Apart from cancer and diabetes, hearing loss is currently the fastest growing public health problem. It is estimated that by 2050 more than 900 million individuals will have hearing loss, according to the World Health Organization.
If you’re noticing your own hearing loss, it can be appealing to prevent or deny that it is happening at all. While this is normal, your hearing loss must be addressed as quickly as possible. A bank of research indicates that individuals who use hearing aids to treat their hearing loss can achieve a better general quality of life than individuals who decide to ignore it.
Quality of life is a difficult thing to pin down, but if we look at it in terms of health, Encyclopedia Britannica defines it as “encompassing emotional, physical, material, and social well-being.” Let’s look closer at how treating your hearing can help in these areas.
Hearing aids and your happiness
Untreated hearing loss can affect an individual’s daily life and lead to depression, a serious mental health issue affecting 15 million American adults. Many of those with hearing loss are at a huge risk of social isolation and depression. It could start by avoiding big gatherings of people or meetings and trickle down to a refusal to attend smaller, intimate meetings.
How does this happen? Large get together and meet-ups in restaurants and cafes can make listening and engaging in discussion even more challenging for those with hearing loss. But hearing aids can help you re-engage at social events and help your both meet new people and build on the relationships you already have. This reduces the chances of social isolation and depression rearing its ugly head.
Hearing aids and health
Studies indicate that hearing loss can increase the risk of dementia, a reduction in memory capacity, or other thinking abilities that allow a person to perform daily tasks. While scientists are still working to determine the precise connection between hearing loss and dementia, some of the current theories revolve around the effects of social isolation, and brain shrinkage due to a lack of use of certain parts of the brain responsible for processing sound.
When you’re using hearing aids, you’re not going to use all your strength straining to hear, so you can enjoy spending time catching up with friends, going to your favorite show, or any other hobby that you might be interested in. You will be more active, both socially and physically.
Those who wear hearing aids sleep better and tend to leave the house more often. They also have better functioning brains, better memory, and excellent cognitive function, and they can concentrate readily on assignments and achieve objectives. Your risk of chronic diseases such as insomnia, fatigue, and even dementia will also be reduced.
Hearing Aids and Your Finances
Hearing loss can also affect our earning capacity. People with untreated hearing loss earn a lower salary than hearing aid users and those with undamaged hearing.
There are several reasons why this might be the case. Unaddressed hearing loss reduces the individual’s capacity to work on cognitively demanding tasks, as well as the ability to maintain the communication skills needed for a smoothly run team. This makes the individual much less effective at work, leading to managers passing them over to promote others, and reducing their employability. This explains why hearing loss is also strongly associated with earlier retirement ages. Treating your hearing loss restores these skills and maintains your sharpness at work, helping you move up the company ladder more easily.
Aside from helping you earn more money, hearing aid wearers could also save money on hospital bills. Studies have discovered that those with untreated hearing loss are spending thousands of dollars more on health care expenses, experiencing more accidents, and visiting their doctors far more often than those who wear hearing aids.
Swift Audiology
Are you willing to make the correct choice for your brain, happiness and account balance? Visit us at Swift Audiology today and learn how hearing aids can help you stay happy, healthy and wealthy. We have a broad range of some of the top hearing aids in the world, and we are excited to find the ideal device to support your hearing in any sound environment.