About 28 million people could benefit from using hearing aids. This means that 28 million people could here their environment clearer if they had hearing aids. But your hearing aids will also help you take advantage of some other health benefits.
Your physical and mental health can, as it so happens, be improved by something as straight forward as using hearing aids. These tiny devices can help stop (or forestall) everything from injury from a fall to depression. In many ways, your hearing aids can help you stay on your feet.
Hearing Aids And Mental Health Benefits
Modern medical studies have solidly established a link between hearing loss and cognitive decline. Mental illnesses such as depression, cognitive decline, anxiety, and dementia, in line with current thinking, can be induced by hearing loss due to a combination of physical, mental and social factors.
So it’s not surprising that recent analyses has shown that hearing aids might have significant mental health benefits.
Decreasing Your Chances of Dementia
As reported by one study, wearing your hearing aids can help decrease your risk of developing dementia by as much as 18%. And all you have to do to make the most of this amazing benefit is remember to wear your hearing daily.
Other research has indicated that wearing your hearing aids regularly can slow the onset of dementia by up to two years. Further research needs to be done to help clarify and duplicate these findings, but it’s definitely encouraging.
Reduce Anxiety And Depression
Anxiety and depression aren’t symptoms that are unique to people who have hearing loss. But there is enough evidence to indicate that people who have hearing loss are at a higher risk of developing both anxiety and depression as time goes on.
Wearing your hearing aids can help you stay socially active and mentally engaged. Hearing aids can be particularly helpful if those factors are contributing to depression and anxiety.
You Won’t Feel as Lonely
While it might not sound as dire or important as dementia, for people who have untreated hearing loss, isolation can be a real issue, caused by and exacerbating a sense of social solitude. That social isolation can cause significant changes to your disposition. So it can be an enormous advantage if your hearing aids can help you stay socially active.
To be sure, this is connected to your hearing aids’ ability to decrease the risks of depression, for instance. All of these health concerns, to some extent, are in some manner linked.
The Physical Benefits of Hearing Aids
There is some data which suggests that as hearing loss symptoms become more obvious, your risk of stroke goes up. But that specific research is definitely in the preliminary stages. The most pronounced (and perceptible) physical benefit of hearing aids is a little simpler: you won’t fall as much.
This occurs for two reasons:
- Fall detection: At times, it’s not the fall that’s hazardous. Rather, it’s your inability to get back up that creates possible danger. Many new models of hearing aids come with fall detection built in. With specific settings enabled, when you take a tumble, a call will immediately be made to one of your pre-programmed emergency contacts so they will know to check up on you.
- Situational awareness: With hearing aids, your situational awareness will be improved letting you stay away of obstacles and avoid falling down. For instance, if your pet is running up to you, you hear them and expect them to come racing around the corner.
As you get older falling down can have a disastrous effect on your health. So avoiding falls (or minimizing the damage from falls) can be a substantial benefit that ripples throughout your general health.
Make Sure You Wear Your Hearing Aids
These advantages, it’s worth pointing out, pertain to individuals who have hearing impairment. Hearing aids won’t, for instance, help someone with healthy hearing avoid falling.
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 wear your hearing aids.