People with hearing loss in El Paso must deal with many challenges in their daily lives. Hearing aids can help make life easier – and longer, it turns out!
Benefits to Wearing Hearing Aids in El Paso
48 million people experience hearing loss. It affects people of all ages in Texas and throughout the country but is especially common among older individuals. The cumulative effects of a lifetime of noise exposure extract their toll. Fortunately, nine out of ten people with hearing loss in El Paso can benefit from the use of hearing aids.
There are many benefits to wearing hearing aids. They help improve your ability to communicate, provide you with opportunities for enjoying favorite hobbies and activities and help reduce your odds of developing a number of physical, social and psychological conditions associated with untreated hearing loss. In fact, wearing hearing aids can even boost your lifespan in the following ways:
- Hearing aids improve your balance. Impaired hearing makes your brain work harder to process sounds. This requires it to use cognitive resources that would otherwise be utilized for other functions, such as maintaining balance. Falls are a leading cause of injury and death for El Paso senior citizens; when your brain is working harder to hear, your risk of falling increases 3x – even with a mild hearing loss. The more severe your impairment, the higher your risk. Wearing hearing aids allows your brain to focus more on key areas such as balance.
- Hearing aids help protect you in emergency situations. Police, ambulance and fire sirens are high-pitched in order to alert you to danger, but for those with hearing loss – which usually affects higher-frequency sounds – they aren’t always easy to distinguish. The same holds true for smoke detectors, car horns and other sounds designed to keep you safe. Hearing aids target the frequencies you can’t hear well, enabling you to hear these warning sounds and keep you safe.
- Hearing aids lower your risk of depression. Depression is a widespread concern for hearing loss patients in El Paso. The daily struggle to hear can lead to feelings of sadness, anxiety and depression, especially in older individuals. Hearing aids can help stave off depression – a study by the National Council on Aging found wearing them reduces your risk by 8 percent or more.
- Hearing aids can make you more socially active. Hearing loss prevents many people from getting out and enjoying their favorite social activities due to the strain and fatigue that come with trying to hear sounds over noisy backgrounds. This social isolation can lead to loneliness and is associated with higher mortality rates. Hearing aids help your brain work more efficiently, making social activities more pleasurable and reducing your odds of premature death.
- Hearing aids slow down or prevent cognitive decline. Cognitive functioning often takes a hit when the brain diverts its resources into hearing, making memory impairment, depression and dementia more likely for those with hearing loss in El Paso. Hearing aids allow your brain to focus on these key areas, decreasing your odds of cognitive decline.
To help prevent these negative side effects and increase your odds of enjoying a higher quality (and longer) life, schedule an appointment with an El Paso audiologist if you or a loved one is demonstrating symptoms of hearing loss.