Sussex midlife health expert backs campaign to help reduce dementia risk

A world-renowned nutritionist and best-selling author, Marilyn is well known for her work helping women to manage the menopause and for her lifestyle advice for preventing and managing dementia, including Alzheimer’s.

Marilyn has recently started to wear hearing aids, along with her husband, Kriss, after learning how strong the science linking changes to our hearing with deteriorating brain function now is.

Marilyn explained: “The link between hearing loss and dementia is stronger than many people realise. If you struggle to hear, the process of converting sounds into words, and then words into sense, requires extra cognitive effort, and the brain becomes so tired that it loses its effective processing power. But when you wear hearing aids, your brain is more stimulated in the right areas, which frees up other areas that were compensating for hearing loss, so you become more alive and more alert.

“Understanding this, convinced us both to stop settling for saying ‘pardon?’ to each other all the time at home and to get hearing aids, especially due to our family history - Kriss’ mother had Alzheimer’s and my father had vascular dementia.”

Dementia, including Alzheimer’s, is the health condition most people say they are most concerned about developing as they get older, according to new research commissioned by the Love Your Ears campaign run by Hidden Hearing, that asked adults across the South-East about their top health concerns.

One in four (41%) of those surveyed listed dementia as their top health concern – a far higher number than those concerned about stroke (22%), bowel cancer (21%), diabetes (11%), osteoarthritis (9%), breast cancer (14%) or lung cancer (11%).

Yet awareness of the most significant dementia risk factor recently identified in a report by The Lancet Commission was found to be worryingly low. Only 5% of the adults surveyed in the South-East were aware that addressing hearing loss and wearing hearing aids when you need them can significantly reduce your risk of dementia.

To encourage more people to get their hearing tested and to support the work of the Alzheimer’s Society, the Love Your Ears campaign is donating £1 to the charity for every hearing test booked at Hidden Hearing clinics across Sussex in the run-up to World Alzheimer’s Day during 16-22 September and attended by the end of October.

Elle Hewitt, an audiologist at Hidden Hearing’s clinic in Hove, is one of the hearing specialists offering the free hearing tests and helping to raise awareness of the benefits of acting on hearing loss in midlife.

Elle explained: “People who develop hearing problems between the ages of 40 and 65 have been found to have an increased risk of developing dementia in later life. Although the connection is not completely understood, there are a few possibilities that could explain the link between hearing loss and dementia.

"It could be that when we struggle to hear, we fill in the gaps, but this puts extra strain on our brains at the expense of other faculties, like thinking and memory. It’s also possible that the social isolation caused by hearing loss means that people who struggle to hear don’t keep their brain as active or as engaged as those with busy social lives.”

Marilyn is now emphasising the importance of looking after your hearing in the midlife lifestyle advice she offers to other women:

“As a woman, the link between hearing loss and dementia has been really powerful for me, because we know that dementia is our biggest killer. It has really motivated me to think about what I need to do to look after myself and reduce my risk.”

To book a free hearing test and support the Alzheimer’s Society, visit www.hiddenhearing.co.uk/hearing-loss-dementia