Purtone Hearing Centers (602) 904-7891

Do I Really Need Two Hearing Aids?

Have you been told you should have two

hearing aids? Have you wondered why you can’t just get along with one aid? Most people need two hearing aids, which is

called a Binaural Hearing Aid Fitting, because the brain depends on input from both ears to make sense of the world. Humans are designed with many

anatomical pairs: two arms, two legs, two eyes, and two ears. The brain depends on two legs to navigate the world, on two eyes to see the depth and width of the world, and on two ears to locate and understand the sounds of the world. Your brain uses

information from both ears to determine where sounds are coming from and to understand in noisy places.

Because your ears are separated from each other, sounds reach your ears at slightly different times. The brain uses this difference in timing to locate sound, to determine where a sound

is coming from. There are countless times that we need to locate sounds, such as when a car is coming down the road or when someone calls our name from a distance. The brain also uses this difference of input between the ears to separate important

sounds from noise, helping you hear your friend speaking in a noisy restaurant, for example.

Purtone Hearing Centers (602) 904-7891

In addition, your two ears provide a redundancy that is useful to the brain. The redundancy means that a sound reaches the brain

twice, once from the right ear and once from the left ear. If one ear misses a bit of sound, the other ear can provide the missing information. Your brain depends on this redundancy when you are listening in difficult situations, such as in noisy rooms or

group discussions.

All of this means that when you are not hearing well in both ears, you will likely have more problems understanding what you hear when you are in groups, restaurants, or other noisy places. While

most people need two hearing aids to function in the world, there are a few situations in which only one hearing aid is appropriate, such as when a person has hearing loss in only one ear. If you have questions about your hearing loss and the importance of

two hearing aids, contact your hearing healthcare provider for a consultation.

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