Let’s be clear: there are several ways that you can maintain your mental acuity and stave off disorders like dementia, cognitive decline, and Alzheimer’s disease. Remaining social is one of the most significant while participating in the workforce seems to be another. No matter the method, though, treating hearing loss through hearing aids makes these activities a great deal easier and contributes in its own way to preventing cognitive issues.
These conditions, according to many studies, are often directly linked to hearing loss. What follows is a look at why hearing loss can cause serious problems with your mental health and how strategies like hearing aids can help you keep your brain running at a higher level for a longer period of time.
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 results of each study revealed the same story: individuals with hearing loss suffered from dementia and cognitive decline in higher rates than those without. One study demonstrated, in fact, that there was a 24% higher instance of Alzheimer’s in individuals who have diminished hearing.
Hearing loss by itself does not cause dementia, but there is a connection between these conditions. The primary 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 efficiently because your brain has to use so much of that energy on more simple tasks.
Hearing loss can also have a severe affect on your mental health. Studies have shown that hearing loss is connected to anxiety, depression, and may even affect schizophrenia. Staying socially engaged, as mentioned, is the best way to safeguard your mental health and preserve your cognitive clarity. In many examples, hearing loss causes individuals to feel self-conscious out in public, which means they’ll turn to seclusion instead. The mental problems mentioned above are commonly the result of the lack of human interaction and can inevitably lead to serious cognitive decline.
How a Hearing Aid Can Help You Keep Your Resolution
Hearing aids are perhaps one of the best tools we have to maintain mental acuity and fight conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. The issue is that only one in seven of the millions of people 50 or older who deal with hearing impairment actually wear a hearing aid. People may steer clear of hearing aids because they’ve had a bad experience in the past or maybe they hold some kind of stigma, but the fact is that they are proven to help people hear better and preserve their cognitive functions for longer periods of time.
When your hearing is harmed for an extended amount of time, the brain could forget how to recognize some everyday sounds and will need to relearn them. A hearing aid can either stop that scenario from occurring in the first place or assist you in relearning those sounds, which will let your brain focus on other, more essential tasks.
If you want to learn what options are available to help you start hearing better give us a call.
