Hearing loss and dementia are closely linked. For the millions of adults with hearing loss, and An estimated 150 million In the world who will be affected by dementia by 2050, figuring out how they are related is urgent and necessary to reduce the risk.
Hearing loss is now known to be a potential preventable cause of dementia, and research is building a case for hearing aids as one of the most powerful tools to protect against it. One Stady Johns Hopkins, for example, followed more than 600 adults for 12 years and found that mild hearing loss doubled the risk of dementia. Moderate hearing loss tripled the risk of dementia, and severe hearing loss increased the risk of dementia five times.
dementia It is a general term that refers to a person’s inability to think, communicate, and remember things clearly, which affects their mood, personality, and behavior. There are various causes, but the most common disease that leads to dementia is Alzheimer’s disease. The risk of dementia also increases with age, as does the risk of hearing loss.
about a third Many seniors suffer from hearing loss, so when hearing aids became available without a prescription last fall, many experts in medicine and public health celebrated. Not only are over-the-counter hearing aids cheaper, but fewer appointments and easier access mean more people will maintain oral language, a bridge to communication and cognition – our ability to think.
“Language and cognition are two distinct processes, but they are highly interdependent,” Brooke Hatfield, MD, associate director for health care services in speech-language pathology at the American Hearing-Speech-Language Association, said in an email. “Language serves as an internal framework for reasoning, problem-solving, memory, and other thinking skills.”
Here’s what we know about hearing loss, hearing aids, and perception.
Hearing loss and dementia
According to the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public HealthHearing loss is responsible for the largest number of “preventable” dementia cases, an offshoot of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This is compared to Other factors Which may affect the risk of dementia, such as high blood pressure and lower level of education, and the latter may be due to Social and economic challenges and other factors.
Researchers believe hearing loss has this effect because it prevents sound from entering the brain. If someone is struggling with hearing, their brain will have to strain to understand sound, which can speed up the aging process in the brain and limit a person’s ability to think and remember things, according to a fact sheet from the Cochlear Center.
Losing the ability to hear the people around you also limits your communication and contact with them, which can lead to social isolation – an existing public health problem among the elderly and elderly population. Social isolation was found to be associated with roughness 50% increase in risk of dementia and other health problems, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Taken together, the various theories about hearing loss and dementia may also be a “chicken or egg” scenario, according to Hatfield. indicated research which found that hearing loss is a marker of changes already underway in the brain, as opposed to changes resulting from hearing loss.
However, not everyone who has a hearing loss develops it over time, and the risk of dementia does not appear to be the same in people who are deaf for life. For people born deaf who use sign language to communicate, there is It does not appear to increase the risk of dementia Compared to the general population, according to the UK-based charity Social Welfare Institute for Excellence.
However, Hatfield says there is some concern about diagnosing dementia in deaf patients, due to the limitations of testing as well as the provider’s lack of experience working with people in the deaf community. But there is still a “protective factor” to staying connected and avoiding social isolation when it comes to dementia risk.
“It appears that the association with dementia and hearing loss is related to having a history of hearing that changes and therefore the brain changes in response to that, rather than being associated with the act of hearing itself,” Hatfield added.
Wildpixel / Getty Images
Can hearing aids protect against dementia?
Available search says yes.
a Stady Published last month in The Lancet it was found that people with hearing loss who also use hearing aids did not have an increased risk of dementia compared to people without hearing loss. In the study, researchers used data from the UK Biobank to look at health records and dementia diagnoses for a large group of adults between the ages of 40 and 69 from England, Scotland and Wales.
If “causation” is proven through further research, the authors write in the study, hearing aids “would offer a minimally invasive, cost-effective intervention to mitigate all or at least some of the effect of hearing loss on dementia.”
a Great systematic review From February also adds evidence that hearing aids for people who need them may help avoid the risk of dementia. The review looked at studies on hearing aid use and the risk of cognitive decline, and found that the use of “hearing restoration devices” was associated with a 19% reduction in long-term cognitive decline.
Read more: What is the right hearing for you? Here’s what you should know
How quickly can a hearing aid help?
The average time a person has to wait to get hearing loss treatment — a hearing aid, in many cases — is seven to nine years. But similar to other medical conditions, the earlier a person with hearing loss seeks treatment, the better their outcome, according to Priya Collins, co-director of hearing loss practice at ASHA.
“The longer a person who communicates through spoken language waits to get treatment, the more difficult it will be to adjust to hearing speech and environmental sounds again,” Collins said in an email. Think of hearing and language as a muscle we need to exercise, like a runner who runs several miles each week, she explains. If a runner takes an extended break from exercise, “she will not be at the level of athletic performance she was when her muscle/stamina used to work out.”
How long it takes someone to regain their language or performance after obtaining a hearing aid varies, Collins says. For example, there is evidence that the brain adjusts to a hearing aid after about four weeks. And while many people feel relief from “listening fatigue” almost immediately in situations where they are watching television or having a one-on-one conversation, they usually need more time to adjust to more “challenging” listening environments that require more discernment, such as restaurants or bars. or crowded family gatherings.
It also depends on how long the person has been without hearing and the severity of the hearing loss – going from hard of hearing to being immersed in a world full of sounds can be disturbing for some patients. Collins explains that this is why audiologists may adjust hearing aids gradually over time for patients, so that patients are not overwhelmed. (This is one notable pitfall of over-the-counter hearing aids and how they may fall short compared to prescription hearing aids fitted by a professional.)
“In short, there is no set period of time that it takes for the brain to adjust to amplification,” she said. “There is a lot of individual variation.”
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق