Hearing aids may boost longevity, study finds. But only if used regularly
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
About 40 million adults in the U.S. have trouble hearing, including me, but most of them do not use hearing aids. This means they're missing out on more than just good hearing. They may also be putting themselves at heightened risk of everything from depression to dementia. NPR's Allison Aubrey reports on surprising new research that finds wearing hearing aids may even boost longevity.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: Dr. Janet Choi was born with hearing loss. But for years, she resisted wearing hearing aids because her hearing was very good in one ear. Then, when she became a surgeon, she realized she was missing out.
JANET CHOI: In the operating room during surgery sometimes, if someone talks to me on the left side when there are a lot of background noise, I usually wouldn't respond 'cause I didn't hear it. And people thought that I was just ignoring them, which was actually not true. I just didn't hear them.
AUBREY: Choi was well aware of the risks associated with hearing loss, and she knew the evidence was piling up.
CHOI: Social isolation, depression, also decreased physical activity, and now there have been a lot of studies talking about dementia.
AUBREY: With so much at stake, Choi has become a regular user of her hearing aids, and she's also at the forefront of new research. On the heels of a study showing that the use of hearing aids may help stave off cognitive decline, she and her collaborators wanted to know if hearing aids may also be linked to a longer lifespan. To evaluate this, they tracked the status of nearly 1,900 adults who'd been shown to have hearing loss during screenings and who had tracked their use of hearing aids. What they found, she says, was surprising.
CHOI: One thing that we were surprised was that the group of patients who have hearing loss and report that they were using hearing aids regularly had 24% lower risks of mortality compared to those group who never used hearing aids.
AUBREY: Meaning they were significantly less likely to die prematurely. Prior studies have shown that hearing loss, if untreated, is associated with multiple health problems. And this adds to the evidence that restoring hearing is beneficial. The study does not prove cause and effect. It could be that people who become regular users of hearing aids are more likely to stave off isolation and stay more active, which could explain the longevity boost. Given the benefits, Choi says it's stunning how few people wear hearing aids regularly.
CHOI: In our study, we found that the rates of hearing aid use was about 12%.
AUBREY: And she says another striking finding is that the people in the study who had hearing aids but did not use them regularly were as likely to die prematurely as the never-users, pointing to the importance of habitual use. She recommends new users wear them every day for 30 consecutive days to acclimate.
CHOI: Hearing loss such is an invisible problem and it happens gradually, that it takes time for you to get used to hearing aids and then get benefit from it.
AUBREY: So Choi says if you have hearing aids sitting in the back of your drawer, not using them due to stigma or maybe just the annoyance of getting used to them - try them again. Allison Aubrey, NPR News.
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