10 Best Home Remedies for How to Improve Hearing
Suspect your hearing is worsening? Though hearing loss is common and unavoidable in some cases, there’s a lot one can do to improve hearing and to make themselves more comfortable. Specific exercises to try and activities to avoid are key.
The following are the ten best home remedies on how to improve hearing loss.
1. Test your hearing
If you have hearing loss, it could stem from any of a number of things. The best way on how to improve hearing is by knowing what’s causing it. For example, if it’s an ear infection, antibiotics are a treatment to try. Anatomical problems can be corrected via surgery. Ear wax can be washed away or dissolved depending.
You can get more diagnostic information and insights from performing a hearing test. Once you’ve identified the cause, we can move forward with protecting the hearing you have.
2. Meditation
Meditating is a great way to get keep your brain trained and accustomed to identifying and interpreted sound. As you meditate, it’s also been shown to help circulation and increase the body’s oxygen.
Focus on sounds as you meditate. Do it in a public place, if possible. One can concentrate on deciphering sounds in noisy environments. In this context, meditation almost becomes like a sort of sensory training almost.
3. Yoga
Yoga can actually help with your hearing by gently increasing circulation through the ear and brain. Increased circulation technically happens everywhere in the body but any sort of yoga program focuses on stretching to get the blood flowing through specific areas. Various poses get more circulation up into the head where it improves nerve functions, removes waste and toxins, and can even battle tinnitus.
4. Solve puzzles
The brain processes the sound information our ear receives. Studies have shown links between depression and anxiety, and hearing loss. Some suspect this is from brain atrophy which is when brain cells shrink or are damaged in some way.
To combat this, our brain needs a workout. Crossword puzzles, word searches, and Sudoku are all ways to keep your brain sharp and to prevent this atrophy. Bingo and card games a la poker also work.
5. Daily exercise
Exercise is important for how to improve hearing, even if it’s just gardening or doing housework. Typically, we don’t recommend exercising with headphones or earbuds as repeated exposure to loud noises can damage ear hairs – permanently and irreplaceably.
Exercise is going to keep yourself healthy, keep blood flowing, and set you up with the strength you need to hopefully carry you through comfortably across the aging process. Daily exercise does not directly correlate with better hearing however its’ effects on the cardiovascular system and other systems in the body can or do.
6. Nutrition
Nutrition’s a big piece of the puzzle in terms of improving and retaining hearing. Minerals are inarguably most important when discussing the effects nutrition has on hearing. Potassium, folic acid, magnesium and zinc should find their way into your diet daily.
They can be used to supply our bodies with what it needs to fend off age-related hearing loss. In terms of a hearing loss diet, consumption of minerals and a focus on the aforementioned four are the closest you’ll come to anything of the sort.
7. Focus
Focus in on sounds and locate them in the room. Place a speaker in one area of the room and then, place sound in a different area of the room. Create a moderately noisy environment between these two sources of sound. Close your eyes and try to locate the sounds of each. Consider adding a third source of sound like someone reading a book. This exercise can be intense from a hearing standpoint but it can help with cognitive functions around the ear.
8. Herbs
In some cultural medicines, herbs have played a big role in maintaining ear health and fighting off hearing loss. Gingko biloba, spearmint, garlic, dill, and turmeric all serve to assist in various functions, be it improving immune system support, increasing blood circulation, or providing our bodies what they need to survive.
Some people may dismiss this as ‘folk medicine’ and nothing more however there are studies supporting the use of each of these five herbs in improving hearing.
9. Vitamins
Vitamins aren’t going to save your hearing but they are one of several things you can do to prevent or delay hearing loss. Omega-3s, vitamin D, antioxidants, folic acid, magnesium, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin E, and glutathione are all excellent things to ensure are included in your body. If you aren’t already including them in your diet naturally, supplements aren’t a bad idea. You can keep yourself healthy while protecting your ears.
10. Avoidance
Protect your hearing and improve it through avoidance. Don’t go into places with repetitive exposure to loud noises. Wear ear protection when you’re around loud sounds. Avoid anything that threatens your hearing. If your hearing loss is becoming a problem, keep a diary and note what makes it worse. These are the things to avoid. Through a combination of exercise, diet, occasional exercises, and avoidance, these are a few of the ways in which you can improve and/or protect your hearing.
