While you may be diligent about yearly checkups for certain aspects of your health (e.g. eyes, teeth, etc.), you may not worry too much about your hearing. However, one survey showed that about 48 million people (or 20% of the U.S.) suffer from some type of hearing loss--so, it's important that you add an audiologist to your yearly doctor checkups. You can take care of yourself by listening to your hearing specialist and by considering some of the following suggestions.
Improve Your Hearing With Your Food
One thing that you should consider is eating foods that contain potassium and sodium. This is because your body needs a healthy balance of these nutrients so that it can create a hormone called aldosterone. Aldosterone is a hormone that maintains the quality of the sound that you hear.
Be sure to include the following in your diet:
- Sea salt
- Seafood, like mussels or octopus
- Dark greens
- Yogurt with live cultures
- Mushrooms
You can talk to your hearing specialist to find out if there are other nutrients that would be helpful in keeping your hearing healthy.
Boost Your Hearing By Rocking A Tune
Your auditory skills rely on several small components in your ears and, just like any other muscle, exercise can improve their functionality. A study showed that knowing how to play an instrument helps improve your hearing in several ways.
- Playing an instrument improves sound memory
- Learning an instrument boosts hearing clarity
- Learning an instrument can prevent premature hearing
You should remember that it is always better to start learning a musical instrument as young as possible, but improvement should still happen even if you start learning an instrument at a mature age.
Follow Proper Care To Maintain Your Hearing
Clean Up
One thing that you should do is clean out your ear canal because wax or debris could get stuck in there. Your ears usually clean themselves, but that does not mean that the ear canal can't get plugged up, which is why you need to clean out your ears from time to time. All you have to do is pour a few drops of baby oil or olive oil into your ear, which should push out any earwax or debris. Do NOT stick a q-tip in to clean your ears, as you could push the wax deeper or hurt your eardrum. If you wear earbuds a lot or already wear hearing aids, they will work better after cleaning because built-up wax won't get into the internal components.
Exercise A Bit
Another important part of maintaining ear health is having strong blood circulation; this is necessary because your ears need to receive nutrients. So make sure you consider undertaking cardiovascular exercises like yoga, tai chi, power walking, or bicycling.
As you can see, there are a few things you can do to prevent hearing loss and take care of your health. But make sure that you do not neglect visiting your health specialist to make sure any hearing issue is detected early enough to try to rectify it.
