Exercise is good for your hearing

Written by Jacqui Carling-Rodgers | Sep 16, 2020 11:10:55 PM

Time to Read: 4 minutes

If you have hearing loss and you would like to maximise your hearing health, it is time to improve your fitness.

Regular exercise improves cardio-vascular fitness, which in turn helps keep your ears in tip top condition.

Researchers believe that age-associated inflammation damages the structures of the inner ear (strial capillaries and hair cells).

Tests done on mice showed that non-exercising mice with more extensive inflammation lost the structures of the inner ear at a far faster rate than the exercising group. This produced a 20 percent hearing loss in sedentary mice compared to a 5 percent hearing loss in the active mice.

Exercise may also help diminish the effects of auditory fatigue. Auditory fatigue is defined as a temporary loss of hearing after exposure to sound. This results in a temporary shift of the auditory threshold known as a temporary threshold shift. The damage can become permanent if sufficient recovery time is not allowed before continued sound exposure.

Several weeks of physical training may improve the hearing ability by several dB and strengthen the ear's defenses against noise damage, according to a study reported in Scandinavian Audiology, vol. 27 1998. Women with low body fat and in shape because of regular exercise also were found to experience TTS less frequently than less fit people, according to Medicine and Science In Sports and Exercise, February, 1998.

Studies of people in noisy jobs have shown that people in good physical shape suffer fewer adverse effects from the noise. The risk of hearing loss almost doubled in people in bad shape. Noise may break down the hair cells in the inner ear. The cells are unable to regenerate making ear protection a better preventive measure than exercise, alone.

Exercise doesn’t need to be arduous or expensive. You should be aiming for at least 30 minutes a day. That could take the form of a walk around a local fitness park or even around the block. There are strengthening exercises which can be done in the comfort of your own home.

If it has been a while since you’ve done any serious exercise, it is important that you consult your doctor, but once you’ve been given the all clear, there are plenty of resources online to help get you started. Depending on where you live, your local council may have free or low cost fitness classes which are held in local parks.

There are many great benefits to getting regular and vigorous exercise. Exercise helps promote physical health (including your hearing), improves mood, and has been shown to reduce the risk of getting other illnesses associated with ageing.

If you’re regularly attending fitness classes, you might want to keep an ear on the volume. Enthusiastic fitness instructors might be tempted to pump up the volume, while you pump out those reps.

Ask the gym to keep an eye on the volume to ensure that it doesn’t go over 85dB in order to protect your hearing.