Can You Hear Me Now?
The sweet sounds of preventative measures to protect your ears.
Staying healthy is a full-time job. You worry about your blood pressure, your cholesterol, your weight, you have your eyes checked, your teeth checked and your heart checked, but do you ever think about your ears?
Most people don’t, until that wonderful day their hearing simply stops working. There is plenty you can do before that day comes, however, to keep your ears in tip-tip condition, helping to preserve your hearing as long as possible.
For starters, and this may be counterintuitive, but stop jamming Q-Tips in there. If you look on the packaging, you’ll notice that it says specifically not to put them in your ears, but for almost 100 years people have been doing it anyway. The fact is, your ear does a fine job of cleaning itself out. If you really want to clean the wax out, just lie on your side and squeeze a few drops of hydrogen peroxide in there. Let it do its thing for 10 or so minutes (the crackling tells you it’s working) and then tilt your head over a sink, letting it drain out.
You can also take supplements to build up your ear health such as magnesium. This powerful mineral blocks the free radicals that plague your inner ear, destroying the fine hairs that transmit sound to the brain. In addition, potassium has been shown to have a strong positive effect on inner ear fluid health and steady supplies of zinc help stave off ear infections.
And finally, the best way to keep your ears healthy is to avoid loud noises. Always wear protective ear coverings around heavy equipment or firearms, keep the volume to a minimum when listening to music and maybe bring a set of earplugs to the next heavy metal concert you go to. Your ears will thank you.
