Hearing aids could benefit approximately 28 million people. What this means is that 28 million people would here their world better 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 turns out, be helped by something as simple as using hearing aids. These little devices can help counter (or delay) everything from injury from a fall to depression. Your hearing aids can literally help you stay on your feet.
Hearing Aids And Mental Health Advantages
Modern medical studies have solidly demonstrated a link between cognitive decline and hearing loss. Mental illnesses including dementia, cognitive decline, anxiety, and depression, in line with current thinking, can be triggered by hearing loss due to a mix of physical, mental and social factors.
So the mental health advantages of hearing aids shouldn’t be very striking.
Dementia Risks Reduced
As reported by one study, wearing your hearing aids can help reduce your chances of developing dementia by as much as 18%. And all you have to do to take advantage of this awesome advantage is remember to wear your hearing daily.
Other research has suggested that wearing your hearing aids regularly can delay the onset of dementia by as many as a couple of years. This is very encouraging and with more research conducted to replicate and clarify these numbers, we can come a long way in the battle against cognitive decline and illness.
Decrease Depression And Anxiety
Depression and anxiety are not symptoms that are unique to people who have hearing loss. But there’s enough evidence to suggest that people who have hearing loss are at increased risk of developing both depression and anxiety as time passes.
Wearing your hearing aids can help keep you socially active and mentally connected. If those factors were contributing to anxiety and depression, they can help.
You’ll be Less Lonely
While dementia may sound much more extreme, loneliness can be a serious problem for individuals with untreated hearing loss, caused by and exacerbating a sense of social solitude. That social isolation can cause considerable changes to your mood. So it can be a tremendous benefit if your hearing aids can help you remain socially involved.
To be certain, this is connected to your hearing aids’ ability to reduce the risks of depression, for instance. All of these health problems, to a certain degree, are in some way connected.
Hearing Aids And Physical Benefits
There is some evidence which suggests that as hearing loss symptoms become more obvious, your risk of stroke goes up. But this research is in preliminary phases. It’s a little simpler to recognize the more obvious physical advantage of hearing aids: you’ll fall less often.
This takes place for two reasons:
- Situational awareness:
- Fall detection: Frequently, it’s getting back up after a fall that is the real hazard, not the fall itself. Fall detection is a built-in feature of many newer hearing aid designs. You can save emergency phone numbers into your phone which will be automatically called if you take a tumble.
As you age falling down can have a disastrous impact on your health. So preventing falls (or minimizing the damage from falling) can be a huge benefit that ripples throughout your general health.
Be Sure to Wear Your Hearing Aids
It’s worth noting that all of these benefits apply to those who have hearing ailments. Hearing aids won’t, for example, help someone with healthy hearing avoid falling.
But if you do have hearing loss, the best thing you can do for your hearing, and for the rest of your body, is to wear your hearing aids.