The secret to youth is…better hearing? It may sound crazy but it’s true. You can retain your youth when you take the necessary measures to protect your hearing. This is true in many aspects of life, such as the ability to react quickly to traffic noises or the ability to engage with others on productive conversations. Just as your physical health depends on exercise and eating right, your ears depend on you to take good care of them. The side effects are increased youth and vitality. Take a look at 10 ways you can grasp onto your youth a little longer.
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Improve your hearing while on the job. When you strain to hear, you obviously can’t pick up on important instructions or safety precautions. You certainly can’t readily participate productively in coworker discussions or meetings, which can impact your overall performance. Stay relevant to your position through good hearing health.
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Maintain productive interactions in daily life. Hearing loss can unfortunately alienate people from getting the information they need to go about their daily lives. It’s tough to effectively communicate with anyone from friends and co-workers to check-out clerks and butchers when you suffer from hearing loss.
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Keep your mind sharp as a tack. No one wants to think about it, but dementia is a very real possibility for older seniors. The National Institute on Aging has linked hearing loss with dementia, thanks to the brain shrinkage we experience as we get on in years.
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Lower your risk of falls. Individuals who can’t hear well don’t have as much of a stable awareness of their surroundings, and can trip and fall easier. People with a 25-decibel hearing loss are three times more likely to fall than others with no hearing impairments, says Johns Hopkins Medicine.
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Have a quicker reaction time. When you have a healthy hearing level, you can better react to fire alarms and sirens so you can get out of the way and not get hurt.
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Increase the blood flow to your ears for good health. Exercise is great for the ears. Via aerobic activity, you send oxygen-rich blood flow to the ears which protects them from additional hearing loss.
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Interact better with teachers and classmates in school. Do you find yourself back in school after many decades away? You won’t learn as well if you constantly have to sit up front and ask the teacher to repeat herself. Maintaining a healthy level of hearing means you can understand the teacher’s instructions more clearly. In addition, you can interact with your classmates and participate in projects much more easily.
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Give your self confidence a lift. Those who have trouble hearing can have a lack of self confidence or self-esteem because they are afraid to engage in conversation with others. They fear they won’t be able to engage in a healthy back and forth discussion, so they tend to stay away from social situations.
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Enjoy better mental health. Falls and other events are big problems for seniors. Hearing loss can compound these risks. When you end up in the hospital, you have long periods where you’re relatively inactive as your recuperate. This can easily lead to feelings of depression.
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Get more friends and have better sex. Yes, it’s true, according to studies have shown that hearing impaired seniors who wear hearing aids, along with seniors who have no hearing loss, tend to have an improved social life and sex life. They also experience better mental health and independence.