Do you have hearing difficulties? If yes, do you occasionally find that it feels like work just to understand what the people near you are saying? You are not alone. The sensation that listening and understanding is demanding work is typical among individuals with hearing impairment – even the ones that use hearing aids.
As though that was not bad news enough, it may not be just your ability to hear that is impacted, but also cognitive functions. In newly released studies, scientists have found that hearing loss drastically increases your chances of contracting Alzheimer’s and dementia.
One particular research study was conducted by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine on 639 participants between the ages of 36 and 90 over a period of sixteen years. The data showed that 58 study participants – 9 percent of the total – had developed dementia and 37 – 6% – had developed Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers found that for every 10 decibels of hearing loss, the individuals’ odds of developing dementia increased by 20%; the more significant the degree of hearing loss, the higher their chance of dementia.
A different study of 1,984 people, also sixteen years in duration, demonstrated similar results linking hearing loss and dementia. In this second study, researchers also found decline of cognitive functions among the hearing-impaired over the course of the study. The hearing-impaired individuals developed reduced thinking capacity and memory loss 40% faster than participants with normal hearing. A far more surprising conclusion in both studies was that the link between hearing loss and dementia held true even if the participants used hearing aids.
Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain this apparent link between hearing loss and loss of cognitive faculties. One of these explanations relates to the question that started this article, about needing to work harder to hear; this has been called cognitive overload. The theory is that among the hearing-impaired, the brain tires itself out so much working to hear that it cannot concentrate on the meaning of the speech that it is hearing. This can bring about social isolation, which has been linked to dementia risk in other research studies. A second theory is that neither hearing loss nor dementia is the cause of the other, but that each are caused by an unknown mechanism that could be genetic, vascular, or environmental.
While the individual with hearing loss probably finds these study results dismaying, there is a good side with valuable lessons to be derived from them.For individuals who wear hearing aids, it is important to have your aids tuned and re-programmed on a consistent basis. You don’t want to make you brain work harder than it needs to work in order to hear. The less you strain to hear, the more cognitive power your brain has in reserve to understand what is said, and remember it. Also, if loss of hearing is related to dementia, knowing this may lead to interventional methods that can delay its onset.
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