During my professional life as a private practice audiologist I have had the opportunity to help tens of thousands of patients hear better. This experience is one of the most rewarding aspects of my work. Those wearing hearing aids range from 3 to 106 years of age.
Approximately two out of three patients are over the age of 18. Many of those are over the age of 60 and wearing hearing aids or in need of acquiring them.
With respect to hearing, as we age it becomes increasingly difficult to learn new skills, master new tasks, struggle with technology, and adapt to hearing aids. This occurs because of reduced neuroplasticity in the brain.
Neuroplasticity allows the brain the ability to reorganize and adapt new neural connections. This adaptability is critical for learning, memory, and recovery from brain injury. When we learn information and develop new skills, our brain is more pliable in strengthening synapses, creating new ones, and allowing neurons to communicate efficiently. In other words, a younger person’s brain can learn and function optimally compared to an older person.
With that in mind, as we age it becomes increasingly difficult to learn and adapt. Even though it is part of the aging process, it is an impediment to effective counseling and aural rehabilitation when fitting new amplification for the first time.
This reduced neuroplasticity hampers the patient’s cognitive process in learning and memory retention, motor skills, and slows the cognitive processing of information.
It is more difficult for older patients to learn, understand, remember, and apply what is taught during counseling and aural rehabilitation with hearing aids. The longer an individual waits to be fitted with hearing aids, the harder it is to learn, the frustration level increases while the rate of success and adaptation to the new devices decreases.
Another factor beyond what has been discussed to this point about neuroplasticity, is decreased memory.
Research is available at your fingertips for hearing loss and dementia. Research has been conducted, documented, and published on this aspect. Johns Hopkins University, University of California at Davis, and University of Oregon have found that people with even a mild untreated hearing loss which has not been treated with a fitting of amplification, those individuals travel down the road of dementia.
Hearing is one of the five senses, and hearing loss contributes to the risk of dementia and cognitive decline. If this sensory avenue is not kept appropriately stimulated, changes within the brain affect memory and information processing.
Hearing aids can help reduce this risk. However, most people wait too long to address their hearing difficulties. Often, I have encountered patients who should have had new hearing aids 20 to 30 years ago. They are usually 80 to 90 plus years of age.
Being at an advanced age when getting your first set of hearing aids presents a multifactored set of hurdles. First, at an advanced age, the neuroplasticity factors discussed previously make learning and adaptability to the technology harder for the person to achieve success. Second, having untreated hearing loss while worsening over time negatively affects cognition and is a contributing factor to dementia.
I’ve written before about the patient’s success with new amplification depending upon their individual motivation to get the hearing aids and wear them every day. When the initiation of this process is delayed for years and even decades, the aforementioned factors along with irritability, social isolation, depression, and lack of participation in events with others, negatively impact that person’s quality of life.
I’ve encountered a lot of patients waiting until they are 85, 90, 93, and 97 to agree to get the new amplification they so desperately needed decades before. Sometimes, that person has taken an ironfisted approach and denied themselves the opportunity to hear better until it was too late. I’ve listened to their offspring rejoice and say, “Daddy (or mommy) has finally agreed to get new hearing aids.” Sadly, their time to enjoy better hearing is often too late and too short.
Don’t wait so long to acquire better hearing!