TODAY: Treating Hearing Loss Can Protect Your Brain From Cognitive Decline
TODAY correspondent Maria Shriver recently interviewed otolaryngologist Mia Miller, MD, director of Neurotology in the Acoustic Neuroma and Lateral Skull Base Tumor Program at Cedars-Sinai, about the link between hearing loss and dementia and how hearing aids can prevent or delay cognitive decline.
Research has shown that moderate hearing loss in older adults triples the risk of dementia and that those with severe hearing loss have five times the risk because of harm to the brain’s thinking and memory functions.
“What I tell patients is the ‘If you don’t use it, you lose it’ theory. So if you’re not getting verbal information to the brain and you’re not using that language perception, you may lose some of that function over time,” Miller told Shriver.
Miller said hearing loss screenings should be as common as other preventive tests, such as mammograms or eye exams.
“You know, I have a very strong opinion on this because we check hearing in children in pediatric offices all the time, and we check sight throughout peoples’ lives,” Miller told Shriver. “It should be screened, I think, the way sight is screened. And it doesn’t take very long, and it has a huge impact.”
Investigators recently found that using hearing aids to treat hearing loss can positively affect brain health. But most people who need hearing aids don’t get them, in part because of an association with aging.
“So, patients actually say to me, ‘I don’t want to be perceived as old,’” Miller told Shriver.
Click here to view the segment from TODAY.