It’s easy to notice how your body ages over time. Your skin starts to develop some wrinkles. Your hair turns gray (or falls out). Your joints start to stiffen. Some drooping of the skin starts to take place in certain places. Maybe your eyesight and your hearing both begin to fade a bit. These signs are difficult to miss.
But it’s more difficult to see how growing older affects your mind. You might find that you’re needing to put significant events on the calendar because you’re having trouble with your memory. Perhaps you miss important events or lose your train of thought more frequently. But regrettably, you might not even detect this gradual onset. For those with hearing loss, the psychological effects can frequently worsen this decline.
As you get older, there are, fortunately, some exercises you can do to help your brain remain clear. Even better, these exercises can be downright enjoyable!
What’s the link between hearing and mental cognition
The majority of people will slowly lose their hearing as they age (for a wide variety of reasons). The risk of mental decline will then increase. So what is the connection 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 untreated hearing loss. Occasionally, it’s put to other uses, but in general, this is not great for your cognitive health.
- Untreated hearing loss can easily result in a sense of social isolation. Because of this lack of social interaction, you can begin to notice cognitive lapses as you withdraw from the outside world.
- Untreated hearing loss can also bring about depression and other mental health problems. And having these mental health problems can increase an associated danger of cognitive decline.
So, can hearing loss turn into dementia? Well, indirectly. But untreated hearing loss can raise your risk of mental decline, up to and including dementia. Those risks, however, can be greatly lowered by getting hearing loss treated. And those risks can be lowered even more by increasing your overall brain function or cognition. Think of it as a little bit of preventative medicine.
How to improve cognitive function
So, how can you be sure to increase your cognitive function and give your brain the workout it needs? Well, as with any other part of your body, the amount and type of exercise you do go a long way. So here are some enjoyable ways to develop your brain and improve your sharpness.
Gardening
Growing your own vegetables and fruits is a delicious and rewarding hobby. Your cognition can be improved with this unique mix of hard work and deep thinking. Here are several reasons why:
- Gardening releases serotonin which can relieve the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
- You get a little modest physical activity. Improved blood flow is good for your brain and blood flow will be increased by moving buckets around and digging in the ground.
- You have to think about what you’re doing as you’re doing it. You have to use planning skills, problem solving skills, and examine the situation. This gives your brain a great deal of great practice.
As an added bonus, you get healthy vegetables and fruits from your hobby. Of course, you can grow lots of other things besides food (herbs, flowers cacti).
Arts and crafts
You don’t need to be artistically inclined to take pleasure in arts and crafts. You can make a simple sculpture out of popsicle sticks. Or perhaps you can make a nice clay mug on a pottery wheel. When it comes to exercising your brain, the medium matters a lot less than the process. Because your critical thinking skills, imagination, and sense of aesthetics are developed by doing arts and crafts (sculpting, painting, building).
Here are several reasons why getting involved in arts and crafts will improve cognition:
- You have to make use of numerous fine motor skills. Even if it feels like it’s happening automatically, lots of work is being done by your nervous system and brain. Over the long haul, your cognitive function will be healthier.
- You need to process sensory input in real time and you will need to employ your imagination to do that. A lot of brain power is required to achieve that. You can activate your imagination by participating in these unique brain exercises.
- You will have to keep your attention engaged in the task you’re doing. This type of real time thinking can help keep your cognitive processes limber and versatile.
Your level of talent doesn’t really matter, whether you’re painting a work of art or doing a paint-by-numbers. What counts is that you’re making use of your imagination and keeping your mind sharp.
Swimming
Going for a swim can help you stay healthy in a lot of ways! Plus, it’s always enjoyable to jump into the pool (particularly when it’s so unrelentingly hot outside). But swimming isn’t just good for your physical health, it also has mental health benefits.
Your brain needs to be engaged in things like spatial awareness when you’re swimming in the pool. Obviously, colliding with someone else in the pool wouldn’t be a good thing.
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 kind of thinking is going on in the background of your brain, it’s still excellent cognitive exercise. And cognitive decline will advance more slowly when you get involved in physical exercise because it helps get more blood to the brain.
Meditation
Spending a little silent solo time with your mind. As your thoughts calm down, your sympathetic nervous system also gets calm. These “mindfulness” meditation practices are designed to help you focus on your thinking. Meditation can help:
- Improve your memory
- Improve your attention span
- Help you learn better
Essentially, meditation can help provide you with even more awareness of your mental and cognitive faculties.
Reading
Reading is great for you! And it’s also quite enjoyable. There’s that old saying: a book can take you anywhere. The bottom of the ocean, the distant past, outer space, you can travel anywhere in a book. Consider all the brain power that goes into generating these imaginary landscapes, following a story, or conjuring characters. In this way, reading activates a massive part of your brain. Reading isn’t feasible without employing your imagination and thinking a lot.
Consequently, one of the best ways to sharpen the mind is by reading. Imagination is required to picture 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 actually matter, fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, as long as you allocate time every day reading and building your brainpower! And, for the record, audiobooks are basically as good as reading with your eyes.
Manage your hearing loss to reduce cognitive risks
Disregarded hearing loss can raise your risk of mental decline, even if you do everything right. Which means, even if you swim and read and garden, you’ll still be fighting an uphill battle, 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 treated (normally with hearing aids).
Are you suffering from hearing loss? Call us today to make an appointment for a hearing test and reconnect to life!
