Aging and Its Impact on Hearing
As people age, their senses may experience gradual shifts that affect how well they communicate, enjoy activities and stay connected to those around them. Hearing loss can have profound ramifications.
Hearing loss is an inevitable part of aging that affects us all. Generally gradual in onset, hearing loss may result from normal wear-and-tear, medications, diseases that become more prevalent with age (like diabetes or high blood pressure), exposure to loud noises over time, ear infections or damage from stroke.
Doctors perform medical exams and hearing tests to diagnose age-related hearing loss. Hearing exams include measures of your ability to hear high and low sounds as well as differentiate speech from background noise, and healthcare providers also use an otoscope (lighted scope) to make sure there are no obstructions such as wax build-up or small particles obstructing the ear canals.
Health care providers may recommend treating presbycusis by prescribing hearing aids that amplify sounds while simultaneously reducing background noise levels, strategies for dealing with tinnitus and vestibular imbalance, cochlear implants that re-create sounds to improve speech understanding, or cochlear implants which re-create sounds re-creating lost ones like concerts; all as part of an overall plan to address hearing loss and cognitive decline. It’s essential that steps be taken in order to tackle hearing loss before cognitive decline sets in – for instance asking friends/family to speak up or even wearing earplugs at noisy events to address it properly – untreated hearing loss can cause cognitive decline which will further accelerate cognitive decline as a whole – this problem should not go unchecked resulting in cognitive decline resulting from hearing loss being untreated thus leading to cognitive decline due to cognitive decline due to hearing loss itself resulting from cognitive decline caused by cognitive decline; this issue must be tackled in order to address it before cognitive decline occurs – asking friends/family to speak up or wearing earplugs during noisy events such as concerts where noise may cause too loud environments is one way addressing the problem is another step you should consider taking before proceeding further; for instance asking family/friends/cold be taken. For instance you could ask people/wearing out when loud events or concerts can help! /