Southwest Florida's Health and Wellness Magazine Health and Wellness Articles
By Hoglund Family Hearing and Audiology Services
A series of lectures concerning hearing loss and memory problems will be presented March 23rd, 24th, and 25th. These seminars are completely FREE, and lunch will be provided. Hoglund Family Hearing and Audiology Center is proud to feature speakers from the renowned Neuropsychiatric Research Center during this return to our extremely popular “Lunch and Learn” lecture series.
Crowds will be limited, and masks will be required at the restaurants to keep a SAFE environment for learning, so please RSVP as soon as possible if interested. This new research will answer all your questions concerning new treatments for both hearing loss and memory loss… you will be amazed to see how closely these conditions are tied together!
Hearing Loss DRAMATICALLY Increases Alzheimer’s Disease Risk!
Hearing loss can have much larger consequences than just the frustration of misunderstanding friends and loved ones. A number of studies have come to light showing a link between hearing loss and dementia. Specifically, studies out of Johns Hopkins found that hearing loss is associated with accelerated cognitive decline in older adults and that seniors with hearing loss are significantly more likely to develop dementia over time than those who retain their hearing. A third Johns Hopkins study revealed a link between hearing loss and accelerated brain tissue loss. The researchers found that for older adults with hearing loss, brain tissue loss happens faster than it does for those with normal hearing. Some experts believe that interventions, like hearing aids, may delay or prevent dementia. Brandeis University Professor of Neuroscience, Dr. Arthur Wingfield, has been studying cognitive aging and the relationship between memory and hearing acuity. He says unaddressed hearing loss not only affects the listener’s ability to “hear” the sound accurately, but it also affects higher-level cognitive function. Specifically, it interferes with the listener’s ability to accurately process the auditory information and make sense of it.
How Hearing Loss Affects Cognitive Function
“They say your brain is like a computer”, says John Hoglund of Hoglund Family Hearing and Audiology Center, “and data gets into your computer through your five senses. The sense of smell, taste, and touch all give us information about the world around us, but most of the data getting into your computer all day every day comes from our eyes (what we see and read) and our EARS (what we hear). There is a phrase that most people have heard from the computer field that says garbage in … garbage out! We find that the ongoing misinformation and flawed data getting into your computer begins to take its toll and leads to tragic consequences!”
When we have a hearing loss, the connections in the brain that respond to sound become reorganized. Fortunately, for many people, hearing aids can provide the sound stimulation needed for the brain to restore the normal organization of connections to its “sound center” so it can more readily react to the sounds that it had been missing and cognitively process them. We “hear” with our brain, not with our ears.
“Even if you have just a mild hearing loss that is not being treated, cognitive load increases significantly,” Wingfield said. “You have to put in so much effort just to perceive and understand what is being said that you divert resources away from storing what you have heard into your memory.”As people move through middle age and their later years, Wingfield suggested, it is reasonable for them to get their hearing tested annually. If there is a hearing loss, it is best to take it seriously and treat it!
Even mild hearing loss doubled the dementia risk of memory problems. That risk appeared to increase once hearing loss began to interfere with the ability to communicate — for example, in a noisy restaurant. It is therefore recommended that regularly scheduled Hearing Tests should be a part of Senior’s routine medical testing, and that hearing loss should be addressed as early as possible before these negative consequences begin to develop.
These Seminars will discuss this research in much greater detail.
SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER
Wendy R. Bond, M.D.
Dr. Wendy Robinson Bond is Board Certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. For the past 13 years, Dr. Bond has been practicing General Neurology in the Fort Myers and Cape Coral Area. She is a current member of the American Academy of Neurology, AAN Fellow. Locally, she is a member of the Lee County Medical Society. Because of her personal experiences with Alzheimer’s Disease, she joined the Neuropsychiatric Research Center of Southwest Florida founded by the renown clinical research expert Dr. Fred Schaerf. She continues, to maintain the high quality of clinical research trials here in Southwest Florida, in hopes of finding some relief for everyone suffering from this type of dementia. Dr. Bond and/or members of her clinical research staff will share clinical research in the new treatments being developed to treat Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease.
If you prefer a private consultation instead of a group lecture, please call our clinic response line (239) 360-3753 to arrange an appointment with John Hoglund or Dr. Bond.
Hoglund Family Hearing And Audiology Center
Fifteen 8th Street, Suite B (Next to Royal Scoop Ice Cream)
Bonita Springs, FL 31434
Southwest Florida Tinnitus And Hearing Center
10020 Coconut Rd. Ste.120 (Next to LabCorp)
Estero, FL 34135
AUDIOLOGY CENTERS OF HOGLUND FAMILY HEARING
13710 Metropolis Ave.Suite 101
(One block west of Gulf Coast Hospital)
Fort Myers, FL 33912
Hoglund Family Hearing And Audiology Center
1003 Del Prado Blvd South, Unit 204
(Towers Professional Building, Next to Downtowner Car Wash)
Cape Coral, FL 33990
