Twenty years ago, UK professor Richard Wiseman quested to find the funniest joke in the world. He describes this in a chapter in his book Quirkology, using some of these jokes to illustrate various psychological theories.
One joke goes something like this: An old man is concerned his wife is going deaf, so he devises an experiment. He stands in the bedroom, and calls to his wife in the kitchen, “What’s for dinner?” No reply, so he steps into the hallway and repeats, “What’s for dinner?” silence. So he steps to the door of the kitchen and asks one last time, “What’s for dinner?” His wife turns to him and says, “For the third time, we’re having lasagne!”
Research suggests older people find this funny, and Freud would say it’s because it’s a way to deal with something challenging: age-related decline. Laughs aside, age-related hearing loss, or presbycusis as medical types call it, is no joke.
By definition, presbycusis increases with age but, on average, typically becomes apparent around age 60. It affects about half of people aged over 75. It’s usually cumulative, and can be hastened by chronic exposure to loud noise. Loud noise can “kill” hearing cells, and once they’re gone, they’re gone for good. The same goes for some medications and medical conditions that cause cell death. Unfortunately, these delicate cells also naturally degenerate over time, though this may be slower or faster depending on things like genetics.
As a digression, our dog Banjo is now deaf as a post. This obviously happened slowly over time, and we didn’t notice it until we came back from a three-week holiday to find him completely unable to hear. This is fairly common, with at least one-in-10 dogs affected by hearing loss. Google tells me it’s more common in some breeds that have white coats or particular genetic makeups. When he’s with us, Banjo doesn’t seem affected at all, but when he can’t see us, he frets. There was a time he could still hear us knocking about in the kitchen, but no more.
Apparently, you can get hearing aids made for your dog. Why not? After all, hearing aids are the most common treatment for human age-related hearing loss (though there are other strategies, including lip reading, lifestyle changes and the like). Hearing aids are subsidised in Aotearoa, and can even be fully covered if you’re an eligible child or adult. The Ministry of Health Hearing Aid Subsidy Scheme covers about $500 per ear.
Which brings me to another Wiseman joke: A police officer stops a man driving along the highway and tells him, “Sir! Your wife fell out of the car about a mile back,” and the man replies, “Thanks for telling me, I thought I’d gone deaf!”
I’m sure some of us might joke that going deaf (to some of the things in our lives) might be a blessing, but that’s not what people’s experience – or research – says. You can see this by looking at what happens when a person gets a hearing aid after a period of declining hearing.
That’s to say, research shows improved mood, social connection and even cognitive capacity after fitting. People who get hearing aids report, and demonstrate, better attention and memory. This is because being able to hear means a reduction in the brain’s effort to sift through muddy sounds, but also because auditory stimulation is good for us (to a point).
Which brings me to another anecdote. My father is getting used to his first hearing aids, and says they’ve been pretty revolutionary. A couple of weeks ago, we had a family dinner at a noisy local restaurant (trying out their Wellington on a Plate Burger) and I leant over to my mother and asked if she’d tried out dad’s hearing aids. “What?” she replied …
I like Wiseman’s first joke. It may be cheesy but it has many layers.
