I try to look for hope and good news to share with my readers. If I present a topic my students are concerned with, I look for a possible solution. Not all of your symptoms are Parkinson’s related. It’s easy to blame everything on it, but you are human, and bodies do weird things – even without PD.
A scary symptom of Parkinson’s disease is cognitive decline. What if your problems with cognition was not due to your Parkinson’s, but to hearing loss?
Consider this:
- By age 40, about 1 in 10 adults will experience some hearing loss. It happens so gradually, you don’t realize what you’re missing, and many people are in denial.
- By the time someone notices they have a hearing problem, age-related memory loss may have already set in.
But there is good news! Restoring hearing with hearing aids can help slow down cognitive decline.
Researchers tracked 2,000 older adults in the U.S., both before and after they started using hearing aids, in a big national study called the Health and Retirement Study.
“We found the rate of cognitive decline was slowed by 75 percent following the adoption of hearing aids,” says Asri Maharani, a researcher at the University of Manchester in the division of neuroscience and experimental psychology and an author of the paper. “It is a surprising result”.
To assess cognition over time, researchers performed a battery of face-to-face tests with participants. This was done every two years from 1996 to 2014.
“We weren’t expecting that hearing aid use would eliminate cognitive decline because age-related decline is inevitable, explains Piers Dawes, an experimental psychologist with the study. “But the reduction in the rate of change is quite substantial. It’s a very intriguing finding.” And it adds to the evidence that hearing loss and cognitive decline are strongly linked.
Basically, stimulating your ears stimulates the nerves that stimulate your brain.
When you get hearing aids, you’re giving your ears back what they’re missing, and giving your brain what it needs to make sense of what you’re hearing. This can help you stay more stimulated and socially engaged.
However, cost can be an obstacle for some individuals. With the cost of hearing aids averaging $4,500 or more, they are definitely not cheap. Less expensive options are available, but many insurance plans don’t cover the full cost, and some plans don’t cover them at all.
It is worth a trip to the doctor to get your hearing checked if you find that a love-one is tired of yelling to get your attention all of the time. It may be worth the investment.
Resource:
J Am Geriatr Soc. 2018 Jul;66(6):1130-1136. doi: 10.1111/jgs.15363. Epub 2018 Apr 10.
Longitudinal Relationship Between Hearing Aid Use and Cognitive Function in Older Americans.
Maharani A1, Dawes P2, Nazroo J3, Tampubolon G3, Pendleton N1; SENSE-Cog WP1 group.