Some People Who Need Hearing Aids Never Wear Them Leading to Other Health Issues
It was a good reminder that I needed to wear my hearing aids. I’m not the only one who needs a reminder. The vast majority of people who could benefit from hearing aids do not use them. It is a behavior that public health officials want to revise.
Typically, a person is considered to have hearing loss if they have a loss of 20dB or more. In the U.S., about 13 percent of people age 12 and older have hearing loss in both ears.
Many people who could benefit from hearing aids don’t use or even own them. Although more than half of people ages 70 and older need hearing aids, less than 30 percent of people who need hearing aids have ever used one.
Younger people with hearing loss are even less likely to use hearing aids. Only 16 percent of people age 69 or younger who need hearing aids actually use them.
The Connection Between Hearing Loss, Dementia, and Listening Fatigue
In recent years, studies have found that people with hearing loss are more likely to socially isolate, which raises their risk for dementia.
In 20223, the National Institute of Health funded a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins University that followed 1,000 people ages 70 to 84 for three years.
The study found that among older adults who were at high risk for dementia, hearing aid use reduced the rate of cognitive decline by almost 50 percent!!
Participants in the study who wore their hearing aids reported having an improved ability to communicate. Without that ability, people tend to self-isolate. And when they do engage with others, they find the experience exhausting. Audiology researchers call it “listening-related fatigue.”
“You actually get cognitive fatigue and it can translate into physical fatigue if you are listening hard,” says Stephen Camarata, a professor of speech and hearing sciences at Vanderbilt University.
Problematically, studies have found that listening-related fatigue can prompt people with hearing loss to avoid social situations or specific environments they think might be tiresome.
In difficult listening situations, people describe feeling physically and mentally tired in environmental situations that made listening fatigue likely. A noisy restaurant, for example, made it difficult for a person to hear. Similarly, listening as a member of a large audience or having to listen for a long time was also tiring.Listening-related fatigue made it hard for them to concentrate and get the most from the experience.
People in response will avoid social situations or withdraw when listening becomes a challenge. But others develop coping strategies to help them in hard-to-hear settings. The easiest way to combat listening-related fatigue is to wear hearing aids. Hearing aids allow speech and sound to be heard at appropriate volumes. This puts less strain on the brain to “hear” and process the sound!
If you feel like you have hearing fatigue please contact Dr. Elena Maresca at www.liaudiology.com or call 631-780-HEAR (4327) to schedule an appointment and get more information.