Gerald Hewitt
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Gradual hearing loss is a common symptom of aging, and studies show that people with untreated hearing loss report more concerns about their memory than people with normal hearing. But, more worryingly, for some people untreated hearing loss may also be an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, studies suggest.
The 2020 Report of the Lancet Commission, Dementia Prevention, Intervention and Care shows that hearing loss is the biggest risk factor that you can influence against dementia.
The risk of dementia appears to rise as hearing declines, and older people with mild hearing loss who typically find it hard to follow a conversation in a noisy restaurant, are twice as likely as those with normal hearing to develop dementia.
- Mild hearing loss doubles the risk of dementia
- Moderate hearing loss triples the risk of dementia
- Severe hearing loss increases the risk of dementia five fold
Hearing loss leads to social isolation, which itself has been linked to dementia, and added to this, by stimulating the brain less with sounds to interpret, the brain can become less active and cognitive.
“The brain might have to reallocate resources to help with hearing at the expense of cognition” says a lead researcher and ear surgeon, Frank R Lin, at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, USA. “That could explain why straining to hear conversations over background noise in a loud restaurant can be mentally exhausting for anyone, hard of hearing or not,” he adds.