In general, any audiologist will always recommend to you the hearing aid model that best suits your needs. Here is a useful checklist to make sure that is the case.

• Audiologist's level of knowledge: The audiologist you have seen will hopefully have a wide knowledge of all available hearing aids; however, some will only be familiar with a small number of brands and, therefore, may not really be in a position to know which model is the best for you. It is OK to challenge their recommendation and ask them to justify why this particular brand is the one for you.
• Do research: Read about the hearing aid that was recommended. Does it seem like it will suit your lifestyle? Does it have more or fewer features than you need? 
• Be aware of sales targets: Many high street retailers have specific tie-ins to a particular manufacturer/brand. The hearing aid they have suggested may still be the correct one for you, but do your research so that you know why they might have recommended it.

For most people, the answer is yes. But it's never that simple.

The majority of hearing problems affect the high frequencies a lot more than the low ones. Therefore, open fitting hearing aids sound a lot more natural and ones that block your ears up can make your own voice sound like you are talking with your head in a bucket. Therefore, in-ear aids tend to be less natural.

However, the true answer is we can't tell until we have had a look in your ears to assess the size of your ear canal, and until we have tested your hearing to see which frequencies are being affected.

People with wider ear canals tend to have more flexibility, also there are open fitting modular CIC hearing aids now that do not block your ears.

There is also the age-old rule to consider, that a hearing aid will not help you if it's sat in the drawer gathering dust. If the only hearing aid you would be happy wearing is one that people can't see, then that's what you should get.

Most people can adapt to any type of hearing aid, as long as they know what to expect. Have an honest conversation with your audiologist as to what your needs are.

If you have significant hearing loss in both ears, you should be wearing two hearing aids. Here are the audiological reasons why:

Localisation: The brain decodes information from both ears and compares and contrasts them. By analysing the minuscule time delays as well as the difference in the loudness of each sound reaching the ears, the person is able to accurately locate a sound source. 

Simply put, if you have better hearing on one side than the other, you can't accurately tell what direction sounds are coming from.

Less amplification is required: A phenomenon known as “binaural summation” means that the hearing aids can be set at a lower and more natural volume setting than if you wore only one hearing aid.

Head shadow effect: High frequencies, the part of your hearing that gives clarity and meaning to speech sounds, cannot bend around your head. Only low frequencies can. Therefore, if someone is talking on your unaided side, you are likely to hear that they are speaking, but be unable to tell what they have said.

Noise reduction: The brain has its own built-in noise reduction, which is only really effective when it is receiving information from both ears. If only one ear is aided, even with the best hearing aid in the world, it will be difficult for you to hear in background noise as your brain is trying to retain all of the sounds (including background noise) rather than filtering them out.

Sound quality: We are designed to hear in stereo. Only hearing from one side sounds a lot less natural to us.

Fancy some further reading on this topic?  You can read about why two hearing aids are better than one in our article, hearing aids for Both Ears, here