The benefits experienced by older Americans using hearing aids can be seen in a multitude of ways. Having a hearing instrument can make communicating with friends easier and make participating in activities less frustrating and more enjoyable. Hearing instruments may now even be more beneficial according to new research conducted by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in partnership with The National Institute on Aging, which has shown a correlation between hearing loss and dementia. According to Traci Pederson for PsychCentral, “the greater the hearing loss, the higher the risk of developing the disease”. New research is showing that there is a link between those in the aging population who experience hearing loss being at a much higher risk for developing dementia. This research could suggest that those avoiding their visit to a hearing aid specialist are in actuality increasing their chances for developing the disease and those that treat their hearing loss early may be able to avoid the disease all together or postpone its onset.
Digital hearing aids were already known to better their user’s lives but this research makes scheduling a hearing test even more urgent. According to Pederson, there has been and continues to be great amounts of research going into the causes of hearing loss so that the need for hearing instruments can be avoided however there has yet to be enough research conducted to understand what implications there may be as a result of hearing loss. With the lack of research available, the magnitude of good that can come from a hearing aid, in regards to dementia, isn’t entirely clear but what this study has shown is startling. Over 600 people participated in the study, none with dementia and one fourth had hearing loss at the study’s start. By the study’s conclusion, it was shown that those with hearing loss, in comparison to those without, were up to five times more likely to develop dementia.
The reason for such a relationship between those in need of a hearing device and their diagnoses of dementia could be caused by one or both of two factors. The first factor discussed by Pederson is that due to the difficulty created for those experiencing hearing loss, untreated by a hearing instrument specialist, their minds must work harder to decipher information and this added stress on the brain causes the disease. When people experience hearing loss, the struggle generated to hear conversations and noise around them induces stress and frustration that can possibly overload the brain and lead to dementia.
Another factor that could lead to the relationship between hearing loss and dementia is isolation. There is a preexisting link that has been established between those that remove themselves from social settings and interactions and those that develop dementia. This symbiotic relationship may be the explanation for hearing loss and dementia’s linkage due to the fact that a classic symptom of hearing loss that is not treated with a hearing device is that people remove themselves from environments they find difficult to participate in. People that experience hearing loss often cannot hear discussions and therefore cannot participate in them and so they begin to isolate. This correlation between the two conditions is startling and begs that more research be conducted on the matter.
