Let’s be clear: Keeping your mind clear and preventing cognitive conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s can be accomplished in numerous ways. Staying socially active is one of the most important while participating in the workforce appears to be another. Whatever methods you employ to deal with cognitive decline, however, keeping your hearing strong and using hearing aids if you need them will be immensely helpful.
These disorders, according to many 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 reduce the probability of these conditions becoming an imminent issue.
How Hearing Loss Contributes to Cognitive Decline
The link between hearing loss and cognitive decline has been examined several times over the years by researchers at Johns Hopkins. The results of each study revealed the same story: cognitive decline was more common with individuals who experience hearing loss. One study showed, in fact, that there was a 24% higher instance of Alzheimer’s in people who have impaired hearing.
Even though dementia isn’t directly caused by hearing loss there is definitely a connection. The primary theories indicate that your brain has to work overtime when you can’t properly process sounds. That means your brain is spending more valuable energy on fairly simple activities, leaving a lot less of that energy for more advanced processes like memory or cognitive functions.
Your mental health can also be seriously impacted by hearing loss. Anxiety, social isolation, and depression have all been associated with hearing loss and there might even be a connection with schizophrenia. Remaining socially active, as mentioned, is the best way to protect your mental health and preserve your cognitive ability. In many cases, hearing loss causes individuals to feel self-conscious out in public, which means they’ll turn to isolation instead. The lack of human contact can cause the other mental health problems listed above and potentially 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 maintain mental sharpness and fight conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Unfortunately, most people who need hearing aids don’t use them. 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 retain their cognitive functions for longer periods of time.
There are situations where specific sounds will have to be relearned because they’ve been forgotten after extended hearing damage. It’s important to let your brain go back to processing more important tasks and hearing aids can do just that by stopping this problem in the first place and helping you relearn any sounds the brain has forgotten.
If you want to find out what options are available to help you begin hearing better get in touch with us.