Wearing a hearing aid for age-related hearing problems is better for maintaining brain function than not using a device, a new study by the University of Exeter and King’s College London suggests. The study showed that people who wear hearing aids may in fact, be protecting their brains and reducing their risk of dementia.
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The connection between brain health and hearing is well documented.
Your ear is an incredible instrument. It captures sound traveling through the air as vibrations in air pressure and converts those sound waves into electrical impulses that can be interpreted by your brain.
Those vibrations travel from your eardrum to the inner ear and the sounds are translated into nerve impulses that your brain can recognize and understand as distinct sounds.
Hearing loss is not limited to the elderly. Hidden hearing loss, caused by exposure to everyday noise, is thought to be on the rise. Young people may be especially at risk of hidden hearing loss from the use of personal audio devices and visiting loud entertainment venues like bars, nightclubs and concerts.
You may be able to lower your risk of hearing loss or improve your hearing with nutrients found to be beneficial for protecting and improving hearing such as astaxanthin, vitamin A, folate, zinc and magnesium. Astaxanthin may also raise your chances of recovery from noise-induced hearing loss.
For tinnitus, which is characterized by a chronic or near-chronic ringing in the ears, folate (vitamin B9), can be beneficial. It works by lowering your homocysteine. Having a high blood level of homocysteine has been linked to age-related hearing loss.
Folic acid can be found in supplements, but the best way to raise your folate levels is to simply eat plenty of fresh, raw and organic leafy green vegetables, broccoli, lentils and beans. By getting this nutrient from food, you automatically transform it into its biologically active form — L-5-MTHF — the form that is able to cross the blood-brain barrier.
If you choose to take a B-vitamin supplement, make sure it contains natural folate, not a synthetic folic acid.
Other nutrients found to be most beneficial for hearing include:
Carotenoids, especially astaxanthin and vitamin A
Folate
Zinc
Magnesium