Putting off on important appointments, like your hearing aid fitting, is all too easy amidst the hustle and bustle of daily events. You may even find yourself hesitating to order hearing aids altogether. However, delaying treatment for hearing loss is a lot more than just a mistake concerning your ears alone.
The connection to mental decline
A clear link between mental decline and untreated hearing loss has been established by scientists and researchers. This underscores the crucial importance of not delaying treatment, as it can have negative effects on your brain function also.
The impact on hearing
Obviously, it’s evident that delaying treatment for hearing loss isn’t helpful for maintaining your auditory health. By avoiding appointments with a hearing specialist or delaying the purchase of hearing aids, you inadvertently subject your ears to further damage.
You might find yourself continually boosting the volume on your various devices, worsening the damage to your ears and speeding up the progression of hearing loss. Using a hearing aid can help mitigate this by selectively amplifying specific frequencies, thereby delaying the advancement of hearing loss.
The connection between neglected hearing loss and cognitive function
There’s a close connection between your sense of hearing and your brain. Research shows that neglected hearing loss can have substantial repercussions on cognitive function. Over time, mental decline can be exacerbated by depression and anxiety caused by social separation.
Moreover, long-term neglected hearing loss causes the brain to adapt by reallocating resources from processing sound to other functions, such as visual processing, potentially complicating the restoration of healthy hearing function later on.
Navigating neuroplasticity
The brain’s remarkable ability to adapt, known as neuroplasticity, is both a friend and a foe in this scenario. The brain will have a hard time reverting back to its previous state after it rewires itself to accommodate for extended untreated hearing loss.
But it is possible to undo this effect. In both the short and the long term, utilizing hearing aids can bring significant benefits even if you’ve put off on getting treatment for some time.
Give us a call for an appointment
You should obviously seek treatment as soon as possible, but even if you’ve delayed for a while, it’s not too late to seek help. Making an appointment with us as soon as you can is essential, ensuring you can enjoy better hearing and cognitive function going forward. Call today!