By Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
A recent Canadian newspaper article discussing a report in The Lancet, the premier British medical journal, about preventing dementia.
The Lancet article highlights the importance of treating hearing loss for possibly preventing dementia. If you’re interested in dementia, know someone with dementia, or want to see what you can do to avoid developing dementia yourself, I recommend the Lancet article. It summarizes a large body of research in a readable fashion that should be accessible even to the lay reader.
There are many factors correlated with dementia risk, including genes, blood lipid levels, and diseases or conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and factors such as social isolation and cigarette smoking. The association between hearing loss and dementia is well-known and research is under way to see if treating hearing loss reduces the risk of dementia. Despite only correlations, and no clear understanding of how hearing loss may increase the risk, the Lancet authors think the scientific evidence is strong enough to recommend treatment of hearing loss as a possible prevention measure for dementia.
Of course, the only treatment for hearing loss is hearing aids, with cochlear implants reserved for the more severely impaired. We think that people with hearing loss should use hearing aids just to be able to hear others, whether hearing aids prevent dementia or not.
That said, hearing aids are a poor substitute for preserved natural hearing.
Perhaps the Lancet article should have gone a step further and highlighted the importance of preventing noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) to delay or avoid the onset of dementia. After all, we think it’s significantly better to prevent NIHL than to treat it, and that’s simple: avoid exposure to loud noise or wear ear protection when you cannot.
