binaural hearing aids

T

two_suns

New Member
Joined
Apr 10, 2011
Messages
15
Reaction score
0
Hey everyone! I'm new, both to the forum and as a hearing aid user. I was diagnosed with mild/moderate hearing loss last year although I've dealt with mild hearing issues since my late teens. Hearing aids were recommended, but as a college student I could only afford one. My hearing loss is more or less the same in both ears, and while the aid helps considerably, I'm still asking people to repeat themselves in noisy environments.

My question is for people who started off with one hearing aid and eventually got two, specifically those with milder losses who could get by without two aids. Did you experience dramatic results, and was the monetary investment worth it? Also, do any of you with mild/moderate losses also sign or intend to learn? It never occurred to me to pick it up until my boyfriend, who has a Deaf family member and knows a little ASL, suggested it. We're taking our first class next semester.
 
Last edited:
Not personally, but my mum did. She was given only one hearing aid when she was much younger and had much better hearing. When she moved to a new area they had a different policy and she was given two, but could never really get used to having both ears aided as the one which had not been aided had more "auditory deprivation" (if you don't know what it is it's easily Googled cos I don't have what it takes to explain it all just now).

Modern hearing aids do tend to have a lot of binaural features, but depends if you would be able to afford ones which have the more advanced features, as budget hearing aid pairs don't really have so much benefit from being a pair as the more expensive ones do. That said, it's probably better to have two lower budget hearing aids than one expensive one.

Anyway, where I really intended to go with this was the only way to know is to try it. You don't say where you live but most US states have mandatory trial periods where you can take a pair of hearing aids and try them to see if two is better than one. You'll need the longest trial they will give you because your previously unaided ear may have a lot of catching up to do, and your brain needs to reset to having more equal input from both sides to help you work out where noises are coming from. Some states give totally free trials, other places you are refunded a percentage after the trial and you would still have to pay, say, 10% of the price as a restocking fee.

Also, as a college student you might want to look into things like does your college have a loop system installed and do you use it with your current hearing aid? What help exists in your country/state to assist college students with special equipment purchases? You may be able to buy something like an FM system to help you with your classes (short version - you get the lecturer's voice straight in your hearing aid instead of it travelling across the room to you and losing volume and clarity) and there is often grant assistance available to students for this kind of equipment.
 
As a child, forty years ago, I was only issued with one HA, British NHS policy at the time, this aid was provided for my better ear. When I got two HAs, years later, the difference was amazing. Although my hearing loss was bilaterally severe by then, I'm sure I would have been much better off with two HAs right from the start. It actually made me feel quite sad that I had been missing out on so much sound for so many years.

As well as hearing much better, with two aids your hearing is also more balanced and you are better able to tell the direction of sounds. As Rose mentioned, aiding only one ear can also lead to auditory deprivation, this means that the unaided ear becomes unable to make sense of sounds and speech even when an aid is later provided.

As for noisy environments, they are always a problem for HA users, whether you have one HA or two. Although two aids are generally better than one in these situations.

Hope that is some help to you.
 
I wear binaural hearing aids and it provided me excellent performance that I relyed on my new ones :)
don't know? I'm a proud owner of the Oticon Safari 600!
 
In my case, it didn't make a big difference. I have a cookie bite loss in the mid-frequencies, so HAs don't help very much. If that's your case, I wouldn't be in a hurry to get a second HA. If you have a different kind of loss, it may help.

Find an audiologist who will allow you to test a second HA for a week or two. Audis usually keep a pair of HAs for loaning them out.
 
I have a cookie bite loss in the mid-frequencies, so HAs don't help very much.
Click to expand...
I'm a cookie-biter, and the HA's help a lot. I have had two since I first got them. The first weren't technologically sophisticated, and I had a lot of trouble getting used to them. The ones I have now do a fine job of amplifying the frequencies I need, and not making other sounds too loud.
When I first got them, I asked about only one, but she advised me that with only one, you lose the ability to process what you hear in the unaided ear.
 
RoseRodent said:
Also, as a college student you might want to look into things like does your college have a loop system installed and do you use it with your current hearing aid? What help exists in your country/state to assist college students with special equipment purchases? You may be able to buy something like an FM system to help you with your classes (short version - you get the lecturer's voice straight in your hearing aid instead of it travelling across the room to you and losing volume and clarity) and there is often grant assistance available to students for this kind of equipment.
Click to expand...

RoseRodent, I'm in California. I took spring semester off, and summer semester will be my first experience with a hearing aid in the classroom. I'm familiar with the concept of a loop system, but I have no idea whether or not my school is equipped with one. Are they ADA mandated or at all common in public US colleges?
 
djchur said:
As well as hearing much better, with two aids your hearing is also more balanced and you are better able to tell the direction of sounds. As Rose mentioned, aiding only one ear can also lead to auditory deprivation, this means that the unaided ear becomes unable to make sense of sounds and speech even when an aid is later provided.
Click to expand...

I've heard this about directionality, and I think it's worth looking into. Even though my loss is mild (45-50db in the higher frequencies) I have no discrimination of where the sounds I hear are coming from, with or without my aid.
 
Much depends on the quality of the technology as to whether 2 hearing aids will help with directionality. I have 2 Siemens aids which leave me hearing things in random places - I heard someone up a ladder with an angle grider and I was convinced the noise was in my purse! The Phonaks are much better for me, although they are still BTE there is something in the technology (Real Ear Sound) which works for me, I heard an alarm go off the other day and actually managed to look straight at where it was coming from.

Just to wander from the topic a wee bit, as a cookie-biter too I have had lots of rough hearing aid experiences, the old classic "I hear better without my hearing aids" which is somewhat relative anyway! I've been looking at some research with my local university which has a department of audiology. Apparently cookie-biters are more likely to have cochlear dead regions in areas of hearing loss that nobody would really think they should do from the previous understanding of dead regions. They are common on the two sides of the "slope" and especially at the HF climbing side. I respond to sound easily in high frequencies, but it is nonsense, everything above a certain point sounds like a swishing noise, not a beep, and the HF sounds get lower, not higher.

It is extremely counter-intuitive to try SoundRecover with a cookie-bite loss because you are moving sounds from "good" hearing into "bad" hearing, but since you can (to a certain extent) correct gain and you cannot correct distortion it's better for me that the sounds are moved to the area of worst hearing and then amplified rather than staying in the area where I have distortion and recruitment because the noise is painful but I don't understand any of it. It doesn't sound "natural" (whatever natural is after years of hearing loss and hearing aids) but it sounds way more comprehensible, even my little daughter makes sense to me, which is such a gift. I now consider my HF hearing a dead loss.

I think if you have a cookie-bite loss you need an audiologist prepared to go all over the map and way out of the box to see what they can do, programming in the audiogram and clicking "initial fit" is going to end in tears.
 
So (your audi vocabulary is a bit too sophisticated for me) an audiogram for a cookie biter should test more frequencies?
 
MCB said:
So (your audi vocabulary is a bit too sophisticated for me) an audiogram for a cookie biter should test more frequencies?
Click to expand...

I can't entirely understand dead regions very well either, but it's along the lines of if you have an area with no hearing at all sometimes the neighbouring hair cells respond instead, giving you a false positive. Say they play an 8kHz sound, if you cannot hear at 8kHz but you have working hair cells at 7kHz (oversimplified for example purposes) sometimes they respond. It's like your body is trying to compensate for the bit that doesn't work similar to people without hands who learn to be amazingly accurate with their toes.

Your brain perceives a sound so you press the button in the test and they tick off what dB level you can hear 8kHz even though you actually didn't hear at 8kHz at all, you responded to an 8kHz sound with parts of your cochlear that are not related to 8kHz. Goodness knows how they do the testing, this is a research facility with custom-designed computers and things. There are some marketplace tests for dead regions but they are probably focussed on the more common sorts.

If you hear sounds in your tests that don't seem to relate properly, e.g. if 8kHz sounds lower than 4kHz (it should sound higher), if it sounds like a swish, static or shhhhh noise instead of a beep, if you feel sensation rather than hearing actual discernible noises then those are early indications of potential dead regions and indications for more detailed testing. In terms of what that testing will be for more unusual losses I guess it's watch this space while the research labs try to figure it all out.

I hear that not everyone even "believes in" dead regions anyway. All I know is that many HF sounds hurt my ears before I can even hear anything and I hear way better with the sounds transposed to my "worse" frequencies.
 
You speak of "reverse tinnitus." I think I know what you mean. There are times when my hearing in one ear or the other suddenly goes way mute. I get a bit panicky, but within minutes, it picks up again.
 
MCB said:
You speak of "reverse tinnitus." I think I know what you mean. There are times when my hearing in one ear or the other suddenly goes way mute. I get a bit panicky, but within minutes, it picks up again.
Click to expand...

No, I have that too, these are permanent physically damaged regions.
 
two_suns said:
Hey everyone! I'm new, both to the forum and as a hearing aid user. I was diagnosed with mild/moderate hearing loss last year although I've dealt with mild hearing issues since my late teens. Hearing aids were recommended, but as a college student I could only afford one. My hearing loss is more or less the same in both ears, and while the aid helps considerably, I'm still asking people to repeat themselves in noisy environments.

My question is for people who started off with one hearing aid and eventually got two, specifically those with milder losses who could get by without two aids. Did you experience dramatic results, and was the monetary investment worth it? Also, do any of you with mild/moderate losses also sign or intend to learn? It never occurred to me to pick it up until my boyfriend, who has a Deaf family member and knows a little ASL, suggested it. We're taking our first class next semester.
Click to expand...

Your post didn't say if you were still in college or not, but if you are, do you have the ability to get VR help? If so, they will likely cover the costs of HAs for you. Even if you are out of college, if by any chance you are unemployed or under-employed, you could still potentially qualify for VR benefits. Check with your state. (Of course, I'm assuming you are based in the US.)
 
Your post didn't say if you were still in college or not, but if you are, do you have the ability to get VR help? If so, they will likely cover the costs of HAs for you. Even if you are out of college, if by any chance you are unemployed or under-employed, you could still potentially qualify for VR benefits. Check with your state.
Click to expand...
Sorry about the derail. Voc rehab counselors are usually aware about the negative long-term effects of a mono hearing aid compromise, and would not use such a cost-cutting measure. You may get cheap ones, but not to the detriment of your long-term well-being.
 
I have top of the line HAs and they are programmed as best as they can be. Recruitment limits the programing. Sounds are distorted.

I've got some absent acoustic reflexes which relate to the 7th nerve. My facial nerve is effected, too. I think that I have neuropathy. The nerve cells are damaged. It doesn't matter how loud a sound is if nerves don't work. I really don't want to waste time with another "undifferentiated disorder" diagnosis.
 
Two Suns, are you still here and reading?

When I was first diagnosed with a hearing loss, I could only afford one aid. As soon as I had more money, I bought a decent pair. Yes, it made a difference, for the reasons everyone else has mentioned above.
 
MichellePasinat said:
Binaural hearing allows a quality of "spaciousness" or "high fidelity" to sounds, which cannot occur with monaural (one ear) listening. Understanding speech clearly, particularly in challenging and noisy situations, is much easier while using both ears. Additionally, using two hearing aids allows people to speak to you from either side of your head not just your "good" side!
Click to expand...

In some cases this is true. However, depending upon the severity and the nature of the loss, binaural aids can also interfere with discrimination achieved in the better ear. There are many people who do much better with a single HA.
 
I can't even hear out of my left ear. Binaural isn't going to help that.
 
Bottesini said:
I can't even hear out of my left ear. Binaural isn't going to help that.
Click to expand...

My son gets so much distortion from being aided in his left ear that he has refused to wear an HA on that side since he was a kid.
 
Back
Top