Make no mistake: there are a number of ways that you can maintain your mental acuity and fend off disorders like cognitive decline, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease. Staying social is one of the most significant while engaging in the workforce seems to be another. Regardless of the method, though, treating hearing loss by using hearing aids makes these activities a lot easier and contributes in its own way to preventing cognitive issues.
These disorders, according to many studies, are often directly linked to hearing loss. This article will lay out the connection between cognitive decline and hearing loss and how wearing hearing aids can decrease the likelihood of these conditions becoming an impending problem.
The Link Between Hearing Loss And Cognitive Decline
The connection between hearing loss and cognitive decline has been analyzed numerous times over the years by scientists at Johns Hopkins. The results of each study told the same story: people with hearing loss suffered from dementia and cognitive decline in higher rates than those without. In fact, one study revealed that people with hearing loss were 24% more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than those with healthy hearing.
Hearing loss by itself does not cause dementia, but there is a connection between the two conditions. When you can’t properly process sound your brain has to work harder according to leading theories. That means that tasks such as cognition and memory, which demand more energy, can’t function at full capacity because your brain has to use so much of that energy on more basic tasks.
Hearing loss can also have a serious affect on your mental health. Anxiety, social isolation, and depression have all been linked to hearing loss and there could even be a connection with schizophrenia. All of these conditions also lead to cognitive decline – as mentioned above, one of the optimum ways to maintain your mental acuity is to stay socially active. Often, people who have hearing loss will resort to self isolation because they feel self conscious in public. The mental issues mentioned above are frequently the outcome of the lack of human interaction and can inevitably produce significant cognitive decline.
Keeping Your Mental Faculties Acute With Hearing Aids
One of the best resources we have to combat dementia and other cognition disorders such as Alzheimer’s is hearing aids. Unfortunately, the majority of people who need hearing aids don’t use them. It may be a stigma or a previous bad experience that keeps people wearing hearing aids, but the fact is that they are proven to help people hear better and maintain their cognitive functions for longer periods of time.
There are circumstances where specific sounds will have to be relearned because they’ve been forgotten after prolonged hearing damage. It’s important to let 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.
If you want to learn what options are available to help you begin hearing better get in touch with us.