Hearing aids are a major investment, so if you’ve suffered hearing loss in both ears, you naturally think, “Do I actually need two hearing aids, or can I hear equally as well with one?” The majority of hearing industry professionals will state that the advantages of using two hearing aids considerably outweigh the extra expense, but to be fair let’s start with the reasons why some individuals don’t need two.
For starters, if your hearing is fully normal in one ear, you obviously do not need a second hearing aid for that ear. Similarly, if you are completely and irrecoverably deaf in one ear, wearing a hearing aid in that ear is not going to help. People that have chronic ear infections may opt for a single hearing aid to avoid aggravating the recurring infection. There are also hearing loss conditions in which the sounds of speech heard in one ear are completely garbled, and in that case wearing a hearing aid in that ear is merely going to amplify the garbled sounds, which makes it harder for your brain to understand speech heard through your other ear.
Outside of these four situations, the arguments for using two hearing aids are fairly strong and backed up by numerous consumer satisfaction surveys among hearing aid users. Two hearing aids greatly enhance your ability to perceive the source of the sounds you hear, and provides a more realistically balanced sound. Understanding speech has been proven to be much easier when wearing two hearing aids than when wearing one, especially when the listening environment is noisy.
If you have hearing loss in both ears, wearing two hearing aids will enable you to keep stimulating both ears, whereas wearing only one can allow the other ear to deteriorate further from lack of use. If you suffer from or a ringing in both ears, wearing only one aid will allow the ringing in the other ear to continue. Last but not least, clinical studies and customer surveys have shown that users find wearing two hearing aids much less tiring than wearing only one.
All told, the case for wearing two hearing aids is more persuasive than the case for wearing only one. For many people making this decision, they need to experience the difference between one and two hearing aids first hand. You can test out the difference by scheduling an appointment to come see us. Experience tell us that you’ll probably agree that two are better than one.