Could Hearing Aids Help You Live Longer?

Besides Helping You Hear Better, Hearing Aids May Help You Live Longer

Hearing aids help you hear better, improve your balance and prevent cognitive decline. These should be sufficient motivators to encourage you to make wearing your hearing aids a priority.

However, if you’re still on the fence about the benefits of hearing aids, a study by

Dr. Janet Choi from the University of Southern California provides evidence that patients who used hearing aids regularly have a 24% lower risk of mortality compared to the group that didn’t use hearing aids at all.

As a means of encouraging people in the Ontario communities we serve to take their hearing healthcare and hearing aids more seriously, I want to share Dr. Choi’s findings.

Hearing Aids Improve Life Expectancy

Although not the only factor in increasing your life expectancy, the day-to-day wearing of hearing aids, according to the study, decreases your risk of mortality.

The use of hearing aids helps you connect with the people around you, contributing to your social interactions that have a significant impact on negative mental health conditions. Those negative mental health conditions can lead to dementia and potentially limit your life expectancy.

While hearing loss progresses slowly and most people don’t really know they are struggling with it until it begins to disrupt their active and independent lifestyle, once you know about it and have the opportunity to treat it, things should begin to change, right?

Unfortunately, that’s not always true. Choi’s study revealed a shocking revelation about hearing aid wearing among those who have them. Only 12% of the study participants wore their hearing aids regularly outside the study.

The primary issue relates to the stigmas attached to hearing aids. Recent innovations in technology are helping relieve many of these issues by making hearing aids lighter weight, more powerful and more discreet to wear, so the stigmas are slowly dying out.

How Hearing Care Professionals Can Help

Modern hearing aids are great, but they don’t do the job all by themselves, especially when the individuals with hearing aids are not wearing them. Partnering with a hearing care professional gives you a significant advantage.

No matter what kind of technology you put in your ears, you need an array of support services to help ensure that you understand the importance of wearing your hearing aids by educating you about all the benefits you can expect to enjoy.

Along with educating you on the use of your hearing aids, how to care for them and troubleshooting advice, your hearing care professional can help ensure that your prescription-level hearing aids are properly programmed, monitored and maintained.

Beyond those things is another element that may be missing if you purchase your hearing aids over the counter or online: ongoing hearing assessments.

Our hearing assessments at York Hearing Clinic are designed to evaluate all of the possible causes of your hearing loss challenges, such as family history, genetics, infection, noise-related accidents and even earwax buildup. They also help evaluate whether your hearing aids are providing the help you need.

The goal of ongoing hearing care is to make sure you get the most out of your hearing aids, which ensures that you will continue to reap the benefits your hearing aids provide, including a longer life.

Concerned About Your Hearing Health?

Your quality of life and your capacity to reconnect with the world around you, thanks to hearing aids have a significant impact on preventing many negative mental and physical health consequences, lowering your risk of mortality.