Age-related hearing loss can have broad impacts across your whole life. Besides your ability to hear, your professional life, your social life, and even your mental clarity can also be impacted. Over time, hearing loss can profoundly impact the way your brain works in ways that immediately impact your mood, your memory, and more.
The relationship between cognition and hearing loss isn’t always apparent. People usually don’t associate their memory problems, for example, with hearing loss even though it’s one of the very first symptoms. Unfortunately, the truth is that memory loss and hearing loss are closely related.
What’s the link between memory and hearing loss? Well, hearing loss puts a distinctive strain on your brain and that’s, at least in part, the connection. Your mental abilities will usually improve when you manage your hearing loss.
How hearing loss impacts memory
Noticing hearing loss can frequently be challenging. It isn’t uncommon for individuals to miss the more subtle and early signs. Hearing loss might only be recognized, for people in this category, when it becomes more extreme. The development of hearing loss is usually gradual over time and that’s in part why it’s initially difficult to recognize. It’s commonly easy to ignore symptoms and, essentially, turn up the volume on your television a little more every few days (or weeks).
Another factor is how good the brain is at compensating for loss of sound. As a result, you might not notice that people are more difficult to understand. The positive thing about this is that your daily life will have fewer disruptions. However, compensating like this requires significant brain power. Here are a few consequences of asking your brain to do this over long time periods.:
- Chronic fatigue
- Unexplained irritability
- Memory loss or forgetfulness
If you’re having these symptoms, we’ll be able to inform you whether the root cause is hearing loss or not. If it’s determined that you’re dealing with hearing loss, we can help you formulate the best treatment plan.
Can hearing loss result in memory issues?
Obviously, your brain can be affected by hearing loss in other ways besides mental exhaustion. Forgetfulness is a prevalent symptom. When hearing loss has gone untreated, this is especially true. The cause and effect relationship is not entirely understood, but it’s clear that there is a relationship between hearing loss and the following problems:
- Increased risk of dementia: Individuals with untreated hearing loss often exhibit an increased risk of dementia and mental decline. This risk declines considerably when the hearing loss is treated and managed.
- Increased risk of depression and anxiety: Research has demonstrated that neglected hearing loss can also cause increases in both depression and anxiety over time. Again, this risk has been shown to drop when the underlying hearing loss is effectively managed.
- Social isolation: It isn’t unusual for individuals to disengage from social contact when they have untreated hearing loss. They will often steer clear of conversations and will do things like going to self-checkout rather than talking to a cashier. Over time, this sort of isolation can change the way your brain is working.
These issues are not unrelated, of course. Mental health issues, including depression, can be worsened by social isolation. Similarly, that kind of isolation can also raise your risk of developing dementia.
Does hearing loss cause cognitive decline?
One of the more severe impacts of untreated hearing loss is a significant increase in your risk of mental decline and dementia. It’s very clear that management of the symptoms helps substantially and scientists have a number of theories as to why. In other words, managing your hearing loss has been shown to reduce cognitive decline and decrease your risk of developing dementia down the road.
Dealing with hearing loss induced forgetfulness
The good news is, managing untreated hearing loss, if your forgetfulness is a result of hearing loss, will certainly help. Here are a few things we may recommend if hearing loss is detected:
- Regular screenings: Routine screenings can help you detect issues with your hearing before they become significant issues. Managing your hearing loss early can prevent mental strain.
- The use of hearing aids: Utilizing a hearing aid can help you hear better. This can lead to less strain on your mental abilities and an improvement in your social situation. Your risk of dementia, depression, and other possible problems can be reduced and your cognition can be improved by limiting your social isolation.
- Hearing protection: Some of the mental decline previously discussed can be avoided and further damage can be reduced by using hearing protection.
You can improve your memory
If hearing loss is causing you to be a little forgetful, it’s important to emphasize that it doesn’t need to remain that way. Once the strain on your brain is alleviated, your cognitive function, in many circumstances, will improve. When you hear better, your brain doesn’t need to work so hard, and that rest can do a world of good.
Make an appointment with us so that we can help you significantly improve your outlook and reduce your risk of other problems.