How maintaining your hearing, maintains your health
Did you know you hear with your brain? Yes! Your brain. Our ears gather sound, but it’s understood in the brain. Your brain plays an important part in your hearing. And like any other muscle, it needs exercise. How can you keep your hearing fit? HearingFitnessTM in the Oticon ON app has been designed to do exactly that.
HearingFitness in an app
Just like an exercise app, HearingFitness tracks hearing aid use and provides insights you can use to improve your hearing health behaviours. What does this mean in reality? The HearingFitness app provides you with advice on ways to use your hearing aids more, by encouraging you to set personal goals of hearing aid usage, and letting you track your progress over time. Using your hearing aids more helps stimulate the brain and ultimately helps reduce the common side effects associated with untreated hearing loss, such as fatigue, withdrawal and stress1. Keeping in the conversation also keeps your mental faculties sharp and optimizes your health.
In short, HearingFitness helps you fulfil your hearing potential. And with hearing data at your fingertips, you are empowered to nurture your own hearing health.
Interested in taking a deeper dive?
Read the: whitepaper
How does HearingFitness work?
HearingFitness technology is incorporated into the Oticon ON app for Oticon hearing aids. In a simple app, it gives you a clear overview of your hearing day, i.e. for how long you have worn your hearing aids. When you set personal hearing goals, it shows the progress towards these too.
Discover Oticon ON
Why is hearing health important?
Just like the muscles in your legs, your brain needs a workout to keep it functioning in tip top shape and help keep deterioration at bay. You can exercise your brain in a myriad of ways, including brain teasers, solving crosswords and learning a new language.
Your brain gets a workout whenever you interact with others, and your hearing helps you listen, chat, laugh and more. Sound stimulates your brain, while conversations and social events keep your faculties sharp.
Learn more about: BrainHearingTM
The battle against dementia
Dementia is a loss of brain function that can be caused by a variety of disorders affecting the brain. Untreated hearing loss can lead to an increased risk of dementia2. Why? Because hearing loss can:
- Contribute to a withdrawal from social activities and lead to isolation. Socializing is vital to your brain’s health3.
- Sap the energy required to create memories and think in trying to compensate for the information missing from sound caused by hearing loss4.
- Accelerate brain atrophy and shrinkage5.
Learn why healthy hearing is vital in fighting dementia
_____________________________________________________________
[1] Lin, F. R., & Albert, M. (2014). Hearing loss and dementia – who is listening? Aging & Mental Health, 18(6), 671–673. doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2014.915924
[2] Livingston, G., Huntley, J., Sommerlad, A., Ames, D., Ballard, C., Banerjee, S., Brayne, C., Burns, A., Cohen-Mansfield, J., Cooper, C., Costafreda, S. G., Dias, A., Fox, N., Gitlin, L. N., Howard, R., Kales, H. C., Kivimäki, M., Larson, E. B., Ogunniyi, A., … Mukadam, N. (2020). Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2020 report of the Lancet Commission. The Lancet, doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30367-6
[3] Mick P, Kawachi I, Lin FR. The Association between Hearing Loss and Social Isolation in Older Adults. Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery. 2014;150(3):378-384. doi:10.1177/0194599813518021
[4] Mick P, Kawachi I, Lin FR. The Association between Hearing Loss and Social Isolation in Older Adults. Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery. 2014;150(3):378-384. doi:10.1177/0194599813518021
[5] Lin, F. R., Ferrucci, L., An, Y., Goh, J. O., Doshi, J., Metter, E. J., Davatzikos, C., Kraut, M. A., & Resnick, S. M. (2014). Association of Hearing Impairment with Brain Volume Changes in Older Adults. NeuroImage, 90, 84–92. doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.12.059