Let’s be clear: Keeping your mind sharp and avoiding cognitive conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s can be accomplished in several ways. Staying socially active is one of the most significant while participating in the workforce appears to be another. No matter the method, though, treating hearing loss by using hearing aids makes these activities a lot easier and contributes in its own way to battling cognitive problems.
These disorders, according to numerous studies, are often directly connected to hearing loss. This article will lay out the relationship between cognitive decline and hearing loss and how wearing hearing aids can decrease the probability of these conditions becoming an impending problem.
How Hearing Loss Contributes to Cognitive Decline
Scientists at Johns Hopkins have conducted numerous studies over the years to examine the link between cognitive decline and hearing loss. The results of each study revealed the same story: 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 people who have diminished hearing.
Hearing loss alone does not cause dementia, but there is a link between the two conditions. The leading theories suggest that your brain must work overtime when you can’t properly process sounds. That means that tasks like memory and cognition, which demand more energy, can’t function at full capacity because your brain has to spend so much of that energy on more basic tasks.
Hearing loss can also have a serious affect on your mental health. Research has shown that hearing loss is connected to anxiety, depression, and may even influence schizophrenia. Remaining socially engaged, as mentioned, is the best way to maintain your mental health and preserve your cognitive ability. In many cases, hearing loss causes individuals to feel self-conscious around others, which means they’ll turn to seclusion instead. The lack of human interaction can produce the other mental health problems listed above and eventually lead to cognitive impairments.
How a Hearing Aid Can Help You Keep Your Resolution
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 out of seven of the millions of people over the age of 50 who deal with hearing impairment actually use a hearing aid. People may avoid hearing aids because they’ve had a negative experience in the past or maybe they hold some kind of stigma, but in fact, hearing aids have been proven to help people maintain their cognitive function by helping them hear better.
There are situations where certain sounds will have to be relearned because they’ve been forgotten after prolonged hearing damage. A hearing aid can either prevent that scenario from happening in the first place or assist you in relearning those sounds, which will let your brain focus on other, more important tasks.
Get in touch with us right away to discover what options are available to help you start hearing better in this decade and beyond.