In this episode of Sound Advice, Doug Leonard from Audiological Services of Iowa emphasizes the significance of Better Hearing Month and discusses an illuminating article that highlights the critical connection between hearing loss and dementia. Discover why understanding this link is more crucial than ever and how it could impact you or your loved ones. Doug underscores the importance of not just self-reporting hearing issues but seeking professional evaluations that can paint an accurate picture of our hearing health, and thus, our cognitive well-being.
This is Sound Advice with audiologist Doug Leonard from ASI, Audiological Services of Iowa. Today is the beginning of Better Hearing Month. It is the month of May. It's like Christmas and New Year's all rolled into one for audiologists. And Doug is in a great mood, of course, with Better Hearing Month today. We're going to be talking about an article, Doug, you've got posted to your Facebook page, talking about a link that we have talked about now. numerous times between hearing loss and dementia. We thought it was one thing, but actually it's probably even more critical and more important than we even thought.
Yeah. You don't like to beat people over the head with this. And I don't like people to come in because they're scared of cognitive decline, but you know, research just keeps showing a greater and greater link between that. A couple of things in this article again was they said that 32% of dementia cases could be attributed to any degree of audiometric hearing loss. So that's certainly higher than what some of the other studies, like there was a study called an ACHIEVE study, and I think they linked about 8% of it. But that's the highlight of the study. I think when you dig a little deeper into the article, too, though, it really highlights the need for people to have professional diagnostic evaluations because they talk about how the numbers are so different now because they were relying on self-reported, air quotes, self-reported hearing loss.
The problem with that is self-reporting is the worst kind of determination of hearing loss.
Yeah, I mean, it is. And because everybody vastly underestimates their hearing problem unless they suffered from a sudden hearing loss. People that think they have mild hearing loss have moderate hearing loss. People that think they have moderate hearing loss think they have severe or actually have severe hearing loss. It is really underreported. And if you don't have a diagnostic evaluation, how do you have any idea? You know, we were talking off the air. How would you know how your cholesterol is unless you had a blood test? You know, what percentage of Americans would actually have high cholesterol or would self-report high cholesterol without actually having a blood test? You know, it's going to be an inaccurate statistic for sure.
Yeah. And you said we're not trying to scare people, but I'll tell you, I'm terrified of dementia and things like that happening in the future.
It is something that, you know, when we've seen our loved ones go through that and we all have people, whether it's our parents, our grandparents or our loved ones, even that are going through that cognitive decline. You know, I think we'd do anything we could to try to help prevent that. And, you know, if people realize the link between untreated hearing loss and cognitive decline, I think they're going to be much more prone to take action.
And here's the crazy part of all of it. You can do something today that will actually help you out tremendously. And it's getting a hearing screening.
Yeah, I mean, it's very simple. You know, if folks are Medicare age, they can visit with their provider and have a referral. And for most folks, they can have Medicare cover the cost of evaluation. It's only $50. It's the cheapest health care examination that I think anybody can go through, even if they're paying out of pocket for it. So. Great information that they'll figure out from that, and they will have peace of mind to know that they actually don't have a hearing problem, or they will maybe confirm what other folks in their lives suspect that there is a hearing issue going on.
It really is a great article. Check out Doug's Facebook page. Where do they find you on Facebook? Just Audiological Services of Iowa?
Yeah, it's Audiological Services of Iowa on Facebook, or they can look at our website, which is asihearing.com. And your phone number here in Carroll? It's 792-5933.
Best thing you can do, Better Hearing Month started off right with a hearing screening that we bet you probably haven't had in a long time. So check it out. ASI, Audiological Services of Iowa.
