Hearing and dementia linked?
Sponsored Content - May 19, 2017 - Think Local

Photo: IHA

As National Hearing Month puts all things auditory on our sonars, Nexgen Hearing wants to stress how important getting your ears checked can be.

Tom Millar, a hearing professional at Nexgen in West Kelowna, warns that while degrading sonic sensibilities may seem like nothing more than an inconvenience, hearing loss can have some very serious side effects.

“We use to look at hearing loss as a kind of minor inconvenience, but [now we know] people have higher risks of hospitalization … just because they’re not as aware of their surroundings,” he says.

Millar is referring to new research that suggests hearing loss can be an early indicator of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia.

As Millar explains, someone living with untreated hearing loss will have more trouble understanding conversations, and have to use more brainpower to unpack the sounds around them.

Since they’re putting more stress on their brain in an effort to properly understand, they will generally have more difficulty recalling and storing that information later on.

“Quite often people who go for cognitive testing … in a lot of those cases the people with hearing loss will score poorer on those results because of their hearing difficulty,” Millar says.

While the possible links between hearing loss and dementia are still tenuous, Millar says untreated hearing can lead to other problems in a person’s life.

Far and away the most common side effect is having to strain to understand conversations. For people with hearing loss, Millar says it often feels like everyone is mumbling, especially in groups or when there’s background noise.

This difficulty understanding can cause people to start avoiding groups, and isolating themselves as the problem worsens.

“There’s a lot of lifestyle constraints people put on themselves because of hearing loss, and that increased isolation will often have other health effects,” Millar says.

That’s why identifying and treating hearing loss is so important, he adds.

In an effort to highlight that importance, Nexgen is offering free hearing screenings at its Kelowna and West Kelowna offices all day long May 30.

Screenings, Millar says, are the “first step” to treating the problem, and anyone who comes in for a free screening May 30 will be booked for a complimentary, in depth appointment if Nexgen professionals discover potential issues.

Millar says treating hearing loss can do wonders for a person both in their daily life and interactions, as well as for their long-term cognitive health.

“Improving your ability to hear and understand early on will improve your quality of life and keep you engaged longer, so that you don’t go down that road of losing connection with friends and relatives,” he says.

For more information on Nexgen’s free screenings, visit them online.

This article is written by or on behalf of the sponsoring client and does not necessarily reflect the views of Okanagan Edge.


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