by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
A man wrote:
My mother, who is coming to terms with her hearing loss, was told recently by a hearing aid dispenser that her hearing loss would probably continue to get worse with age—losing something like up to 7-8% of her hearing each year. However if she were to get hearing aids—that wearing them regularly would actually slow the progression of her loss to around 1% a year due to the stimulation of the inner ear and other factors. Is there any truth to this claim? Do aids really help to slow down the hearing loss?
I think the salesman was using scare tactics. I’ve never seen those figures mentioned before and I watch out for information like that.
There is some truth to it though. IF your brain doesn’t hear anything, then yes, the auditory pathways “deteriorate” over time. Just as exercise keeps our bodies healthy, so to does hearing things keep our auditory circuits functioning optimally.
However, when we lose some of our hearing, there is typically still enough left that keeps the auditory system working. It’s not as though we live in total silence—we just don’t hear as much as we did before.
Therefore, I think those figures are grossly high. For example, at 8% descending balance, in 10 years according to him, you would only hear 43% as much as you did 10 years previously—and I just don’t buy that.
For example, if that were true, then my right ear—in which I didn’t wear a hearing aid for over 30 years, even thought it had a severe loss, shouldn’t hear anything by now—yet it now hears better than my left ear which is the ear in which I wore a hearing aid! Both ears had the same hearing loss to start with.
Apart from all this, it is well-known that the average person loses more and more (mostly high-frequency) hearing with increasing age. (The salesman was right there.) This has nothing to do with wearing hearing aids or not. Its just a fact of our modern life. So hearing will continue to deteriorate with increasing age, and hearing aids don’t stop it or slow it down significantly from anything I have read.
One report showed that the average person at 4000 Hz has the following degree of hearing loss by decade:
Age Loss
10s 0 db
20s 15 dB
30s 20 dB
40s 30 dB
50s 40 dB
60s 45 dB
70s 60 dB
80s 60 dB
90s 80 dB
As you can see, age is the big factor in how well we hear, not whether we wear hearing aids or not.
What hearing aids do is let us hear better in spite of our increasing hearing losses with aging. So it is to your mom’s advantage to wear hearing aids so she can communicate more easily in spite of losing more hearing each year due to aging, not to try to preserve her existing hearing.
Incidentally, when considering hearing aids, my policy is to get strong enough ones so that you only run them at about half power. That way, as your hearing gets worse, you have plenty of reserve power to compensate for it—otherwise you’ll have to buy new hearing aids every couple of years—and that gets expensive.
Dear Dr.Bauman:
There are many theories as to the effects of aids on continued hearing loss. But, I have noticed in my practice when I do a hearing test on a spouse not wearing hearing aids there is a significant drop in hearing, over several years compared to the spouse wearing hearing aids
Your last reader said, “hearing aids—that wearing them regularly would actually slow the progression of her loss to around 1% a year due to the stimulation of the inner ear”, and I was just told I need hearing aids in both ears and if I purchased them now I would delay additional hearing loss. So I asked what is the hearing aid doing to prevent additional hearing loss. I was told the aid stimulates the hair. Naturally my response was, why not get ear plugs and listen to a book or music. Would that not also stimulate the ear. I do not understand the comment being said about hearing aids.
Hi Cathy:
There is likely some truth in the “use it or lose it” philosophy of hearing loss due to not wearing amplification. But I think it is greatly overblown in an attempt to sell more hearing aids.
As you question, “Wouldn’t listening to music or books via your iPod and earbuds do the same thing?” And my answer is, “Yes, that will work just as well (assuming you don’t listen at too high a sound level).” The secret is hearing sounds regularly–it doesn’t matter at all whether it is via your normal hearing (louder sounds in this case), or by wearing hearing aids, or by using assistive devices of various sorts, or listening via earbuds or headphones to whatever you are plugged into.
So don’t let hearing aid dispensers scare you into buying their hearing aids using that argument. Buy hearing aids that let you hear the sounds you want to hear and can’t because of your hearing loss.
Cordially,
Neil
Thanks Neil and all, this has been very helpful to me. I’ve just been diagnosed by Specsavers as having mild to moderate hearing loss. The only thing which makes me hesitate to wear aids as they recommend is the fear of certain sensory pathways not being used, going defunct and then not recovering once I do succumb to aids. But looks like this is a small likelihood, so for the moment I’ll carry on without another hassle!
Hi Erica:
I don’t understand. I think you have it wrong. Wearing hearing aids is not going to let “certain sensory pathways go defunct”. You are better off wearing hearing aids than not wearing them.
Cordially,
Neil
Hi Neil
I think we’re talking at cross-purposes – sorry. I meant that I’d rather not wear aids, but the idea of this choice resulting in some auditory circuits being rendered ‘out of use’ and therefore prone to eventually not working is scary enough to make me go for aids – though I’ll do this via the NHS. Thanks for your reply though, and for al the information given to other bloggers.
I have tinnitus with moderate hearing loss. Will hearing aids help?
Hi Lynn:
Hearing aids should help you hear better, and if your tinnitus is tied to your hearing loss, probably wearing hearing aids will reduce the volume of your tinnitus–at least while wearing them.
Cordially,
Neil
I am 72. Recently a free audiology screening indicated moderate to severe hearing loss. I get along fine though, but I was told that not having a hearing aid would result in the loss of “once cubic centimeter of brain tissue associated with hearing per year”. This screamed junk science. How the hell could she know that. I would like some peer reviewed journal article (not that that means so much though) that makes or refutes this claim. Thanks.
Hi Lawrence:
Actually, your audiologist was correct–on the average. She doesn’t know how much brain volume you lose each year, if any, but on the average, this is true.
Here is a direct quote from a report on the study, “Overall, the scientists report, those with impaired hearing lost more than an additional cubic centimeter of brain tissue each year compared with those with normal hearing.” You can read the whole report at https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/hearing_loss_linked_to_accelerated_brain_tissue_loss_ . This study was led by Dr. Frank Lin, a very respected researcher/professor at Johns Hopkins University.
The truth is, although you think you “get along fine” with your hearing loss, you actually miss an enormous amount of sounds that you used to hear. Try out a hearing aid and see just how much you have been missing–especially of the higher frequency sounds. Then make your decision whether you want to keep the hearing aids or not.
Cordially,
Neil
Kudos for writing such insightful blog. Not only you provided some hard facts but manage to squeez in a brief way.