The tools we have developed to protect our minds from dementia are well-known. We all hear about how it’s good to do the daily crossword, to eat your greens, to exercise. Yet medical science recently discovered an astonishingly powerful tool that doesn’t require joining a gym, eating more kale or radically changing your life. It only requires a 20-minute trip to the audiologist’s chair.
Recent studies, including landmark research published in The Lancet, show that untreated hearing loss in midlife is the single greatest modifiable risk factor for dementia. It isn’t as mysterious as it might seem. When your ears are no longer able to send clear messages to the brain, the relevant parts of the brain shrink through disuse.
Simultaneously, the mental effort of deciphering muffled speech is taxing and it depletes the mental energy the brain needs to remember and think. But perhaps most damaging of all is the social isolation that often accompanies hearing loss. For a Hearing Test Bristol, contact //www.imperialhearing.com/audiologist-near-me/bristol/
Dementia risk is very preventable – once it is treated, hearing loss acts as a shield for the mind, keeping the brain active and engaged and preventing isolation. A simple hearing test is quick, painless and gives you an instant baseline for your health. We don’t hesitate to get our eyes checked to protect our sight but we don’t treat our ears with the same respect. Think of a hearing test not as a diagnostic tool for what we’ve lost but as a 20-minute investment in protecting memories for the future.