Hearing aids could benefit about 28 million people. This means that 28 million people could here their environment better if they wore hearing aids. But your hearing aids can also help you take advantage of some other health advantages.
It turns out that something as easy as wearing your hearing aids could help your mental and physical health. These little gadgets can help counter (or delay) everything from depression to fall-induced-injury. Your hearing aids can literally keep you on your feet.
Mental Health Advantages of Hearing Aids
Modern medical research has solidly established a connection between cognitive decline and hearing loss. The current thinking is that, for a mixture of social, mental, and physical factors, hearing loss can trigger an increased risk of mental illness, such as cognitive decline, anxiety, depression, and dementia.
So it’s no surprise that recent analyses has suggested that hearing aids may have significant mental health advantages.
Dementia Risks Reduced
Your risk of dementia can be lowered, according to one study, by nearly 20%. That’s a fantastic benefit when all you have to do is remember to wear your hearing aids on a daily basis.
In other studies, the arrival of dementia was delayed by as much as two years by wearing hearing aids. Further research has to be carried out to help clarify and replicate these results, but it’s certainly encouraging.
Anxiety And Depression Can be Decreased
Many individuals suffer from depression and anxiety even if hearing loss is not a problem for them. But there’s plenty of evidence to indicate that those who have hearing loss are at increased risk of developing both depression and anxiety as time passes.
Wearing your hearing aids can help keep you socially active and mentally connected. If those factors were contributing to depression and anxiety, they can help.
You Won’t be as Lonely
While dementia might sound much more extreme, for people with untreated hearing loss, isolation can be a genuine problem, social solitude often being the cause and worsening symptoms. That social isolation can cause considerable changes to your mood. So it can be a huge advantage if your hearing aids can help you continue to be socially active.
To be sure, this ties together with your hearing aids’ ability to decrease the risks of depression, for example. To a certain degree, all of these health problems connect in some way.
The Physical Advantages of Hearing Aids
There is some evidence which indicates that as hearing loss symptoms become more apparent, your danger of stroke goes up. But that specific research is obviously on the preliminary side. It’s a little easier to recognize the more obvious physical benefit of hearing aids: you’ll fall less often.
There are a couple of reasons for this:
- Fall detection: Frequently, it’s getting back up after a fall that is the significant hazard, not the fall itself. Fall detection is a standard feature of many newer hearing aid models. You can program emergency phone numbers into your phone which will automatically be called if you take a tumble.
- Situational awareness: This means you’ll be more capable of avoiding obstacles that could cause a fall. If your pet, for instance, is zooming out to say hi, you will be able to hear them coming and will be prepared for them to be running under your feet.
Falling can have very substantial health impacts, particularly as you age. So preventing falls (or decreasing the damage from falls) can be a major benefit that ripples throughout your general health.
Make Sure You Wear Your Hearing Aids
These advantages, it’s worth mentioning, pertain to individuals who suffer from hearing impairment. If your hearing is healthy, then wearing a hearing aid will most likely not reduce your risk of cognitive decline, for example.
But wearing your hearing aids, if you do have hearing loss, is the best thing you can do for overall health.
