Eating Your Way to Healthy Hearing

We all know that healthy diets promote good overall health, but were you aware that it also promotes good hearing health? By following a pattern of healthy eating, you can improve your chances of good hearing for years to come.

According to a study that appeared in The Journal of Nutrition and encompassed 71,000 female nursing students over a period of 22 years, researchers determined that following a healthy diet reduced their risk of hearing loss by 30 percent. Simply by adjusting their diets to include more nutritious foods, they were able to lessen the chances of difficulties hearing later in life.

Living with healthy eating choices is much better on your body than short or even long-term diets and can have better long-term effects too. When we make it a point to take in a variety of fruits and vegetables as wells as legumes and whole-grain products, it allows our bodies to function as they’re meant to.

Stuffing ourselves with processed foods, refined sugars and fruit juices or alcohol isn’t doing our overall health any good. Without a healthy body, chances are slim that our hearing will be healthy, especially in the years ahead. It’s never too late to change the way you eat, and it can only have a positive effect on what’s in store for you later.

When looking towards your children’s future, the best time to begin offering them different foods and teaching them how to eat healthy is when they are young. As your kids grow they will learn to make healthy choices that will allow them to carry on these habits and remain healthy well into their golden years.

Vegetables

Utilizing the foods that are loaded with vitamins, minerals, and nutrients is relatively easy with the options available today. Many of these daily requirements can be met by eating a rainbow variety of foods in every meal. By covering ½ to ¾ of your plate at each meal with vegetables of all colors, you can ensure that your getting the most bang for your nutritional buck.

Farmers markets, u-pick farms, fresh food initiatives, and even the produce department at your local grocery store are ripe with options to enhance your eating experience. The opportunity to eat healthy has never been better than it is today. If you have the space to put in a garden, you can go even one step further by ensuring that your produce is clean and safe to eat and is harvested at the peak of freshness.

Fruits

Like vegetables, fruits that are unprocessed are a great addition to your diet and offer a healthy alternative to sweets that you may be currently consuming. By trading that handful of cookies in for a juicy plum, or the slice of pie for a freshly picked apple, you can satisfy your taste buds need for sugar but not compromise your healthy eating lifestyle.

Legumes

Known for the benefits of decreasing blood sugar levels, reducing cholesterol, and inhibiting the increase of healthy gut bacteria, legumes are full of vitamins, fiber, and proteins. They are helpful for things like weight loss and helping to lower cholesterol.

They’re also full of Omega-3 fatty acids which are believed to be responsible for healthy blood flow to the ears. They contain vitamins C and E which are loaded with antioxidants that are helpful in reducing damage to healthy cells needed for good auditory health.

By adding citrus fruits such as oranges and grapefruit to your diet you can load up on these powerful vitamins. Also consider picking up some peanut butter, almonds, and sunflower oils to the mix for even more nutritional value.

Extras

Among the things we choose to snack on, some of the healthiest contain zinc, such as almonds and cashews. For those with a bit of a sweet tooth, there’s no reason to torture yourself, just switch to dark chocolate. These can all help calm the effects of tinnitus, a ringing or buzzing sound in the ears.

For inner ear health, try adding some potassium to your daily choices. Things like bananas, black beans, and potatoes contain potassium, which helps to transmit sounds into electrical signals the brain interprets.

Asparagus, broccoli, and spinach contain folic acid that is reported to be a potential inhibitor to hearing loss by regulating blood flow. Meat from organs such as liver, heart, and kidneys are also high in folic acid and deliver a quick burst of nutrients to the body that can add to the protection of your auditory system.

A lack of magnesium is known to cause shrinking of blood vessels, resulting in deprivation of oxygen which the inner ear desperately needs. To combat this, be sure to add magnesium-rich foods to your meals such as artichokes, bananas, broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, and potatoes.

With all these options to explore, you shouldn’t have any trouble finding something worth adding to your diet and increasing your odds of having healthy hearing for many years to come.