The Longer You Wait, The Worse It Gets

If you thought this was just about your hearing — think again. You’ve probably heard that hearing loss is progressive. This means it gets worse over time (and it won’t magically get better on its own). But did you know that untreated hearing loss affects aspects of your mental performance and health, too?

It’s all in your head

You actually hear with your brain, not with your ears. To sum up a recent medical study, researchers showed that when it’s more challenging to understand speech, you need more brainpower to make sense of it. It’s also easier to misunderstand what is said, making it harder to process complex sentences and remember verbal material. Hearing loss makes your brain work more than it should, so you feel exhausted by the end of the day. So if you think your hearing isn’t that bad yet, it’s already taking a toll on your brain even though it’s harder to notice.

The top image shows the areas of the brain that are engaged with clear speech. The below image shows the additional areas of the brain that are needed when speech is harder to understand.

Early treatment maintains mental health

Fortunately, with consistent use of hearing aids your brain can hear and perform optimally again. A popular medical journal also published a study that showed that experienced hearing aid wearers are able to process speech faster than new wearers. This demonstrates that the brain can physically rewire itself to hear better and improve mental performance over time with regular use of hearing aids.

One last study even says that “providing hearing aids earlier in the course of hearing impairment may stem the worldwide rise of dementia.”

At the end of the day, when you start to see signs of hearing loss, it’s time to act. You’ll increase your understanding, stay mentally sharp, and protect your overall health.

We make the “time to act” part easy. Just click the button below to get started with your 45-day no-risk trial.

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Sources:

• Listening Effort: How the Cognitive Consequences of Acoustic Challenge Are Reflected in Brain and Behavior
• Are Experienced Hearing Aid Users Faster at Grasping the Meaning of a Sentence Than Inexperienced Users? An Eye-Tracking Study
• Longitudinal Relationship Between Hearing Aid Use and Cognitive Function in Older Americans