We all know the obvious benefits of regular exercise:
- Regular exercise is great for your heart.
- Regular exercise lessens your chances of getting many types of cancer, diabetes, and a host of other monsters under the bed.
- Regular exercise helps take off extra weight and keep it off.
- Exercise can improve your mood.
- Exercise helps your mobility.
- Exercise is as good for your mental health as it it your physical health.
- Exercise makes you fell, and look, younger.
As if that weren’t enough reason to start exercising each and every day, there’s more! A very interesting, and perhaps unexpected, study from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has just sweetened the physical fitness pot: The study suggests that as people age, one of their greatest concerns (hearing loss) is directly tied to their heart’s health.
While the concept of “the ear bone’s connected to the heart” may cause us to do an initial double-take, if you think about it, it’s kind of obvious. Exercise improves our cardiovascular health. This increases blood flow in our bodies, and this certainly includes the blood that flows to our head.
This increase in blood flow helps keep our ears working the way we want them to. The study shows a person in their 50s who is in good shape can hear as well as a person in their 30s!
Experts are challenging the long-held assumptions about growing older. The so-called loss of memory, hearing, mobility, vision and so forth. Hog wash! I read and research each day online and offline and I’m excited about recent studies that show just how much power we actually have when it comes to our bodies, our minds, and our many years ahead.
Like so many things, it all comes down to making GOOD, HEALTHY, SMART choices. It’s common sense, really. 
- Eat the things you know you should eat (such as plenty of vegetables and fruit…)
- Avoid eating the things you know you shouldn’t eat (fried food, too many sweets…)
- Get plenty of exercise (walking, gardening, golf, tennis, yoga…)
- Don’t smoke!
Just as this recent study proves, when something is good for one area of your body, it’s good for another. And another. And another. By the same token, if it’s bad for one area of your body, it’s bad for another. And another. And another.
Making good choices… healthy choices… is just as easy as making bad ones. What’s more, making good choices on a consistent basis will lead to forming good habits – the kind of habits that have the potential to improve your health from the tip of your head to the tips of your toes.
Who wouldn’t want to aim for that?!
Forget about yesterday and forget about any bad habits you’ve picked up over the years. Choose to start right now… right here….
Choose to make better choices and form healthier habits. Eat more fruits and vegetables and less junk food. Make smarter choices at the grocery store and in the drive thrus. Make this the week you start getting more activity each and every day. Walk, work in the yard, or simply put music on and dance around the house.
Move it, baby, move it!
Grampa Ken for social change says
April 25, 2010 at 11:56 amMaking good healthy choices is so right Joi and eating the things you know you should eating especially. But this gets difficult for the average person with massive advertising in their faces telling them to do otherwise.
Exercise is so vital too and the lack of it is the main defense that junk food marketers are using when accused of causing an obesity epidemic. That’s upsetting.
.-= Grampa Ken for social change´s last blog ..Selling Bad Health to Kids =-.
Jarrod@ Optimistic Journey says
April 25, 2010 at 7:27 pmVery informative Joi!!
Wow I never knew exercise was indirectly tied to our hearing. But the study statistics definitely makes sense now that you’ve mapped it out. This gives us another reason to exercise in addition to heart health, weight-loss, and over well being.
Great article! Thank you so much for sharing!!
Megan Zuniga says
April 26, 2010 at 3:35 amI believe that life is all about balance! So, say you ate burgers today. Tomorrow, you have to eat something that would counter the effect like fruits and veggies or something. I know the equivalent exercise of eating burgers would amount to about 3 days ( I read this somewhere I cannot remember) So, that means you can only eat burgers once a month! HeHe.
But this is new to me though, heart affects hearing. I guess in theory, everything is connected. And I agree with you, it’s a nice rule of thumb to know if one is good for one, it should be good for another.
But I know one kind of food, we should all avoid. It’s transfat (if you don’t know what it is, click here http://sn.im/vlvyf ) And it’s found everywhere, even in upscale restaurants.