How to Manage Hearing Loss and Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle

Your hearing is one of the senses you rely on pretty much all the time. Being able to hear what is happening around you is vital, and feeling like you are experiencing hearing loss or your hearing isn’t as it once was can be a worrying time. With over 60% of Canadians living with a hearing health problem and over 50% of adults aged 40-79 experiencing even mild hearing loss, being able to improve your hearing health can help you avoid hearing loss or manage your hearing loss so it doesn’t get worse.

Your hearing is linked to different aspects of your health, and different health conditions and factors can be instrumental in how healthy your hearing is and likely you are to experience or increase the risk of hearing loss.

Managing Hearing Loss

Many people with hearing loss will talk to a hearing professional to help them ascertain their hearing loss level, be it mild, moderate or severe. From here, you can find out your options, be it visiting a hearing instrument specialist to have a hearing aid fitted to help you hear sounds better or getting medical treatment for any conditions that could be causing hearing loss, like an infection or impacted ear wax. But the first step in managing hearing loss is to find out where you stand so you move forward.

You can also make some lifestyle changes that can be beneficial to your hearing and help you to reduce the risk of more significant hearing loss. These changes include:

• Wearing hearing protection around loud sounds that are over 75dB, especially if you will be around them for prolonged periods.
• Avoid cleaning your ears with tools that could cause damage – nothing smaller than your elbow should be inserted into your ear.
• Use hearing loop systems when wearing your hearing aid for a better sound experience.
• Learning to lip read to support any loss to help you manage social situations easier
• Talk to family and friends. If people don’t know you have hearing loss, they can’t adjust how they interact with you to help make things easier.

These lifestyle changes can play a significant role in managing hearing loss. Adopting practices such as reducing exposure to loud noises, maintaining overall health and practicing good hearing hygiene can help preserve and improve your auditory wellbeing.

Maintaining a Healthy Lifestyle

Just because you have hearing loss, it doesn’t mean you can’t live a healthy lifestyle; you will just need to change how you go about it. The main aspect that will be different for those with hearing loss is that they need to take more care when in social situations to help them avoid danger; this is where being able to lip read or wearing a hearing aid can be useful as it allows you to interpret what is going on around you better to help you avoid any issues you might not be aware of otherwise, for example, traffic coming from round a corner or a person warning you of a problem when out and about.

Other ways you can live a healthy lifestyle with hearing loss are:

• Eating a healthy diet: Magnesium-rich foods are thought to be beneficial to hearing health and overall health too, so eating dark chocolate, bananas, avocados and salmon are all great foods to include in your diet alongside a healthy balanced meal plan that consists of a variety of fruit, vegetables, whole grain and lean proteins for optimal health.
• Gentle exercise: Gentle exercise can reduce your risk of developing health conditions that can affect your hearing health. Diabetes, heart disease and certain types of cancers can all affect your hearing, and you can reduce these effects or even your risk of developing some health conditions by undertaking light exercise. You should aim for 30 minutes of exercise five days a week where your heart rate is raised somewhat.
• Stop smoking: Smoke can cause blockages in the eustachian tube, leading to hearing loss and increasing your risk of other health problems.
• Sleep: A lack of decent quality sleep will lead to you being more at risk of different health conditions, including hearing loss. Your body performs vital functions when you are asleep to help your body heal and repair from daily activities; not getting enough sleep can put you at risk of health complications.

If you want to learn more about how to manage your hearing loss and maintain a healthy lifestyle, you can contact us at Niagara Hearing and Speech Clinic on this phone number: (855) 797-8002 for more information and to discuss your hearing needs.