Hearing Loss Prevention: Healthy Habits to Incorporate Today

Lifelong hearing health starts with you and your habits and you can learn how to prevent hearing loss with some easy steps. While not all types of hearing loss are completely preventable, there are things that you can do in life to lower your risk of developing age-related hearing losses and dealing with noise induced hearing loss. You don’t have to wait to wear hearing protection, for example.

A hearing health professional will talk you through all of the ways that hearing protection can help you, and adopting a healthy lifestyle now will help you to have a healthy hearing life later on. It’s vital that you would reduce your exposure to loud noises, but there are some other healthy habits that you can put into place that will help you to keep your hearing from being lost for longer. Here are the things that you can do to prevent hearing loss.

Wear Hearing Protection. Whether it’s yard work, a concert or you work in a loud noise environment, you need to wear hearing protection to protect your hearing from declining. It doesn’t matter your age or your hearing status, you should always protect your hearing when you are going to be exposed to loud sounds. Few things are more damaging to your hearing than loud noise.

Start Looking After Your Heart

It sounds like it wouldn’t work, but your blood pressure and heart disease can actually damage the mechanisms inside your ear that can help you to hear. If you are dealing with blood pressure that is too high or high cholesterol, you should speak to your doctor and follow their orders to make sure that it comes under control.

Quit Smoking

There are studies that definitively show that smoking, whether directly or second hand, can have a huge impact on somebody’s hearing. You’ll also find that even in utero, babies who are born deaf often have mothers who smoke.

Control Your Diabetes

Did you know that those with diabetes are twice as likely to have hearing loss? Just like with high blood pressure, diabetes can damage the cells inside your ear. But when you keep your blood sugar under control, you’ll be able to manage the diabetes and therefore manage your hearing loss.

Reduce Your Stress

A good way to reduce your stress is with exercise. And as exercise also improves your blood flow and helps your body and your ear health, you’ll feel better and hear better for longer.

Check Your Family History

If you have a family history of hearing loss, it will help you to know whether or not you are at an elevated risk of it developing later on. Making sure that you are aware of it early can ensure that you reduce your risk of negative impacts of hearing loss such as depression, social isolation, and a cognitive decline later on.

Speak to Your Family Doctor About Medications

There are plenty of over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription drugs that are linked to hearing loss. These medications can range from aspirin to chemotherapy drugs and IV antibiotics. Sometimes you may be able to take an alternative drug as recommended by your doctor to reduce your risk of drug-related hearing loss.

Signs Your Hearing is Declining

You might be wondering what you could look out for to tell that what you’re hearing is in decline because often people don’t feel it until it’s too late. Some of the ways that you can tell that you’re hearing is declining quickly is with the following:

• People have to raise their voices to be heard by you.
• You struggle to hear people around you in a crowded place.
• Speech sounds muffled when you leave noisy environments.
• You are experiencing ringing in your ears when you’ve been in a noisy place.

If you have experienced any of these, then you need to speak to a hearing health professional. To prevent your hearing loss, you need to be proactive in ensuring that you are keeping on top of that hearing health. Pay attention to the noise levels at work and outside of it so that you don’t have to stop enjoying the hobbies that you love as long as you are taking the right steps to protect your hearing.

The first step to better hearing is by having a comprehensive evaluation conducted to establish a baseline. If you suspect you may already have some hearing loss and you want to learn some more about it, you should call Park Place Hearing Center at (707) 283-7853 today.