Among all the five senses of a human being, hearing is one of the most important ones. We need to hear different sounds to get on with almost every task of our lives. And if someone faces hearing loss to some degree, it can be really scary for them. Anyone can face hearing loss problems at any stage of their life, and it can occur due to many reasons. However, it is mostly seen among older people, as while growing older, hearing cells in the cochlea can get damaged gradually.
No matter whenever a person faces hearing loss problems, it will always be scary for them. Hearing is a really important part of us, and loss of hearing can make us really vulnerable. One doesn’t only fall victim to the loss of hearing when these problems occur, it might badly affect one’s physical and mental health too. If someone leaves the problems untreated, they might face even more alarming and scary consequences that come with them. Let’s see what the future might hold for people with hearing loss problems.
Table of Contents
Cognitive Decline
You might not at first associate your hearing with other health problems, but you should know that there’s a connection. Cognitive function, or in simple words, brain health, can be seriously affected by hearing loss problems. Different pieces of research say that some conditions, such as memory loss, can be really connected to hearing loss problems.
Normally, the brain has a great ability to adapt to any kind of sensory changes, but it seriously backfires when it comes to hearing loss problems. Sound is generally processed in the inner ear in the way that the brain can understand what is the sound. Brain permits you to identify the difference between different sounds. Your brain keeps encountering sound every second and microsecond. Even when you are sitting in a quiet place, there’s an ambient sound. Perhaps there might be a hissing sound of air venting, but your brain cautiously filters it out, thinking you don’t need to hear it.
When you face hearing loss, the brain doesn’t get the same quality or quantity of sound. The brain gets heavily stressed to process the sound and tries hard to find the missing sounds that your ears failed to deliver due to hearing loss. And this stress on the brain can result in a cognitive decline, which can raise the risk of diseases such as dementia.
The chance of having cognitive decline and memory loss increases by 40% in older people if they have hearing loss problems. But they can control the decline of their cognitive function by going through different measures such as using hearing aids to take better care of their hearing health.
Stomach Problems
You might feel like there shouldn’t literally be any connection between hearing loss and stomach problems, but surprisingly hearing loss can lead you to various stomach problems such as-
- Upset stomach
- Diarrhea
- Constipation
- Abdominal pain
There can be other problems such as muscle tension, and problems like irritable bowel syndrome when your discomfort further increases.
Mental Health Problems
One of the most obvious side effects of hearing loss problems is to have a bad impact on mental health. Depression seems to be a lot more present in people with hearing loss problems, according to many pieces of research. People with hearing loss find it tough to communicate with other people, and that can result in depression. Hearing loss has caused many different mental health problems in people, including-
- Anxiety
- Anger
- Lack of Focus
- Negativity
- Irritability
- Social WIthdrawal
At some point, they stop trying to communicate effectively with other people, and that can cause more depression and psychological strain.
Troubles in Maintaining Relations
Hearing loss doesn’t only affect your physical and mental strength, it can also affect your relationships and social life in a huge manner. As people with hearing loss problems aren’t able to hold conversations with other people, and especially it becomes harder to do in a social setting where they have to simultaneously listen to multiple people, they tend to stray away from social gatherings or other loud places such as restaurants. As it can be really depressing while you are trying hard and still not being able to maintain conversations. So, people with hearing loss prefer to stay alone, and their social life gets hampered.
Personal relationships can also get hampered due to hearing loss problems. Romantic relationships, relation with other family members and friends all can get highly hampered due to hearing loss problems. Hearing loss can cause a heavy hit on the self-esteem of a person, and that can be really problematic in maintaining a social life. Home, jobs, schools, people with hearing loss might feel inferior wherever they go and feel depressed as a result.
Final Words
Hearing loss problems can bring various difficulties in a person’s life, and those problems can really shatter them. One needs to go through proper measures if they have hearing loss problems and don’t want to face the alarming consequences of the problem. Wearing hearing aids, cochlear implants, etc., can provide a huge deal of help to a person with hearing loss problems to take care of their hearing health and increase their hearing ability, which can keep them safe from all those mentioned consequences.
