Protect your hearing: avoid loud noises; get off the couch and exercise.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Can slimming down improve your hearing? Maybe. Or at least it may lower your risk of hearing loss, according to a new study. In fact, while age-related decline in hearing is a given, there are hearing loss prevention tactics that will minimize or delay the process. So perk up your ears and try this sound advice.

#1: Limit your exposure to loud noise. The single most significant cause of age-related hearing loss is prolonged exposure to loud noise—a risk that’s become much more acute as our world has gotten increasingly noisier and Americans have started to live longer. “It’s one of the major risk factors for aging people,” says Wen Chen, PhD, program director for research on sensory and motor disorders of aging at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore. “Noise exposure creates free radicals, which creates an imbalance of the chemicals in the ear and brain, and that affects the function of the cells and neurons related to hearing. When you’re younger, the ability of the system to recover from that kind of insult is a lot greater.”
To protect your ears, Michael Seidman, MD, director of otologic/neurotologic surgery at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit and author of Save Your Hearing Now (Wellness Central, 2007) recommends carrying earplugs, which can reduce noise by up to 20 decibels. Wear them to cut out street noise and other sounds, and when operating noisy machinery such as lawn mowers and leaf blowers—or even hair dryers. A related hearing loss prevention imperative: lower the decibel level of any music to which you’re exposed—your iPod, your car stereo, even the music pumped into your gym classes (position yourself farthest away from the speakers).

#2: Lose a few. According to the study just published this month in the medical journal Obesity, being overweight or obese is associated with a higher risk of age-related hearing impairment—particularly if you carry your extra weight around your middle. “This sort of hearing loss is normally associated with diabetes, high cholesterol, and atherosclerosis,” notes Dr. Seidman. It has to do with what he calls “sludging of blood,” or a disruption in the flow of blood around the body, creating a lack of oxygen and also a failure to remove waste products from the ear. To lose weight and to preserve your hearing, Dr. Seidman recommends eating more fruits and veggies, lean protein, less meat, and less dairy—and supplementing with an antioxidant-rich (A, C, and E) multivitamin, for good measure. Besides hearing loss prevention, staying at a healthy weight will bring you many other benefits.

#3: Stop smoking. Add hearing loss prevention to the long list of reasons not to smoke. According to a large study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, smokers are fully 70 percent more likely to experience age-related hearing loss than nonsmokers—seemingly for the same reason that those who are obese are more likely to suffer hearing loss: impaired blood flow to the ears. In fact, even the nonsmoking participants in the study who lived with smokers were more likely to have hearing loss than those who were not exposed to household members who smoked. The take-home Rx, says Dr. Seidman, is: Severely limit your exposure to cigarette smoke—whether it’s your own or anyone else’s.

#4: Check your meds. Many medications, some of them quite common, such as aspirin and antibiotics, are otoxic, meaning they can damage your hearing. In addition, recent studies have shown that women who are on combination therapy hormone-replacement therapy (a combo of estrogen and progestin) suffer more hearing loss than women who take estrogen alone. If you notice that you’re having more difficulty hearing, speak with your doctor about any medications you’re taking—they could be exacerbating the problem.

#5: Move your body. Aerobic exercise is a catch-all Rx for just about any ailment—including, perhaps, hearing loss. Dr. Seidman recommends regular aerobic workouts to keep your weight in check (and, therefore, your hearing acute) and also, because exercise acts as an antioxidant, to counteract the negative affects of hearing-damaging free radicals. Strive for at least 30 minutes a day, five or more days a week.