If you’re experiencing hearing loss should you use hearing aids to reduce your risk of dementia? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Hearing loss is very common, especially as we get older, and a link between hearing loss and dementia has been observed. Now a new study by Frank Lin, an otolaryngologist at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues, has shown that for those at risk, hearing aid use does seem to slow the rate of cognitive decline.

Lin: They're two different study populations that were brought into this ACHIEVE trial,  the Areck population, they're about 238 people they represented a random sample of the population recruited over 30 years ago but followed to the present day in this cardiovascular health study. And the other group called the de novo cohort the new healthy volunteer cohort,  those are new volunteers who respond to advertisements about a healthy  aging cognitive study and the heart health study population we saw that hearing intervention basically reduced the rate of loss of thinking ability by nearly 50%.   :30

Lin says especially now that hearing aids can be purchased over the counter and are much less expensive, this strategy is worth trying. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.