If you’re not treating your symptoms properly, hearing loss can put you in the hospital. You may think that this is a bit of an exaggeration. We’re used to thinking of hearing loss as not much more than an inconvenience – something that makes the news a bit tougher to hear or, at worst, makes you unknowingly agree to something you didn’t mean.
But current research is sounding an alarm over the long-term health effects of untreated hearing loss.
How is Your Health Linked to Hearing Loss?
Hearing loss doesn’t, at first sight, seem as if it has much of a relationship with other health concerns. But research carried out by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests that over time, visits to the hospital can increase by up to 50% for someone with untreated hearing loss. The risk of severe health issues goes up the longer hearing loss remains untreated.
That seems like a curious discovery: what does hearing have to do with your overall health? That question can have a complicated answer.
Hearing Health And Mental Health
Here are a few of the health concerns linked to hearing loss:
- Memory can start to fail. As a matter of fact, your odds of developing dementia is twice as high with neglected hearing loss.
- Balance problems. Hearing loss can make it more difficult to keep your balance and maintain situational focus.
- An increase in anxiety and depression. Simply put, untreated hearing loss can increase depression and anxiety, which will then have a strong negative impact on your physical body, to say nothing of your mental health.
Hearing Aids: An effective Solution
It’s not all gloom and doom, though. Far from it. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School research indicates that up to 75% of the mental decline connected to hearing loss can be stopped in its tracks by one easy solution: wearing a hearing aid.
The health hazards linked to hearing loss can be significantly reduced by wearing hearing aids. According to the study, individuals who wore hearing aids for only two weeks saw:
- Brain function improvements.
- Improvements in balance and awareness.
- Reductions in traumatic brain injuries.
The researchers from Johns Hopkins looked at data from 77,000 patients collected over roughly two decades. And a critical part of preserving your health lies in protecting your hearing which is a surprising outcome. Taking care of your hearing health also helps your financial well-being, because being sick costs money.
Preserving Your Hearing And Your Health
Hearing loss is a perfectly common part of getting older, although it’s not exclusive to aging. Because of accidents, disease, and occupational hazards, hearing loss can develop at any age.
However or whenever you lose your hearing, it’s extremely important to deal with it. Your health could depend on it.