It’s easy to notice how your body ages over time. Your skin begins to develop some wrinkles. You start to lose your hair or it turns grey. Your joints start to stiffen. Your skin gets a little saggy in places. Maybe your eyesight and your hearing both begin to fade a little. These indicators are hard to miss.
But it’s harder to see how aging affects your mind. You may find that you are having to note significant events on the calendar because you’re having trouble with your memory. Perhaps you find yourself spacing out more and missing important events. The trouble is that this kind of mental decline takes place so slowly and gradually that you might never realize it. And that hearing decline can be worsened by the psychological impact.
As you get older, there are, luckily, some exercises you can do to help your brain stay sharp. And you might even have a little bit of fun!
What’s the link between hearing and mental cognition
There are a number of reasons why individuals will slowly lose their hearing as they age. The risk of mental decline will then increase. So, why does loss of hearing increase the chances of mental decline? Research reveals a number of hidden risks of hearing loss.
- There can be atrophy of the part 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 mental health.
- Untreated hearing loss can easily produce a sense of social isolation. As a result of this lack of social interaction, you can begin to detect cognitive lapses as you withdraw from the outside world.
- Mental health problems and depression can be the result of neglected hearing loss. And having these mental health concerns can boost an associated risk of mental decline.
So is dementia the result of hearing loss? Well, not directly. But cognitive decline, including dementia, will be more likely for a person who has neglected hearing loss. Those risks, however, can be seriously decreased by getting hearing loss treated. And, enhancing your overall brain health (known medically as “cognition”) can lessen those risks even more. Think of it as a little bit of preventative medicine.
Increasing cognitive function
So, how can you be sure to boost your cognitive function and give your brain the workout it needs? Well, the great news is that your brain is like any other part of the body: you can always achieve improvement, it simply calls for a little exercise. So boost your brain’s sharpness by engaging in some of these fun activities.
Gardening
Growing your own vegetables and fruits is a delicious and rewarding 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 exercise. Whether it’s digging around in the dirt or moving buckets of soil around, the exercise you get when gardening is enough to get your blood pumping, and that’s good for your brain.
- Anxiety relief and a little bit of serotonin. This can help keep mental health problems including depression and anxiety at bay.
- You need to think about what you’re doing as you’re doing it. You have to utilize planning skills, problem solving skills, and analyze the situation. This gives your brain a lot of great practice.
The fact that you get healthy vegetables and fruits out of your garden is an additional bonus. Of course, not all gardens need to be food-focused. You can grow flowers, wild grasses, cacti, or anything your green thumb wants!
Arts and crafts
Arts and crafts can be appreciated by anyone regardless of artistic ability. You can make a simple sculpture using popsicle sticks. Or maybe you can make a nice clay mug on a pottery wheel. It’s the process that is important when it comes to exercising the brain, not so much the particular medium. Because your critical thinking skills, imagination, and sense of aesthetics are developed by doing arts and crafts (sculpting, painting, building).
Arts and crafts can be good for your cognitive ability because:
- It requires making use of fine motor skills. And while that might feel automatic, your brain and nervous system are really doing a lot of work. That type of exercise can keep your cognitive functions healthier over the long run.
- You need to process sensory input in real time and you will need to engage your imagination to do that. This requires a lot of brain power! There are a number of activities that stimulate your imagination in exactly this way, so it provides a unique kind of brain exercise.
- You have to think about what you’re doing as you do it. You can help your cognitive process remain clear and flexible by participating in this kind of real time thinking.
Whether you get a paint-by-numbers kit or create your own original fine art piece, your level of talent isn’t really relevant. The most relevant thing is keeping your brain sharp by stimulating your imagination.
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 sweltering hot outside). But swimming isn’t only good for your physical health, it also has mental health benefits.
Whenever you’re in the pool, you need to do a lot of thinking about spatial relations when you’re swimming. After all, you don’t want to smash into anyone else in the pool!
You also have to think about your rhythms. When will you need to come up to breathe when you’re under water? Things like that. This is still an effective cognitive exercise even if it’s happening in the background of your mind. Plus, physical exercise of any sort can really help get blood to the brain going, and that can be good at helping to slow down cognitive decline.
Meditation
Just some time for you and your mind. Meditation can help calm down your thoughts (and calm your sympathetic nervous system too). These “mindfulness” meditation techniques are designed to help you focus on your thinking. Meditation can help:
- Improve your memory
- Help you learn better
- Improve your attention span
You can become even more aware of your mental faculties by practicing meditation.
Reading
Reading is good for you! And even more than that, it’s fun. A book can take you anywhere according to that old saying. The bottom of the ocean, the distant past, outer space, you can travel everywhere in a book. Consider all the brain power that is involved in creating these imaginary landscapes, keeping up with a story, or visualizing characters. A large part of your brain is engaged when you’re reading. Reading isn’t feasible without employing your imagination and thinking a lot.
Consequently, one of the very best ways to sharpen the mind is by reading. You have to use your memory to monitor the story, your imagination to visualize what’s happening, and you get a pleasant dose of serotonin when you complete your book!
What you read doesn’t really make a difference, fiction, non-fiction, science fiction, as long as you spend some time every day reading and building your brainpower! Audiobooks, for the record, work just as well!
Manage your hearing loss to minimize cognitive risks
Disregarded hearing loss can raise your danger of mental decline, even if you do everything correctly. But if you don’t get your hearing loss treated, even if you do all of these things, it will still be an uphill battle.
Your social skills, your thinking, and your memory and cognition will improve once you have your hearing loss dealt with (usually with hearing aids).
Is hearing loss a problem for you? Call us today to schedule a hearing exam and reconnect to life!