Hearing loss affects people of all ages, though the most common types tend to hit you as you get older. Long-term exposure to loud sounds can cause cumulative hearing loss, and sometimes just getting older causes a similar cycle.
The specialists at Lawrence Otolaryngology Associates in Lawrence and Ottawa can diagnose the causes behind your hearing loss as well as develop a treatment plan suited to your condition, including custom-fitted and programmed hearing aids if your hearing loss is serious enough.
Hearing loss means more than just a quieter world. The ability to hear is a complex system that starts as acoustic energy in the air and ends up as tiny electrical signals interpreted as the sounds you recognize in your brain.
There are some obvious risks associated with hearing loss, like being unable to hear audible clues about risks in your physical environment. However, the impact of hearing loss goes beyond simply missing sounds.
Consider these three ways that untreated hearing loss can affect your brain.
As you lose hearing, the amount of mental energy you expend to hear increases dramatically. You begin to find that social interactions are less enjoyable, leaving you exhausted after.
Many people with hearing loss may not even connect the issues. Going out or visiting with friends no longer provides the satisfaction you once enjoyed. You might start turning away from friends whose voices you have a hard time understanding.
That’s a negative effect on its own, but these lost social interactions mean that your brain is missing the cognitive stimulation provided by these lost connections. The neural networks devoted to sociability aren’t “flexed,” and just like unused muscles, they may atrophy, contributing to your overall mental decline.
Not only is your ability to handle social interaction reduced, as underuse of the auditory cortex can lead to physical tissue loss in the brain. When neurons are chronically underfiring, tissue loss accelerates, leading to a higher rate of cognitive decline.
A person who loses hearing early in life and doesn’t seek treatment with hearing aids or other assistive devices could see the onset of dementia earlier in life due to this loss of brain tissue.
Your brain is remarkably adaptive and it can help you by developing workarounds for sounds you’re not hearing anymore. While that helps you cope, it comes at a cost.
The interpretive power of your brain uses resources that you may previously use for job tasks or memory. You start running a deficit in some areas of thinking to provide yourself the ability to make sense of a world you can’t hear clearly.
The answer? Visit the hearing specialists at Lawrence Otolaryngology Associates at the nearest of our two locations. We can diagnose your hearing loss, create a hearing aid prescription, and recommend other technologies to help you stay in touch with the rest of the world, and the things that are important to you.
Call or click to book your appointment with us today.
