That hearing loss can affect your brain has been established in numerous studies. (Just take a look at some of our past blog posts.) The good news is, it’s also been confirmed that you can recover some of that cognitive ability by using hearing aids.
This is not to say that hearing aids are somehow going to make you smarter. But there’s some compelling research that suggests cognitive ability can be improved by wearing hearing aids lowering your risk for anxiety, depression, and dementia.
Your Brain is in Charge of a Large Portion of Your Hearing
It’s essential to realize how large a part your brain plays in hearing if you are going to understand the link between cognition and your ears. It’s the brain’s task to transform sound vibrations into recognizable sound information. So as your hearing diminishes, the regions of your brain that decipher those sounds suddenly have much less to do.
When combined with other factors (such as social solitude), the changes in your brain (and hearing) can trigger the onset of certain mental health issues. In individuals with neglected hearing loss, it’s not uncommon to observe an increase in the chances for depression, anxiety, and dementia.
Your essentially “treating” your hearing loss when you’re wearing hearing aids. That means:
- Because you’ll be able to couple your hearing aids with regular monitoring and other treatment options, you can help keep your hearing from getting increasingly worse.
- You won’t be as likely to isolate yourself socially. Interactions will be easier to understand and follow, so you’ll be more likely to engage.
- Your brain will stay healthier if it continues doing work; your brain will be getting a more consistent workout in the parts responsible for hearing.
Staying Attentive
Hearing aids enhance your brain and your social life and can lessen depression, anxiety, and dementia.
- Creating stronger awareness: Sometimes, because you’re not mindful of your surroundings, you may have a fall. Diminished ability to hear can drastically reduce your situational awareness. Figuring out what direction sound is originating from can be as difficult as hearing sound in general. Without treatment, this can end up leading to injury or a fall.
- Inner ear health: Loss of hearing in and of itself will not trigger inner ear injury. However, sometimes loss of hearing and inner ear damage have a common cause. So treating the one can help you treat the other, and in many cases, a hearing aid is a part of that treatment routine.
- Modern technology: Hearing aids have started containing novel technology that can actually notify emergency contacts (or emergency services) when a person wearing the hearing aids experiences a fall. This can prevent long lasting injuries and complications although it won’t prevent the fall itself.
Actually, you’re more likely to avoid a fall when you’re wearing hearing aids. A hearing aid keeps you more alert, more perceptive, and more connected, boosting cognitive abilities and physical health simultaneously.
Start Using Your Hearing Aid
None of this has even yet dealt with the basic hearing advantages of hearing aids. So it seems as if when you factor in all of the positive aspects linked to wearing hearing aids, it’s a no brainer. (not something you need to overthink).
The problem is that many people don’t know they have hearing loss. When your hearing fades away slowly, you might have a difficult time recognizing it. That’s why it’s significant to get your hearing checked regularly. Without hearing aids, loss of hearing can worsen a wide variety of other health issues.
Hearing aids will minimize the chances of physical injury while helping to delay dementia and depression. That’s an impressive combination of advantages that hearing aids offer, and they also help your hearing.