About 28 million people could benefit from wearing hearing aids. Which means that 28 million people would 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 mental and physical health can, as it turns out, be improved by something as easy as wearing hearing aids. Everything from a risk of falling to depression can be delayed or even stopped by these devices. In more ways than one, your hearing aids can help keep you on your feet.
Mental Health Benefits of Hearing Aids
Modern medical studies have solidly established a connection between cognitive decline and hearing loss. The current thinking is that, for a combination of mental, social, and physical causes, hearing loss can bring about an escalated danger of mental illness, like anxiety, depression, cognitive decline, and dementia.
So it’s not surprising that the latest analyses has shown that hearing aids might have substantial mental health advantages.
Reducing Your Risk of Dementia
As reported by one study, wearing your hearing aids can help reduce your risk of developing dementia by up to 18%. And all you need to do to take advantage of this awesome benefit is remember to wear your hearing daily.
Other research has suggested that wearing your hearing aids regularly can delay the onset of dementia by up to a couple of years. This is very encouraging and with more research conducted to duplicate and clarify these numbers, we can come a long way in the fight against mental decline and illness.
Reduce Depression And Anxiety
Countless individuals suffer from anxiety and depression even if they don’t have hearing loss. But people with hearing loss have been shown to be at a higher risk of depression and anxiety over time.
Wearing your hearing aids can help you stay socially involved and mentally connected. If those factors were contributing to depression and anxiety, they can help.
You’ll Feel Less Lonely
While dementia might sound much more extreme, for individuals who have neglected hearing loss, isolation can be a real issue, social solitude often being the cause and worsening symptoms. Your general mood can be dramatically impacted by social separation. So it can be a tremendous benefit if your hearing aids can help you continue to be socially active.
And this is a good reason why, for example, your hearing aid can help counter conditions such as depression. To a certain degree, all of these health problems are linked in some way.
The Physical Advantages of Hearing Aids
There’s some data which indicates that as hearing loss symptoms become more apparent, your risk of stroke goes up. But this research is in preliminary stages. The most pronounced (and perceptible) physical benefit of hearing aids is a little simpler: you won’t fall as often.
There are a couple of reasons for this:
- Fall detection: Many times, it’s getting back up after a fall that is the significant hazard, not the fall itself. Many new designs of hearing aids have fall detection as a standard feature. You can save emergency phone numbers into your phone which will be automatically called if you take a tumble.
- Situational awareness: With hearing aids, your situational awareness will be improved allowing you to stay away of obstacles and avoid falling. For example, if your pet is running to greet you, you hear them and expect them to come rushing around the corner.
Falling can have very significant health effects, especially as you age. So your general health can be safeguarded by reducing damage from falls or avoiding them altogether.
Make Sure You Wear Your Hearing Aids
These benefits, it’s worth pointing out, apply to people who have hearing impairment. If your hearing is healthy, then wearing a hearing aid will likely not reduce your risk of cognitive decline, for example.
But using your hearing aids, if you do have hearing loss, is the best thing you can do for overall health.