Hearing aids could benefit approximately 28 million people. This means that 28 million people could here their environment clearer if they had hearing aids. But your hearing aids can also help you enjoy some other health advantages.
Your physical and mental health can, as it turns out, be helped by something as easy as using hearing aids. These little devices can help stop (or delay) everything from depression to fall-induced-injury. In more ways than one, your hearing aids can help you stay on your feet.
Hearing Aids And Mental Health Advantages
The connection between neglected hearing loss and cognitive decline is pretty well demonstrated by modern medical studies. Mental illnesses such as depression, cognitive decline, anxiety, and dementia, in line with current thinking, can be induced by hearing loss due to a mix of physical, mental and social factors.
So the mental health benefits of hearing aids shouldn’t be very unexpected.
Lowering Your Chances of Dementia
Your chances of dementia can be reduced, as reported by one study, by nearly 20%. And all you have to do to take advantage of this awesome benefit is remember to wear your hearing every day.
In other research, the onset of dementia was delayed by as much as two years by using hearing aids. This is really encouraging and with more research conducted to replicate and clarify these numbers, we can come a long way in the battle against mental decline and illness.
Anxiety And Depression Can be Decreased
Depression and anxiety are not symptoms that are exclusive to those who suffer from hearing loss. But individuals with hearing loss have been shown to be at a higher risk of anxiety and depression over time.
Wearing your hearing aids can help you stay socially involved and mentally connected. If those factors were contributing to depression and anxiety, they can help.
You Won’t be as Lonely
While dementia may sound much more severe, for individuals with untreated hearing loss, loneliness can be a real issue, caused by and exacerbating a sense of social solitude. That social isolation can cause considerable changes to your mood. So being able to continue to be social and involved with help from your hearing aid can be a big benefit.
To be certain, this is connected to your hearing aids’ ability to reduce the risks of depression, for instance. All of these health concerns, 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 these studies are in preliminary stages. The most pronounced (and perceptible) physical benefit of hearing aids is a little more straightforward: you’ll fall less frequently.
There are a couple of reasons for this:
- Situational awareness: Hearing aids can improve your situational awareness.
- Fall detection: Often, it’s getting back up after a fall that is the real hazard, not the fall itself. Many new designs of hearing aids have fall detection built in. You can program emergency phone numbers into your phone which will be automatically called if you take a tumble.
As you get older falling down can have a disastrous impact on your health. So avoiding falls (or decreasing the damage from falling) can be a huge benefit that ripples throughout your general health.
Wear Your Hearing Aids Everyday
It’s worth keeping in mind that all of these advantages apply to individuals who have hearing ailments. If your hearing is healthy, then wearing a hearing aid will most likely not reduce your risk of dementia, for example.
But if you do suffer from hearing loss, the smartest thing you can do for your hearing, and for the rest of your body, is to use your hearing aids.
