It is necessary to use hearing aids from the first symptoms to avoid irreversible sequelae
“It’s not so much that I don’t listen, as that I don’t understand.” Luisa Ruiz is 85 years old and has age-related hearing loss; have not yet decided to get a hearing aid. «If I have a conversation with a person in front, and there is not much ambient noise, I hear well. But if he turns his back on me, it’s complicated. On television, when many people are speaking at the same time, I don’t know and I turn off”, says this widowed woman who lives in Bilbao. In the gym class for the elderly, she does not listen well to the monitor and, to follow the exercises, she looks at her classmates. These limitations that Luisa already suffers anticipate consequences that she will face if the deafness is not treated in time, experts warn.
BRAIN IMPAIRMENT AND DEPRESSION
Hearing loss is an important communication disorder: not only is listening to certain sounds lost, but it also compromises the central nervous system, affecting the ability to understand spoken language,” warns Faustino Núñez, president of the audiology commission of the Spanish Society of Otorhinolaryngology and specialist at the Central University Hospital of Asturias. This limitation causes “cognitive deterioration, intellectual capacity” and accelerates processes of senile dementia.
That is, the ear picks up and transmits the sounds and the brain processes the signals and gives them meaning. With hearing loss, the brain receives fewer sounds and “forgets” what to do with them. Hence, when that ability to process sound is reduced, the ability to understand speech is affected. Even with mild deafness, the hearing areas of the brain are weakened.
Research published by the scientific journal ‘The Lancet’, one of the most prestigious in the field of health, confirmed that “untreated deafness is the greatest avoidable risk factor for senile dementia and Alzheimer’s”, warns JoséLuis Blanco, responsible of audiology in the firm Oticon. “The brain is a muscle and you have to work it. If you don’t exercise it deteriorates and a fundamental way of brain function is hearing and understanding because it activates many areas of the brain. By not listening well you lose neural connections. And this deterioration begins from the beginning of the first symptoms of deafness, the same at 40 years as at 80.
Although it can occur at any age, hearing loss affects older people more. Half of people in their 80s experience some loss in their ability to hear. Which translates, many times, into isolation. “By not listening well, they feel limited and reduce their social life, lower their self-esteem, affect them emotionally,” says the Asturian specialist. “Deafness is a common cause of depression in the elderly,” notes Blanco.
Connected to mobile or television
“A person with hearing aids already goes unnoticed because more and more people wear headphones to listen to music and talk on the mobile,” explains the head of audiology at Oticon, José Luis Blanco. The technology of these digital devices has taken a giant leap in recent years. “They adapt to each person depending on their deafness. They have an individual configuration, in which the sounds that you have lost, for example the treble, are intensified and those in which you manage well are maintained. They can be connected to the mobile phone and the television and regulate the volume”, details the ENT doctor Faustino Núñez.
FALLS AND ACCIDENTS
The ear, in addition to allowing us to hear sounds, informs the brain so that it moves the muscles that make us maintain our balance. That is why it is important to keep it in good condition, since many diseases that affect the ear can cause dizziness and balance disorders. “This is the reason why people who suffer from deafness are at greater risk of falling,” says José Luis Blanco.
In addition, these people may not hear the noise of the approaching car, the horn of a vehicle that alerts them, an object that falls next to them… In the kitchen, an open tap or a pan on the fire makes sounds that they warn and, if we don’t listen to them, we run the risk of having a domestic accident.
The two specialists advise correcting deafness from the first symptoms. “The later, the more the chances that the hearing aid will be effective are reduced,” says the audiology expert. «We have had 80-year-old patients who have used a hearing aid from the beginning of hearing loss and others who do it later and do not achieve the same recovery since practice is important. The brain forgets to interpret sounds because neural connections have been lost”, highlights Blanco. “If anything, correcting deafness improves quality of life.” He warns: “The person with hearing loss should ask for things to be repeated, never resign himself to isolation.”
Health only finances it until the age of 26
The fight against deafness faces two obstacles. “There are no early detection programs, which prevents timely treatment of cases that would thus have a more favorable evolution,” warns the specialist from the Spanish Society of Otorhinolaryngology. The other problem is that hearing aids are only financed by public health until the age of 26 – and not completely. And prices range between 1,000 and 4,000 euros. “There are older people who don’t get hearing aids because they can’t afford them,” he adds. He maintains that it is an investment that the Health Service should assume “because it would reduce the expenses generated by that person due to senile dementia, falls…”
.