It’s an unfortunate fact of life that hearing loss is part of the aging process. Roughly 38 million individuals suffer from hearing loss in the U . S ., but many people choose to dismiss it because they look at it as just a part of aging. But beyond the ability to hear, disregarding hearing loss can have severe adverse side effects.
Why do many people decide to just deal with hearing loss? According to an AARP study, more than one-third of senior citizens consider hearing loss to be a minor issue that can be handled fairly easily, while cost was a concern for more than half of individuals who took part in the study. The consequences of ignoring hearing loss, though, can be a lot higher as a result of complications and side effects that come with leaving it untreated. Here are the most likely adverse effects of neglecting hearing loss.
Fatigue
Most people won’t instantly connect the dots from fatigue to hearing loss. Instead, they will attribute fatigue to countless different ideas, such as slowing down because of aging or a side-effect of medication. The reality is that the less you’re able to hear, the more your body struggles to make up for it, leaving you feeling drained. Imagine you are taking a test such as the SAT where your brain is entirely focused on processing the task at hand. You would probably feel fairly depleted when you’re done. The same situation happens when you struggle to hear: your brain is working to fill in the blanks you’re missing in conversations – which, when there is too much background noise, is even harder – and simply trying to process information uses precious energy. This kind of chronic tiredness can affect your health by leaving you too tired to take care of yourself, skipping out on things like going to the gym or cooking healthy meals.
Decline of Brain Function
Hearing loss has been connected, by several Johns Hopkins University studies, to reduced cognitive functions , accelerated loss of brain tissue, and dementia. While these links are correlations, instead of causations, it’s theorized by researchers that, once again, the more frequently you need to fill in the conversational blanks, which consumes mental resources, the less you have to give attention to other things like memorization and comprehension. And decreasing brain function, as we age is, directly linked to an additional draw on our mental resources. What’s more, having a routine exchange of information and ideas, often through conversation, is believed to help seniors remain mentally fit and can help decrease the process of mental decline. Luckily, cognitive specialist and hearing specialist can use the recognized connection between mental decline and hearing loss to collaborate to carry out research and establish treatments that are promising in the near future.
Concerns With Mental Health
The National Council on the Aging found, from a study of more than two thousand senior citizens, that mental health problems that have a negative social and emotional impact, are more prevalent if there is also neglected hearing loss. It is obvious that there is a link between hearing loss and mental health issues since, in social and family situations, individuals who suffer from hearing loss have a difficult time communicating with others. Ultimately, feelings of separation could develop into depression. If left untreated, anxiety and even paranoia can surface due to these feelings of isolation and exclusion. Hearing aids have been proven to help in the recovery from depression, although anybody suffering from depression, anxiety, or paranoia should talk to a mental health professional.
Cardiovascular Disease
If one part of your body, which is an interconnected machine, stops working properly, it might have an affect on seemingly unrelated bodily functions. This is the situation with our hearts and ears. As a case in point, if blood flow from the heart to the inner ear is restricted, hearing loss may occur. Diabetes, which is also connected to heart disease, can impact the inner ear’s nerve endings and cause information sent from the ear to the brain to become scrambled. Individuals who have detected some amount of hearing loss and who have a history of diabetes or heart disease in their families should contact both a hearing and cardiac specialist to figure out whether the hearing loss is actually caused by a heart condition, since neglecting the symptoms could lead to serious, possibly fatal repercussions.
If you want to start living a healthier life, reach out to us so we can help you address any adverse effects of hearing loss that you might suffer.
