It’s easy to notice how your body ages over time. Your skin begins to develop some wrinkles. You begin to lose your hair or it turns grey. Your knees start to hurt a little bit more. Your skin becomes a little droopy in places. Perhaps you begin to observe some fading of your hearing and eyesight. It’s pretty difficult not to notice these changes.
But the impact aging has on the mind is not always so apparent. You might find that you are having to put important events on the calendar because you’re having difficulty with your memory. Maybe you miss important events or lose your train of thought more often. But unfortunately, you might not even notice this gradual onset. For those who have hearing loss, the psychological effects can often worsen this decline.
As you age, there are, luckily, some exercises you can do to help your brain remain clear. Even better, these exercises can be utterly fun!
What is the link between hearing and mental cognition
Most individuals will gradually lose their hearing as they age (for a wide variety of reasons). The risk of cognitive decline will then increase. So what is the link between cognitive decline and hearing loss? Research points to a number of hidden risks of hearing loss.
- When you’re dealing with neglected hearing loss, the portion of your brain that processes sound starts to atrophy. Occasionally, it’s put to other uses, but in general, this is not great for your cognitive health.
- Neglected hearing loss can easily result in a sense of social separation. This isolation means you’re conversing less, interacting less, and spending more time on your own, and your cognition can suffer as a consequence.
- Untreated hearing loss can also lead to depression and other mental health concerns. And having these mental health issues can increase an associated danger of mental decline.
So, can hearing loss turn into dementia? Well, not directly. But mental decline, including dementia, will be more probable for someone who has untreated hearing loss. Managing your hearing loss can substantially reduce those risks. And, improving your overall brain health (known medically as “cognition”) can decrease those risks even more. A little preventative management can go a long way.
How to improve cognitive function
So, how can you be sure to develop your cognitive 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 a few fun ways to exercise your brain and improve your sharpness.
Gardening
Cultivating your own vegetables and fruit is a tasty and rewarding hobby. Your cognition can be enhanced with this unique mix of hard work and deep thinking. This happens for several reasons:
- You get a bit of moderate physical exercise. Whether it’s digging around in the ground or moving bags of soil around, the activity 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 you’re working, you will have to think about what you’re doing. You have to assess the situation making use of planning and problem solving skills.
The reality that you get healthy vegetables and fruits out of your garden is an additional bonus. Of course, you can grow a lot of other things besides food (herbs, flowers cacti).
Arts and crafts
You don’t need to be artistically inclined to enjoy arts and crafts. 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 as much the specific medium. Because your critical thinking skills, imagination, and sense of aesthetics are cultivated by doing arts and crafts (sculpting, painting, building).
Here are several reasons why doing arts and crafts will strengthen cognition:
- It requires the use of fine motor skills. And while that may feel automatic, your brain and nervous system are truly doing lots of work. Over the long run, your cognitive function will be healthier.
- You have to make use of your imagination and process sensory inputs in real time. This involves a ton of brain power! You can stimulate your imagination by engaging in these unique brain exercises.
- You have to think about what you’re doing while 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 fine art piece, your level of talent isn’t really relevant. The most important thing is keeping your brain sharp by stimulating your imagination.
Swimming
Taking a swim can help you stay healthy in a number of ways! Plus, it’s always fun to jump into the pool (particularly when it’s so sweltering hot outside). And while it’s obviously good for your physical health, there are some ways that swimming can also be good for your mental health.
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? That sort of thing. This is still an effective mental exercise even if it’s going on in the background of your brain. Also, physical exercise of any sort can really help get blood to the brain pumping, and that can be good at helping to slow down cognitive decline.
Meditation
Just a little time for you and your mind. As your thoughts calm down, your sympathetic nervous system also calms down. These “mindfulness” meditation practices 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 provide you with even more awareness of your mental and cognitive faculties.
Reading
Reading is great for you! And it’s also quite enjoyable. A book can take you anywhere according to that old saying. The floor of the ocean, the distant past, outer space, you can travel anywhere in a book. When you’re following along with a story, manifesting landscapes in your imagination, and mentally creating characters, you’re using a lot of brain power. A large part of your brain is engaged when you’re reading. You’re forced to think quite a bit and utilize your imagination when you read.
Hence, one of the best ways to sharpen the mind is reading. You have to utilize your memory to keep an eye on the story, your imagination to visualize what’s happening, and you get a nice dose of serotonin when you finish your book!
Spend some time every day to develop your brain power by doing some reading, regardless of whether it’s fiction, science fiction, non-fiction, or whatever you prefer. And, for the record, audiobooks are essentially as effective as reading with your eyes.
Treat your hearing loss to minimize cognitive risks
Even if you do every single thing right, neglected hearing loss can continue to increase your risks of mental decline. But if you don’t have your hearing loss treated, even if you do all of these things, it will still be a difficult fight.
When you do get your hearing treated (usually thanks to a hearing aid or two), all of these fun brain exercises will help boost your cognition. Improving your memory, your thinking, and your social skills.
Are you dealing with hearing loss? Reconnect your life by contacting us today for a hearing assessment.
