Why Two Hearing Aids Are Better Than One

After years of evolution, hearing has remained one of the major senses to keep us humans in touch with the world around us. We have ears on both sides of our heads, giving us a 360-degree picture of the sounds around us. Our early ancestors relied on the sense of hearing to survive. Back before there was electricity or fire even, when they went into a dark wood, they had to rely on sound.

These days, binaural hearing keeps us well-connected to the world. By sound, we are able to identify our distance from something – a speeding car, let’s say. Or a roll of thunder might tell us to seek shelter.

With hearing loss, both ears are usually affected. However, some people prefer to just get one hearing aid for the ear with a higher degree of hearing loss. Using two hearing aids, rather than one, provides us with a better picture of our sonic landscape and keeps us better connected.

People who experience hearing loss find speech recognition to be one of the biggest challenges. With inhibited speech recognition, people may find it difficult to differentiate between words; they may mishear or mistake meaning or intention. Conversations with multiple speakers may prove difficult, while having a conversation may be challenging with a lot of background noise.

Difficulty with speech recognition leads to social withdrawal and isolation for people with hearing loss. With two hearing aids, discerning speech assists against background noise and also helps people locate the direction from which speech comes.

Because all sounds we hear are processed into neural signals that are registered in the brain as sound, hearing loss in only one ear has the potential to hinder the signals. For a full spectrum of sound, hearing specialists recommend using two hearing aids. With two hearing aids, you will have a better sense of your environment, and you will have a fuller sense of the location from which sounds come. This is especially important for reasons of personal safety, such as being in busy traffic or not hearing an alarm from a different part of the home. Two hearing aids improve both our awareness of our surroundings and our security.

Increasing the clear signals of sound from all directions keeps both your brain and your ears active. Wearing one hearing aid has been compared to having a 180-degree view: it’s only half of the picture. Or, it would be like wearing a monocle, rather than eyeglasses with two lenses. Our hearing is a system that fully utilizes both ears to function properly. With two hearing aids, you receive a full spectrum of sound. Additionally, when you choose to wear just one hearing aid, the other ear struggles to match the hearing ability you experience with the ear with a hearing aid. With two hearing aids, sounds will be much richer.