It’s very important to take care of all of your senses, especially as you age. In order to live a comfortable and fulfilling life, it’s important to be able to hear, see, smell, taste, and touch. Fortunately, you don’t really have to worry about keeping your senses intact when you’re young, as your body is able to keep them all healthy without much outside assistance. However, as you age, your senses begin to gradually decay, and if you’re unlucky, you might lose one of them completely.
One of the most common senses that degrades is your ability to hear. There are different types of hearing loss that are caused by a variety of different things. You can lose your ability to hear thanks to trauma or wax buildup. Or, you could lose some hearing ability when the hair cells of your inner ear get damaged. Another common cause of hearing loss is when the auditory nerve gets damaged. This can happen gradually due to noise exposure and radiation, be caused by your genes, or even happen as the result of a trauma.
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Thankfully, there are a lot of ways you can protect and boost your hearing ability. There are the tried-and-trued ways, like taking supplements, but there are also some unconventional methods. Here are a few things you can try:
Four tips to protect your hearing
Practice your hearing
Just like you’d exercise the muscles in your arms and legs or train your brain, you can also exercise your ears. Practice focusing on sounds and identifying where they are coming from.
Try holding a conversation over loud music. Focusing on hearing what the other person is saying will help strengthen your hearing. Another thing you can do is close your eyes and have a friend walk around a room while talking to you. Try and identify where the sounds are coming from, essentially training your ability to locate objects by their sound.
Exercise daily
Like everything else in the body, exercising is the easiest—and probably best—method of improving your hearing. It’s pretty easy too. You don’t have to hit up a gym and lift weights—a short walk or jog every day will do the trick.
We know you like to exercise with headphones in, but a quick tip: make sure they aren’t too loud. Excessively loud music can damage the hairs in your ears, which don’t grow back.
Keep your brain healthy
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The brain processes sounds that come in through the ears, so it’s important to keep it healthy. The stronger your brain cells are, the better your hearing will be. An easy way to train your brain is to download a brain training app on your phone and do it every morning or before bed. Or you could take a more traditional approach and do some crosswords.
Meditate
Spending time outside in a public place will force you to sort through different sounds, strengthening your hearing. Try and identify where certain sounds are coming from outside while you meditate in the park.
Related: City noise associated with hearing loss: Study
