There Are Surprising Side Benefits to Hearing Aids

About 28 million individuals could benefit from wearing hearing aids. This means that 28 million people could here their world better if they had hearing aids. But your hearing aids will also help you enjoy some other health advantages.

Your physical and mental health can, as it turns out, be helped by something as straight forward as using hearing aids. These little gadgets can help counter (or forestall) everything from injury from a fall to depression. In more ways than one, your hearing aids can help you stay on your feet.

Hearing Aids And Mental Health Advantages

Modern medical research has solidly demonstrated a link between cognitive decline and hearing loss. Mental illnesses such as dementia, cognitive decline, anxiety, and depression, according to current thinking, can be induced 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 unexpected.

Reducing Your Chances of Dementia

Your chances of dementia can be lowered, as reported by one study, by nearly 20%. And all you need to do to make the most of this awesome benefit is remember to wear your hearing daily.

In other studies, the onset of dementia was delayed by as much as two years by wearing hearing aids. This is really encouraging and with more research conducted to duplicate and clarify these numbers, we can come a long way in the battle against mental decline and illness.

Reduce Anxiety And Depression

Countless people suffer from depression and anxiety even if hearing loss is not a problem for them. 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 keep you socially involved and mentally engaged. Hearing aids can be especially helpful if those factors are contributing to depression and anxiety.

You Won’t be as Lonely

While it might not seem as serious or imperative as dementia, loneliness can be a big problem for those who suffer from neglected hearing loss, social isolation often being the cause and adding fuel to the fire. That social separation can cause considerable changes to your mood. So being able to continue to be social and engaged with help from your hearing aid can be a huge benefit.

And this is an excellent reason why, for example, your hearing aid can help prevent conditions such as depression. To a certain degree, all of these health conditions are linked in some manner.

The Physical Benefits of Hearing Aids

There is some data which indicates that as hearing loss symptoms become more noticeable, your risk of stroke escalates. But these studies are in preliminary stages. The most obvious (and noticeable) physical advantage of hearing aids is a little more straightforward: you won’t fall as much.

There are a couple of explanations for this:

• Situational awareness: This means you’ll be more capable of steering clear of obstacles that could cause a fall.
• Fall detection: Many times, it’s getting back up after a fall that is the real hazard, not the fall itself. Many new designs of hearing aids have fall detection as a standard feature. You can program emergency phone numbers into your phone which will be automatically called if you take a tumble.

As you grow older falling down can have a disastrous impact on your health. So your general health can be safeguarded by reducing damage from falls or preventing them altogether.

Be Sure to Wear Your Hearing Aids

These advantages, it’s worth mentioning, pertain to individuals who have hearing impairment. If your hearing is healthy, then using a hearing aid will most likely not decrease your risk of dementia, for instance.

But if you do suffer from hearing loss, the smartest thing you can do for your hearing, and for overall health, is to wear your hearing aids.