Make no mistake: there are several ways that you can preserve your mental acuity and ward off disorders like dementia, cognitive decline, and Alzheimer’s disease. Social engagement and participation in the workforce are among the most significant. No matter the method, though, managing hearing loss by using hearing aids makes these activities a lot easier and contributes in its own way to combating cognitive problems.
These conditions, according to many studies, are frequently directly connected to hearing loss. This article will lay out the relationship between cognitive decline and hearing loss and how using hearing aids can decrease the likelihood of these conditions becoming an impending issue.
The Connection Between Hearing Loss And Cognitive Decline
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have carried out numerous studies over the years to examine the connection between cognitive decline and hearing loss. The same story was told by each study: cognitive decline was more common with people who experience hearing loss. Actually, one study demonstrated that individuals with hearing loss were 24% more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than people with healthy hearing.
Hearing loss alone does not cause dementia, but there is a link between these conditions. When you can’t properly process sound your brain has to work overtime according to leading theories. That means your brain is spending more valuable energy on relatively simple tasks, leaving a lot less of that energy for more challenging processes such as cognitive function and memory.
Your mental health can also be severely affected by hearing loss. Anxiety, depression, and social isolation have all been linked to hearing loss and there may even be a connection with schizophrenia. Staying socially active, as noted, is the best way to protect your mental health and preserve your cognitive ability. In many examples, hearing loss causes people to feel self-conscious around others, which means they’ll turn to seclusion instead. The mental problems mentioned above are commonly the result of the lack of human contact and can ultimately produce significant cognitive decline.
Keeping Your Mental Faculties Acute With Hearing Aids
Hearing aids are perhaps one of the best tools we have to preserve mental sharpness and combat conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. The issue is that only one in seven of the millions of people over the age of 50 who suffer from hearing loss actually wear a hearing aid. People may avoid hearing aids because they’ve had a negative experience in the past or perhaps they have some kind of stigma, but in fact, hearing aids have been shown to help people maintain their cognitive function by helping them hear better.
There are situations where particular sounds will need to be relearned because they’ve been forgotten after prolonged hearing damage. It’s important to help your brain get back to processing more important tasks and hearing aids can do just that by preventing this issue in the first place and helping you relearn any sounds the brain has forgotten.
Contact us today to find out what options are available to help you begin hearing better in this decade and beyond.