People will often fail to think about their hearing until it is far too late, and that is a real problem. If you don’t spend much time thinking about how you can improve your hearing or just take care of it, you might find that you have bigger problems in later life. However, by taking care now, you can drastically reduce the likelihood that you are going to have any issues with your hearing at all. In this post, we are going to take a look through some of the basic and essential things you might want to consider when it comes to caring for your own hearing.
Don’t Insert Anything In Your Ears
There is never any reason to insert something in your ears. People sometimes think that it is a good idea, or even necessary, to use cotton buds or something similar in order to clean inside the ear. But these should be used for the outside of the ear only, and one thing you should never do is put anything down the hole itself. Your ears are a self-cleaning machine, and the wax is the result of that self-cleaning process. Any time you put something in your ears, you are increasing the chances of damaging them – perhaps permanently – and having your hearing suffer as a result, so don’t do it.
Clean Your Ears Safely
If you have an excess build up of wax, you can clean your ears in a safe manner by doing as follows. Firstly, wash the outer part of the ear with a warm washcloth with water. You can then gently go around the outside of the hole itself, but as we have seen you should never go inside it with anything, not even your finger. If this simple cleaning process does not seem sufficient, for example if you have too much wax you can’t do anything about, you can try putting some olive oil on a piece of toilet paper and gently dabbing it in the ear, without pushing it in. If that fails to work, see your doctor.
Get Your Hearing Checked Regularly
One thing that you should absolutely make sure you do is to get your hearing checked on a regular basis. Ultimately, you can’t really know if your hearing is getting worse over time, as it might be happening so gradually that you can’t really tell. So that means that you are going to have to go and see the audiologist on a regular basis, to see whether they are going to recommend you need some assistance. If you are curious as to whether you might need a hearing aid, you can learn more at your audiologist or hearing specialist. You should consider this one of those frequent health check-ups that are essential, like checking your blood pressure or going to the optometrist.
Use Sunscreen On Your Ears
Here’s something that few people remember to do, and which is yet an incredibly important thing. If you want to fully protect your ears as much as possible, you need to make sure that you are using sunscreen on them when the weather is particularly hot, or if you know that you happen to live somewhere where the UV rate is quite high. This will protect your ears from skin cancer, which in the worst case can be a very serious problem to have, even if it is just on your ears.
Protect Yourself From Noise
One of the most important things of all when it comes to your hearing, of course, is that you should try to protect yourself from noise as much as you can. If you are frequently being exposed to loud noises, you will find that your hearing is going to suffer considerably, and ultimately this is going to make for a much higher chance of having hearing problems in later life. You might be surprised at how little it takes to have real problems with your hearing, so it’s something that you are going to want to pay attention to as best as you can.
Care For Your Hearing Equipment
Finally, if you do ever need to use hearing aids and the like, you should do whatever you can to take proper care of them. Generally they will need regular cleaning at least, and sometimes they might need taking apart and looking at in some detail too to ensure that the parts are all working and not clogged up. Make sure you are looking after them as well as possible.