It’s not difficult to observe how your body ages over time. Your skin begins to develop some wrinkles. You begin to lose your hair or it turns grey. Your knees begin to hurt a little bit more. Your skin gets a little saggy in places. Maybe you start to detect some fading of your hearing and eyesight. These signs are tough to miss.
But the affect getting older has on the mind isn’t always so evident. You may find that you’re having to note significant events on the calendar because you’re having difficulty with your memory. Maybe you find yourself spacing out more and missing significant events. The trouble is that this sort of cognitive decline happens so slowly and gradually that you might never detect it. And that hearing decline can be worsened by the psychological effects.
As you get older, there are, luckily, some exercises you can do to help your brain remain clear. And you may even have a little bit of fun!
The relationship between hearing and cognition
There are numerous reasons why people will slowly lose their hearing as they age. The risk of cognitive decline will then increase. So what is the link between cognitive decline and hearing loss? Research reveals a number of hidden risks of hearing loss.
- There can be atrophy of the portion of the brain that processes sound when someone has neglected hearing loss. The brain might assign some resources, but in general, this isn’t very good for cognitive health.
- A feeling of social separation is frequently the consequence of untreated hearing loss. This isolation means you’re talking less, interacting less, and spending more time by yourself, and your cognition can suffer as a consequence.
- Mental health issues and depression can be the result of neglected hearing loss. And an associated chance of cognitive decline can be increased by these mental challenges.
So, can hearing loss turn into dementia? Well, not directly. But neglected hearing loss can raise your risk of cognitive decline, up to and including dementia. Those risks, however, can be seriously decreased by getting hearing loss treated. And those risks can be decreased even more by enhancing your general brain function or cognition. A little preventative treatment can go a long way.
How to enhance cognitive function
So how do you accomplish giving your brain the workout it requires to strengthen cognitive function? Well, as with any other part of your body, the amount and type of exercise you do go a long way. So increase your brain’s sharpness by engaging in some of these fun activities.
Gardening
Growing your own fruits and vegetables can be incredibly rewarding all by itself (it’s also a delicious hobby). A unique combination of deep thinking and hard work, gardening can also increase your cognitive function. Here are a number of reasons why:
- You get a bit of moderate physical activity. Whether it’s digging around in the dirt or moving containers of soil around, the activity you get when gardening is enough to get your blood pumping, and that’s healthy for your brain.
- As you’re working, you will have to think about what you’re doing. You have to use planning skills, problem solving skills, and examine the situation. This gives your brain a great deal of great practice.
- Gardening releases serotonin which can alleviate the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
The fact that you get healthy vegetables and fruits out of your garden is an added bonus. Of course, you can grow a lot of other things besides food (herbs, flowers cacti).
Arts and crafts
Arts and crafts can be appreciated by anyone regardless of artistic ability. Something like a simple popsicle stick sculpture can be fun. Or perhaps you can make a nice clay mug on a pottery wheel. When it comes to exercising your brain, the medium matters much less than the process. That’s because arts and crafts (painting, sculpting, building) cultivate your imagination, your critical thinking skills, and your sense of aesthetics.
Here are a number of reasons why doing arts and crafts will strengthen cognition:
- You need to use lots of fine motor skills. Even if it feels like it’s happening automatically, lots of work is being carried out by your nervous system and brain. Over the long run, your cognitive function will be healthier.
- You have to use your imagination and process sensory inputs in real time. This requires a ton of brain power! There are a few activities that activate your imagination in exactly this way, so it provides a unique type of brain exercise.
- You have to stay focused on what you’re doing as you do it. You can help your cognitive process stay clear and flexible by engaging in this type of real time thinking.
Whether you pick up a paint-by-numbers kit or draft your own original work of art, your level of talent isn’t really relevant. What matters is that you’re making use of your imagination and keeping your mind sharp.
Swimming
Taking a swim can help you stay healthy in a lot of ways! Plus, it’s always enjoyable to hop into the pool (particularly when it’s so unrelentingly hot outside). But swimming isn’t only good for your physical health, it also has cognitive health benefits.
Any time you’re in the pool, you need to think a lot about spatial relations when you’re swimming. After all, you don’t want to collide with anybody else in the pool!
You also have to pay attention to your rhythms. When will you need to come up to breathe when you’re under water? Things like that. Even if this type of thinking is occurring in the background of your mind, it’s still very good cognitive exercise. And mental decline will advance more slowly when you take part in physical activity because it helps get more blood to the brain.
Meditation
Spending some quiet solo time with your mind. As your thoughts calm down, your sympathetic nervous system also relaxes. These “mindfulness” meditation practices are made to help you focus on your thinking. Meditation can help:
- Help you learn better
- Improve your memory
- Improve your attention span
You can become even more mindful of your mental faculties by getting involved in meditation.
Reading
Reading is great for you! And it’s also really fun. There’s that old saying: a book can take you anywhere. In a book, you can travel anywhere, including outer space, ancient Egypt, or the bottom of the ocean. When you’re following along with a story, creating landscapes in your imagination, and mentally creating characters, you’re using lots of brain power. A big portion of your brain is engaged when you’re reading. You’re forced to think a lot and utilize your imagination when you read.
Hence, one of the very best ways to sharpen the mind is reading. Imagination is needed to visualize what’s going on, your memory to follow along with the plot, and when you finish the book, you get a rewarding dose of serotonin.
What you read doesn’t really matter, fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, so long as you spend some time each day reading and strengthening your brainpower! Audiobooks, for the record, work just as well!
Better your cognition by getting your hearing loss treated
Disregarded hearing loss can increase your risk of mental decline, even if you do everything correctly. Which means, even if you swim and read and garden, you’ll still be struggling uphill, unless you get your hearing loss treated.
Your social skills, your thinking, and your memory and cognition will improve once you have your hearing loss addressed (normally with hearing aids).
Is hearing loss an issue for you? Call us today to schedule a hearing test and reconnect to life!
