Have you noticed your hearing is not as quite as good as it used to be? You are not alone. According to the National Institutes of Health, about one third of U.S. adults over 65 experience hearing loss, with two thirds of adults over 70 suffering from hearing impairment severe enough to affect their daily communication.
Moderate to severe hearing loss is not only disruptive to one's life, but the population with hearing loss is also at an increased risk for developing dementia. It is speculated that this relationship may exist because many risk factors associated with dementia are also risk factors for hearing loss.
So, if you have hearing loss, does that mean you are doomed to develop dementia? Not at all. It is important that splashy headlines describing population research results are not misinterpreted in what they mean for an individual.
One important fact is that the majority of older adults will not experience dementia or mild cognitive impairment. However, those that do typically face many struggles, including reduced memory and increased social isolation. Untreated hearing loss only increases these challenges. Why? One theory suggests that hearing loss forces the brain to overcompensate, potentially affecting mental processes crucial for functions like memory and thinking. Another suggests that hearing loss contributes to social isolation, which has been associated with increased dementia risk.
The good news is hearing loss is very treatable and studies have shown that hearing aid use is associated with improvements in hearing-related quality of life, communication, and even social connectedness and some cognitive abilities. In other words, treating hearing loss positively affects some of the exact challenges associated with cognitive decline.
If you think your hearing has worsened, do not ignore your concerns. If you are interested in learning more about hearing loss and dementia and what some recent findings might mean for you as an individual, check out my community presentation on Hearing Loss an Alzheimer's here.
Signed,
Todd Ricketts, PhD
Professor and Vice Chair,
Hearing and Speech Sciences
Vanderbilt University