Don Doucet was not surprised by a recent report finding nearly a third of dementia is attributable to hearing loss. 

The Powell hearing instrument specialist said there’s been anecdotal evidence for years that older people who have trouble hearing seem to be more likely to develop dementia, but the findings by the Journal of the American Medical Association back that up, finding 32% of dementia is attributable to hearing loss.

“It’s pretty astounding,” Doucet said. “The good news is that it’s considered the No. 1 largest modifiable risk factor for dementia. So really encouraging people to seek intervention is the key to try to get ahead of that, if they can.”

Doucet, licensed in both Nebraska and Wyoming, has lived in Cody since 2014 and works at Powell’s Beltone Hearing Plus. He said with the aging of the area population, and the increase in older adults moving in, it’s an issue that will only increase going forward. 

The issue, he said, is people who struggle to hear often avoid long talks with others or fade out of conversations due to it being too frustrating to follow along. And engagement with other people is a key factor in avoiding dementia. 

“When the mind becomes disengaged, we do what is natural, we just kind of shut down,” he said. “We do what’s going to be the easier thing to do, you know, and if the mind isn’t stimulated by that, that intake of information, the exchange of ideas, we kind of experience a bit of mental atrophy. We all do. We know how it feels like to be in a fog when you’ve been kind of isolated from communication for a while. Well, it can be the same thing with our inability to communicate because we’re not hearing.”

Doucet said he’s seen it in his office, where some people he’s talking to will fade out of a conversation because of inability to hear. 

The good news is hearing aids have improved over the years. 

“Hearing aids are never going to replace natural hearing, but they’ve come a long way in terms of the implementation of artificial intelligence, for example, to help analyze your acoustic environment as it changes, they will change. And so the old, the old analog hearing aids, going back, you know, quite a while. You know, everything was manual. You had to choose different programs for different settings. Now the hearing aids do that automatically.”

Most hearing loss, Doucet said, is brought on by age and exposure to loud noises. He said anyone who is over 40 years old and especially those worried they may be losing hearing should get checked regularly. 

Of course, he said it’s best to prevent exposure to sustained loud noises earlier to head off future issues, especially knowing what we know now about the link between hearing loss and dementia. 

“Young people today need to be much more cautious about protecting their hearing,” he said. “Instead of thinking that, you know, when they hit 40, that they get a do over, you know, or new ears, the damage you cause just by listening, you know, to music too loudly with earbuds, for example, is really turning into kind of a real, substantial damage to our young people.”

Doucet said Beltone offers no cost screenings for people to get an idea of what kind of hearing loss they’ve already had, and thus have a baseline to check against future hearing loss. 

He said there’s not much more rewarding then to finally fit someone with hearing loss with new hearing aids. 

The moment I fit them with hearing aids, you know, after they get past the challenge of the loudness of their own voice and hearing things they haven’t heard in a long time, it’s amazing how sharp they are,” Doucet said. “I mean, they are so in tune with what’s going on, and they’re responsive, and they’re, you know, they’re joking — it’s just, it’s night and day. It’s one of the things that really makes this line of work so rewarding, because you can make such a difference in people’s lives so quickly.”