CNN Indonesia
Sunday, 17 Sep 2023 01:28 IWST
Illustration. Recent studies have found that using hearing aids can reduce the risk of dementia. (iStock/LightFieldStudios)
Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
For some people, hearing aids may only be beneficial for the deaf and elderly. However, a Education Recent findings have found that hearing aid use can reduce the risk of greater cognitive decline such as dementia.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) dementia is a major problem worldwide.
“As everyone lives longer, the number of people with dementia over time will increase,” said study co-principal investigator Frank Lin, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health, as reported. CNN.
Over the past decade, research has established that hearing loss is one of the greatest risk factors for developing dementia, but it is unclear whether hearing aid intervention will reduce the risk.
But Lin said the study published Tuesday (18/7) in the Lancet is the first randomized control study to investigate this question.
The researchers looked at more than 3,000 people from two populations. These were healthy community volunteers and older adults from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, a long-standing observational study of cardiovascular health.
Participants were randomly assigned to a control group that received counseling in chronic disease prevention or an intervention group that received care from an audiologist and hearing aids.
Researchers followed up with the group every six months for three years, and at the end, they were given scores from a comprehensive neurocognitive test.
The study found that in the total group, hearing aids did not appear to reduce cognitive decline. But when the researchers looked only at the older group at higher risk, they found a significant reduction in cognitive decline.
“It was impressive to see that in unhealthy individuals they (hearing aids) were able to slow the rate of cognitive decline by up to 48 percent,” said Dr. Thomas Holland, physician scientist at the Rush Institute for Health Aging. Holland was not involved in this research.
The smaller change over the total population could be because if healthy, less-at-risk participants saw no cognitive decline at all, then hearing aids couldn’t do much to slow it.
“We can’t slow down something that is already completely unchanged,” Lin said.
He added that more at-risk populations see rates of cognitive decline at rates nearly three times higher than their counterparts. And the results raise the question of whether governments and individuals should prioritize hearing health to reduce the risk of dementia.
Everyone’s hearing declines with age. But why might it increase the risk of dementia?
Lin said there are three mechanisms that researchers think may play a role.
One is that if the cochlea wears out over time, the inner ear may send chaotic signals to the brain, which has to work harder and redistribute brain power to understand what it hears, Lin said.
“That’s why people always say it sounds like people are nagging me,” he added.
Additionally, hearing loss may have a structural impact on the integrity of the brain, and parts of it may atrophy or shrink more quickly – and that’s not good for the brain.
A final possible mechanism is that if you cannot hear well, you are less likely to go out and participate in social activities.
“We’ve known for a long time that staying fully engaged in general social activities is critical for maintaining our cognitive health as well,” Lin said.
Lin also recommends regular hearing health checks.
Benjamin Tan, associate dean at the National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin Faculty of Medicine, said even if you only have mild hearing loss, use assistive devices. Tan was not involved in the new study.
“This is a simple, effective, and practically risk-free method to preserve your cognition as much as possible,” he adds.
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2023-09-16 18:28:01
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