Hearing Innovations - Full service audiologist with the best selection of hearing aids in Youngstown and Liberty OH areas. See us for hearing tests, custom ear protection, tinnitus treatment, ear wax removal, hearing aid repair. Hearing Innovations explains the connection between hearing loss and loss of cognitive abilities.

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Is Hearing Loss be an Indicator of Loss of Cognitive Abilities?
For people reading this who’ve suffered some type of hearing loss, do you
ever find yourself having to work really hard to understand what is being
said to you or around you? This is a sensation that happens even to people
wearing hearing aids, because in order for them to work well you have to
have them fitted and tuned properly, and then get used to wearing them.
This frequent phenomenon may affect more than your hearing; it might also
influence your memory and your cognitive abilities. The latest research
studies have revealed that there is a solid relationship between hearing
loss and your odds of contracting
Alzheimer’s and dementia.
One such research study was
conducted by the Johns Hopkins
School of Medicine on 639
participants between the ages of 36
and 90 16-year period. The
investigators found that at the
conclusion of the study, 58 of the
participants (9 percent) had developed dementia, and 37 (5.8 percent) had
been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. On top of that, the greater their
degree of hearing impairment, the higher was the chance of developing
dementia; for every 10 decibels of hearing loss, the odds of dementia went
up 20%.
A different research study of 1,984 people, showed comparable results
linking dementia and hearing loss. In this second study, researchers also
found degradation of cognitive functions among the hearing-impaired over
the course of the data gathering. When compared with participants with
normal hearing, those with hearing loss developed memory loss 40 percent
faster. A crucial, but disturbing, finding in both studies was that the adverse

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cognitive effects were not diminished by using hearing aids. Several
hypotheses have been put forth to explain this seeming link between
hearing loss and loss of cognitive faculties. One of these explanations
relates to the question that began this article, about having to work harder
to hear; this has been called cognitive overload. The cognitive overload
hypothesis suggests that the hearing-impaired individual expends so much
brainpower working to hear, that the brain is tired and has a diminished
capacity to understand and absorb verbal information. The ensuing lack of
understanding can cause social isolation, a factor that has been
demonstrated in other research studies to cause dementia. A second
theory is that neither dementia nor hearing loss is the cause of the other,
but that both are caused by an unknown mechanism that could be
environmental, vascular or genetic.
Despite the fact that these study outcomes are a little dismaying, there is
hope that comes from them. For individuals who use hearing aids, it’s
important to have your aids tuned and re-programmed on a consistent
basis. You shouldn’t make you brain work harder than it has to work in
order to hear. The less effort expended in the mechanics of hearing, the
more brainpower available for comprehension. Also, if hearing loss is
related to dementia, knowing this might lead to interventional techniques
that can postpone its development.

3.
Hearing
Innovations
|
(330)
423-­‐0498|
http://betterhearing.net
Discover
more
great
content
here:
https://twitter.com/betterhearing4u
http://www.youtube.com/user/hearinginnovations
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