About 28 million individuals could be helped by using hearing aids. This means that 28 million people could here their world clearer if they had hearing aids. But your hearing aids will also help you take advantage of some other health advantages.
Your mental and physical health can, as it so happens, be improved by something as straight forward as using hearing aids. Everything from depression to a risk of falling can be delayed or even prevented by these gadgets. In more ways than one, your hearing aids can help keep you on your feet.
Mental Health Advantages of Hearing Aids
Modern medical studies have firmly demonstrated a connection between hearing loss and cognitive decline. Mental illnesses like depression, cognitive decline, anxiety, and dementia, in line with current thinking, can be triggered by hearing loss due to a mix of mental, physical and social factors.
So it’s not surprising that recent analyses has shown that hearing aids may have substantial mental health advantages.
Dementia Risks Reduced
Your risk of dementia can be lowered, as reported by one study, by almost 20%. That’s a wonderful benefit when all you have to do is remember to wear your hearing aids each day.
In other research, the onset of dementia was slowed by as much as two years by using hearing aids. Further research needs to be done to help explain and duplicate these results, but it’s certainly encouraging.
Anxiety And Depression Can be Reduced
Countless individuals suffer from anxiety and depression even if hearing loss is not a problem for them. But there is enough evidence to suggest that those who have hearing loss are at increased risk of developing both anxiety and depression as time goes on.
When you use hearing aids, you tend to stay more mentally focused and socially engaged. Hearing aids can be especially helpful if those factors are contributing to depression and anxiety.
You’ll Feel Less Lonely
While dementia might sound much more extreme, isolation can be a serious issue for individuals who suffer from neglected hearing loss, caused by and exacerbating a sense of social isolation. That social separation can cause significant changes to your disposition. So it can be an enormous advantage if your hearing aids can help you continue to be socially involved.
And this is an excellent reason why, for example, your hearing aid can help counter conditions like depression. All of these health issues, to some extent, are in some way connected.
Hearing Aids And Physical Advantages
There is some evidence which indicates that as hearing loss symptoms become more noticeable, your risk of stroke goes up. But that particular research is undoubtedly in the preliminary stages. It’s a little easier to recognize the more obvious physical benefit of hearing aids: you won’t fall as much.
This takes place for two reasons:
- Fall detection: In some cases, it’s not the fall that’s hazardous. Instead, it’s that you can’t get back up that produces possible danger. Many new designs of hearing aids come with fall detection built in. With certain settings equipped, when you have a fall, a call will immediately be made to one of your pre-programmed emergency contacts so they will know to check on you.
- Situational awareness:
Falling can have very substantial health effects, particularly as you get older. So preventing falls (or decreasing the damage from falling) can be a huge advantage that ripples throughout your general health.
Be Certain to Wear Your Hearing Aids
These advantages, it’s worth mentioning, pertain to individuals who suffer from hearing impairment. Hearing aids won’t, for instance, help somebody with healthy hearing avoid falling.
But if you do suffer from hearing loss, the best thing you can do for your hearing, and for overall health, is to wear your hearing aids.
