(BPT) - Hearing aids – those two words alone may conjure up images of unattractive, beige devices that your father or grandmother once wore before finally throwing them in a drawer, never to be seen again. And who could blame them? In the past, hearing aids were big, bulky and fragile – incapable of getting wet or dirty. But hearing aids have come a very long way. Here are five things you may not know about today’s digital hearing aids:

1. Hearing aids can adjust automatically based on your listening situation

Digital hearing aids of the past required you to manually switch programs depending on your environment (for example noisy vs. quiet). The latest hearing aids are smart enough to recognize up to six distinct listening environments: quiet, speech in quiet, noise, speech in noise, car or music. The hearing aids continuously detect which of the six situations you’re in and automatically switch settings for the best hearing in that environment. No manual adjustments are needed.