HEALTH
Hear to eternity
Only 6% of people have had a hearing test in the past year, yet four in ten over-50s have hearing loss. If you’re affected, don’t ignore it. Getting it checked out is sound advice
by PATSY WESTCOTT
illustrations MICHAEL DRIVER
Always turning up the TV or asking people to repeat themselves? You’re not alone. Around four in ten (42%) of us over the age of 50 and seven out of ten (71%) aged 70-plus have hearing loss. Causes include exposure to loud noise, genetic conditions, certain medications – and growing older.
It’s estimated that 12 million people in the UK are affected, rising to 14.2 million by 2035. Yet, whether as a result of pride, ignorance or a feeling that hearing aids make us look older, many ignore it. This could be misguided: new research suggests tackling hearing loss could reduce the risk of dementia. The most recent study, in July, found that improving hearing – including wearing hearing aids – slowed cognitive decline by 48% over three years among certain people in the study.
That seems an astonishingly high figure, but experts say that these people already had a three-times greater risk of dementia because they had multiple risk factors, including high cholesterol, high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes. But if you look at the bulk of the 977 people on the trial (aged 70-84), there was no difference in the rate of cognitive decline between those given hearing aids and those not given them. This seems to suggest that if you have risk factors such as those above, managing hearing loss is vital.