The Negative Impacts of Neglecting Hearing Loss

The unfortunate reality is, as you get older, your hearing starts to go. Roughly 38 million individuals suffer from hearing loss in the United States, though many choose to ignore it because they think about it as just a part of getting older. Ignoring hearing loss, though, can have major adverse side effects on a person’s entire well-being beyond how well they hear.

Why is the decision to simply ignore hearing loss one that many people consider? Based on an AARP study, more than one-third of senior citizens consider hearing loss to be a minor problem that can be dealt with easily enough, while price was a worry for more than half of those who took part in the study. The consequences of ignoring hearing loss, however, can be a lot higher due to complications and side effects that come with leaving it untreated. What are the most prevalent complications of ignoring hearing loss?

Fatigue

The dots will not be connected by most people from fatigue to hearing loss. Instead, they will blame their fatigue on several different ideas, such as slowing down because of aging or a side-effect of medication. The reality is that the less you can hear, the more your body works to make up for it, leaving you feeling tired. Think about taking a test like the SAT where your brain is entirely concentrated on processing the task at hand. You would most likely feel fairly depleted when you're done. The same thing occurs when you struggle to hear: when there are blanks spots in conversation, your brain needs to work hard to substitute the missing information – which is often made even more difficult when there is a lot of background noise – and just attempting to process information consumes precious energy. This type of chronic fatigue can impact your health by leaving you too tired to care for yourself, cutting out 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 diminishe cognitive functions , accelerated brain tissue loss, and dementia. Even though these links are not causation, they're correlations, researchers think that, again, the more often you need to fill in the conversational blanks, which consumes cognitive resources, the less there are to give attention to other things like comprehension and memorization. And as people age, the increased draw on mental resources can speed up the decline of other brain functions and contribute to loss of gray matter. What's more, having a regular exchange of ideas and information, often through conversation, is believed to help seniors stay mentally fit and can help decrease the process of cognitive decline. Luckily, cognitive specialist and hearing specialist can use the known link between cognitive decline and hearing loss to collaborate to carry out research and establish treatments that are promising in the near future.

Issues With Mental Health

The National Council on the Aging conducted a study of 2,300 senior citizens who were dealing with some form of hearing loss and found that people who neglected their condition were more likely to also be dealing with mental health problems including depression, anxiety, and paranoia, which negatively affected their emotional and social well-being. The link between mental health issues and hearing loss makes sense since, in family and social situations, people who suffer from hearing loss have a difficult time interacting with others. This can lead to feelings of separation, which can eventually result in depression. Feelings of exclusion and isolation can worsen to anxiety and even paranoia if neglected. If you are dealing with anxiety or depression, you need to consult a mental health professional and you should also know that hearing aids have been proven to help people recover from some kinds of depression.

Cardiovascular Disease

If one part of your body, which is a coordinated machine, stops functioning properly, it could have an affect on seemingly unrelated bodily functions. This is the case with our hearts and ears. Case in point, hearing loss will happen when blood doesn't flow easily from the heart to the inner ear. Another condition linked to heart disease is diabetes which also has an effect on the nerve endings of the inner ear and sometimes causes the brain to get scrambled signals. People 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 ascertain whether the hearing loss is actually caused by a heart condition, since ignoring the symptoms might lead to serious, possibly fatal repercussions.

If you want to begin living a healthier life, contact us so we can help you address any adverse effects of hearing loss that you might suffer.