Let’s be clear: there are several ways that you can maintain your mental acuteness and stave off disorders like cognitive decline, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease. Social engagement and participation in the workforce are among the most notable. No matter the method, though, treating hearing loss through hearing aids makes these activities much easier and contributes in its own way to combating cognitive problems.
These conditions, according to many studies, are frequently directly linked to hearing loss. This article will lay out the link between cognitive decline and hearing loss and how wearing hearing aids can decrease the probability of these conditions becoming an impending problem.
The Link Between Hearing Loss And Cognitive Decline
The link between hearing loss and cognitive decline has been analyzed numerous times over the years by scientists at Johns Hopkins. The same story was told by each study: people with hearing loss struggled with dementia and cognitive decline in higher rates than those without. One study revealed, in fact, that there was a 24% higher instance of Alzheimer’s in individuals who have diminished hearing.
Even though dementia isn’t specifically caused by hearing loss there is definitely a link. The leading theories indicate that your brain has to work overtime when you can’t effectively process sounds. That means that activities like memory and cognition, which require more energy, can’t function at full capacity because your brain has to use so much of that energy on more simple tasks.
Your mental health can also be seriously impacted by hearing loss. Anxiety, social isolation, and depression have all been linked to hearing loss and there might even be a connection with schizophrenia. All of these conditions also lead to cognitive decline – as noted above, one of the optimum ways to preserve your mental acuity is to remain socially active. In many cases, hearing loss causes people to feel self-conscious out in public, which means they’ll turn to seclusion instead. The lack of human interaction can lead to the other mental health problems mentioned above and eventually lead to cognitive impairments.
How a Hearing Aid Can Help You Safeguard Your Mental Faculties
One of the best tools we have to fight dementia and other cognitive conditions such as Alzheimer’s is hearing aids. The issue is that only one in seven of the millions of people over the age of 50 who deal with hearing impairment actually use a hearing aid. People may stay away from hearing aids because they’ve had a bad experience in the past or maybe they hold some kind of stigma, but in fact, hearing aids have been proven to help people preserve their cognitive function by helping them hear better.
When your hearing is damaged for an extended amount of time, the brain could forget how to identify some common sounds and will need to relearn them. It’s essential to help your brain get back to processing more important tasks and hearing aids can do just that by preventing this problem in the first place and helping you relearn any sounds the brain has forgotten.
If you want to learn what options are available to help you start hearing better get in touch with us.