If You Thought It Was Normal to Lose Your Hearing, Think Again

There is a new link between loss of hearing and Alzheimer’s disease. We used to think it was normal as we aged that hearing decreased exponentially in our 70s. But the key thing is hearing that slowly gets bad and garbles your frontal cortex for many, many years.

In November of 2019, the Otolaryngology Journal of the American Medical Association published a study of 6,400 people aged 50 and older.

They measured hearing and cognitive performance. The relationship between hearing loss and poor performance on cognitive tests begin the moment imperfect hearing begins. This is startling.

In 1989 at the University of Washington, there was initial evidence linking hearing loss and dementia. Doctors compared 100 people who had Alzheimer’s like dementia with 100 people who didn’t. They noticed that the patients who had Alzheimer’s like symptoms were in direct proportion to the amount of hearing loss the patient suffered.

Fast forward to 2017 when the Lancet Medical Journal reviewed all the risk factors attributed to Alzheimer’s Disease. Hearing loss was the biggest factor, accounting for 9% of all current diagnoses.

The issue is when does a given person start hearing less, because our brains cells are complex and interconnected, and hearing loss has been shown to have brain tissue atrophy in the auditory regions.

Doctors and scientists do not yet know if treating someone’s hearing loss with a hearing aid will prevent Alzheimer’s, and they don’t know if treating someone in their 50’s with mild hearing loss will make a difference.

The best thing we can teach young children is to have “hearing fitness” and to not blast the music they are listening to in their ears. Remember, one loud sound can change the trajectory of someone’s hearing for a lifetime.