associated Hearing Professionals, our audiologists have over 70 years of combined experience. We offer a full range of hearing test services, as well as hearing aid fittings, screenings, and repairs. To schedule an appointment in St. Louis or Chesterfield, call us today at 314-725-2686.