3 Reasons Hearing Loss May Increase Dementia Risk

3. Hearing loss damages the brain.

Hearing loss leads to the brain being less stimulated with sound information, and this in turn appears to be linked with parts of the brain shrinking and atrophying faster from this chronic deprivation. As you can probably guess, an atrophying brain is not a good thing!

Scientists estimate that hearing loss may be the biggest potentially treatable risk factor for dementia, accounting for more cases of dementia in the world than other risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking or low education.

Hearing aids to prevent dementia?

At this point, you may be scratching your head and asking something along the lines of “Uh ... so are you telling me that people who have hearing loss are definitely going to get dementia?”

The answer to this, of course, is “No.” Hearing loss may, however, increase your risk of dementia. Researchers can’t predict the exact increase of risk for a given person.

The more important question, then, is whether strategies to address hearing loss such as hearing aids could actually help reduce someone’s risk for dementia. Scientists think this could be the case, but they don’t know yet for certain.

There is an ongoing randomized controlled trial that we’re leading in the United States funded by the National Institutes of Health, where people are randomly assigned to either get their hearing loss treated or not. We should know the results in a few years, telling us whether hearing loss treatment is linked to a reduced risk of cognitive decline and dementia.

In the meantime, the important thing to keep in mind is that addressing hearing loss with hearing aids and other strategies comes with virtually no health risks and could only have positive upsides for your ability to communicate and engage with others and possibly even benefits for your cognitive health. The degree to which these devices and strategies may reduce your risk for dementia remains to be determined, but there are clearly no downsides to addressing your hearing loss now.

Copyright © 2022 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Adapted with permission from AARP’s Hearing Loss for Dummies by Frank Lin, MD, and Nicholas Reed, AuD, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.