Taking Care of Your Hearing and Vision Slows Cognitive Decline by 50-75%

As you get older, it is very common to lose some of your hearing or vision capacity.  This is a burden in itself, but did you know that it also has a detrimental effect on your mental capabilities?

Hearing Loss & Cognitive Decline

Let’s look at hearing first. Noise-induced hearing loss is a very common condition, afflicting about one in ten adults by the age of 40. Worse, many people refuse to believe that they have hearing loss until about 8 years after first noticing it. This is a huge head-start for age-related cognitive decline to develop.

Diseases like Alzheimer’s are on the rise, and cognitive decline in older age is a very real risk. Fortunately, researchers are finding out more about how we can keep our brains healthy. In joint studies carried out by universities in the UK and US, a substantial connection has been found between treating hearing and vision loss and improved cognitive performance.

"We found the rate of cognitive decline was slowed by 75 percent following the adoption of hearing aids," says Asri Maharani, a researcher at the University of Manchester in the division of neuroscience and experimental psychology and one of the writers of the paper, which was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society this year. That’s right, your rate of decline could be cut by three quarters with hearing aids.

The academics used information from 2000 American older adults who had participated in a large-scale survey called the Health and Retirement Study, before and after they had begun using hearing aids.

Cognition was assessed by undertaking a series of one-on-one memory tests every two years from 1996 to 2014. One of the memory tests included trying to remember a list of 10 words after being initially distracted with another task. These results were compared with thousands of people who had not received hearing aids.

The academics were surprised by the findings. "We weren't expecting that hearing aid use would eliminate cognitive decline. That's just not going to happen", explains Piers Dawes, a fellow author of the study. "But the reduction in the rate of change is quite substantial. It's a very intriguing finding."

But what explains the connection between hearing problems and cognitive decline? The authors of the study are not 100% sure, but they have some suggestions. “Isolation, stigma and the resultant lack of physical activity that are linked to hearing and vision problems might have something to do with it," said Dawes.

Dina Rollins, an audiologist in Silver Spring, MD agrees. "Stimulating your ears stimulates the nerves that stimulate your brain,” she says. With hearing aids, "we're giving your ears back what they're missing, and giving your brain what it needs to make sense of what you're hearing,"

This makes you more likely to be socially engaged. If you are not able to hear the people around you, you talk less when you are out, and you will be less inclined to go to future social events. This is especially true for men, who might fear that revealing their hearing loss to others makes them appear less independent, and thus, manly.

With these results, it might be obvious to all concerned that getting hearing aids is an easy decision to make. but the reality is more complicated than that. "No one wants to wear a hearing aid," says Rollins. There’s still an unfair stigma that comes with hearing aids. People see them as something from an older generation, and if they get hearing aids, they are worried they may appear. However, many of today’s modern hearing aids are very discreet and come with features that will please even the most tech-obsessed!

Cataracts and the brain

The other part of the study involved cataracts and the rate of cognitive decline. The writers looked at British people from the Longitudinal Study of Ageing before and after cataract surgery and compared their cognitive skills with those who have never had the operation. they found that the rate of cognitive decline was reduced by half.

Restoring good vision and hearing can't eliminate cognitive decline. The authors of both acknowledge that although the results are exciting, they are not enough to suggest there is a causal relationship between one and the other.  We have to consider that factors such as diet and physical activity have a huge effect.  At the same time, these studies do suggest that the right medical interventions have the potential to significantly slow the process, and that is a step in the right direction.

Contact Orange County Physicians’ Hearing Services to start treating your health today

Are you concerned about your hearing abilities? If you are ready to reconnect to the sounds of your life, contact Orange County Physicians’ Hearing Services to schedule a consultation and hearing test today!