Why do I need Hearing aids in Both Ears?

(Binaural vs Monaural Hearing Aid)

If you have hearing loss in just one ear then one hearing aid is all you need. But In most cases, (especially in age related) hearing loss isn’t experienced in one ear alone, it’s experienced in both. The ears are designed to work together, so for the most effective treatment and customer satisfaction, we recommend two hearing aids if someone has hearing loss in both the ears.

Binaural (2 Hearing aids) Amplification has numerous advantages

Naturalistic experience

Our ears are designed to work together to create a binaural experience and we have 2 ears but 1 brain. Your ears detect noise, but it’s your brain that processes random noise into recognizable sound. It’s far easier if your brain is receiving signals from both ears. We will program each hearing aid separately, to match the precise levels of amplification you need in each ear (it’s normal to have different levels of hearing loss in each ear).

Easier Handling of Different Sounds

With normal hearing, sound signals from both ears are comparable in strength. The brain can pick out the important signals, like voices, when they’re louder than the background noise. But if you’re wearing just one hearing aid and someone talks into your unaided ear in a noisy room, the voice may sound softer than the background noise. As a result, it’s harder for your brain to give it preferential status.

Less Amplification, Safer Sound Levels

When wearing one hearing aid, you might feel inclined to increase the amplification in order to better hear different noises. However, with two hearing aids, both ears work together to provide something called “binaural summation” which means you can better hear sounds without as much amplification. This can also reduce the urge to turn the volume on speakers, headsets and TVs, which can exacerbate your hearing loss.

Better Localization

It may also be harder for the brain to identify the location of particular sounds if you’re wearing a single hearing aid. The brain can’t locate a sound as well if sound signals are always louder through one ear. Wearing wireless hearing aids in both ears enhances the binaural hearing process because the hearing aids communicate with each other and transfer data back and forth, rather than working independently to process sound.

Use unused principal

There are certain risks of only using one hearing aid if you have hearing loss in both ears. If you’re using one ear over the other too much, then the lack of stimulation of the nerves between the brain and the unused ear can lead to dead zones, meaning that you might never be able to fully process sound from that Ear in the same way ever again. Furthermore, it’s simply much more convenient if you don’t have to turn the side of your head to be able to fully hear.

‘Auditory deprivation’

Depriving our ear of sound can make the auditory nerve pathways and the associated centers in the brain less effective at decoding the sound around you. Understanding speech, particularly in the presence of noise gets more difficult even when the sound is loud enough for you to hear it.