It’s easy to notice how your body ages over time. You get wrinkles. Your hair turns gray (or falls out). Your joints begin to get stiff. Your skin gets a little droopy in places. Perhaps your eyesight and your hearing both start to fade a little. These indicators are hard to miss.
But it’s harder to see how aging affects your mind. You may acknowledge that your memory isn’t as strong as it used to be and that you need to begin writing significant dates on your calendar. Maybe you find yourself spacing out more and missing significant events. The trouble is that this kind of cognitive decline happens so slowly and gradually that you might never notice it. And that hearing decline can be worsened by the psychological effects.
As you get older, there are, luckily, some exercises you can do to help your brain stay clear. And you might even have some fun!
The relationship between cognition and hearing
Most 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 points to a number of hidden risks of hearing loss.
- When you have neglected hearing loss, the portion of your brain that processes sound starts to atrophy. Occasionally, it’s put to other uses, but generally speaking, this is not great for your cognitive health.
- A feeling of social separation is often the outcome of neglected hearing loss. This isolation means you’re conversing less, socializing less, and spending more time on your own, and your cognition can suffer as a result.
- Untreated hearing loss can also bring about depression and other mental health issues. And having these mental health problems can boost the corresponding danger of mental decline.
So, can hearing loss turn into dementia? Well, not directly. But cognitive decline, including dementia, will be more probable for somebody with neglected hearing loss. Those risks, however, can be significantly decreased by getting hearing loss treated. And, improving your overall brain health (known medically as “cognition”) can decrease those risks even more. Think of it as a little bit of preventative medicine.
Strengthening mental function
So, how can you be sure to boost your mental function and give your brain the workout it needs? Well, the good news is that your brain is like any other body part: you can always achieve improvement, it simply calls for a little exercise. So here are some enjoyable ways to develop your brain and increase your sharpness.
Gardening
Cultivating your own vegetables and fruits is a tasty and gratifying hobby. Your cognition can be enhanced with this unique combination of hard work and deep thinking. Here are several reasons why:
- You have to think about what you’re doing when you’re doing it. You have to utilize planning skills, problem solving skills, and analyze the situation. This gives your brain a great deal of great practice.
- You get a bit of modest physical exercise. Whether it’s digging around in the ground or moving bags of soil around, the exercise you get when gardening is enough to get your blood pumping, and that’s healthy for your brain.
- Gardening releases serotonin which can relieve the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
As an added bonus, you get healthy vegetables and fruits from your hobby. 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 enjoyed by anyone no matter the artistic ability. You can make a simple sculpture using popsicle sticks. Or you can get started with pottery and make a cool clay pot! When it comes to exercising your brain, the medium matters a lot less than the process. That’s because arts and crafts (painting, sculpting, building) cultivate your imagination, your critical thinking skills, and your sense of aesthetics.
Arts and crafts can be good for your cognition because:
- You need to use many 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 haul.
- You have to utilize your imagination and process sensory inputs in real time. A lot of brain power is required to accomplish that. You can stimulate your imagination by undertaking these unique brain exercises.
- You have to think about what you’re doing as you do it. This type of real time thinking can help keep your cognitive processes limber and versatile.
Whether you get a paint-by-numbers kit or draft your own original work of art, your level of talent isn’t really relevant. What counts is that you’re making use of your imagination and keeping your brain sharp.
Swimming
There are a number of ways that swimming can keep you healthy. Plus, it’s always fun to jump into the pool (particularly when it’s so sweltering hot outside). But swimming isn’t just good for your physical health, it also has cognitive health advantages.
Whenever you’re in the pool, you have to think a lot about spatial relations when you’re swimming. Obviously, slamming into someone else in the pool wouldn’t be safe.
Your mind also needs to be aware of rhythms. When will you need to come up for a breath of air when you’re under water? Things like that. This is still an effective mental exercise even if it’s happening in the background of your mind. Plus, physical exercise of any kind can really help get blood to the brain pumping, and that can be good at helping to slow mental decline.
Meditation
Spending a little quiet alone time with your mind. As your thoughts become calm, your sympathetic nervous system also relaxes. These “mindfulness” meditation methods are made to help you concentrate on your thinking. As a result, meditation can:
- Improve your attention span
- Improve your memory
- Help you learn better
Put simply, meditation can help give you even more awareness of your mental and cognitive faculties.
Reading
It’s good for you to read! And even better than that, it’s fun. There’s that old adage: a book can take you anywhere. In a book, you can go anywhere, like outer space, the ancient world, or the bottom of the ocean. When you’re following along with a story, creating landscapes in your imagination, and mentally creating characters, you’re using a lot of brain power. In this way, reading activates a huge part of your brain. Reading isn’t possible without employing your imagination and thinking a great deal.
Hence, one of the 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 nice dose of serotonin when you complete your book!
Spend some time each day to strengthen your brain power by doing some reading, regardless of whether it’s fiction, science fiction, non-fiction, or whatever you prefer. Audiobooks, for the record, work just as well!
Better your cognition by having your hearing loss addressed
Neglected hearing loss can increase your danger of mental decline, even if you do everything correctly. Which means, even if you garden, swim, and read, you’ll still be fighting an uphill battle, unless you manage your hearing loss.
When are able to have your hearing managed (usually because of a hearing aid or two), all of these fun brain exercises will help increase your cognition. Improving your memory, your thoughts, and your social skills.
Are you suffering from hearing loss? Reconnect your life by contacting us today for a hearing assessment.
