Mending senses - preventing the deterioration of the senses due to aging

Men's Fitness, Nov, 1998 by Bill Bush

Age and abuse can corrode your five primary senses. Here's what you can do to slow down the process.

Although you might not realize it, your five primary senses - taste, smell, touch, sight and hearing - are intermingled. The brain acts like a blender, taking, for example, the smell of a lover's perfume and conjuring up a myriad of impressions associated with that scent. With one whiff, you can feel soft hair, taste honeyed skin, hear sibilant whispers and see the outline of a face in the moonlight.

It would be tragic to completely lose any of your senses, but the fact is, studies have shown that all senses deteriorate to varying degrees with natural aging. The good news is that you can take precautionary measures to lessen the damage as you grow older - and ensure your ability to enjoy all of life's tactile pleasures for as long as you live.

See me

For the first 25 years of your life, any detrimental changes in your vision are almost self-correcting. Your body simply adapts. But after their mid-20s, most people lose their ability to accommodate vision problems and (usually dictated by their genes) consequently develop near- or farsightedness. Both conditions must be eventually corrected with contacts, eyeglasses or one of the new laser-surgery options.

Alterations to your vision are inevitable, but physical damage to the eye through strain and/or injury is not. Wear protective goggles or glasses when appropriate, such as on the racquetball court or in the workshop or yard. UV light and glare stress the eyes unnecessarily, so get a good pair of shades (even if you have to pay a little extra) and wear them consistently out in the sun. That's especially good advice on water or snow, whose reflective properties can be murder on your peepers.

Oh, and eat your carrots: "Good eye health is a result of promoting circulation to the eye and providing the protective effects of antioxidants," says Marcus Laux, a practicing naturopath, author and lecturer. "The eye is incredibly susceptible to free-radical damage, and a lot of what happens is irreversible. So pycnogenol, gingko biloba, bilberry, grapeseed and vitamins A, C and E are a must for good eye health."

He recommends regular exercise for weight and cholesterol control to reduce the potential for plaque buildup in the tiny capillaries of the eye. Says Laux: "A healthy diet is very important and, especially for good vision, think of coloring your plate with various green, orange, yellow and red vegetables and fruits every day." Cruciferous vegetables such as kale, cauliflower, collard greens and broccoli are loaded with a special pigment called lutein, which is vital to good eye health.

Get a whiff

Your sense of smell emanates from a postage stamp-size forest of millions of receptor cells located in the back of your nasal cavity. That number sounds impressive until you realize a bloodhound sports more than a billion of these smellcheckers.

You can totally disable your sense of smell or significantly reduce it by how you live, warns Ronald DeVere, MD, director of the Taste and Smell Disorders Clinic in Sugar Land, Texas. "Smoking at an early age does cumulative damage to delicate tissues in the mouth, throat and nose," DeVere says. "I also see smell and taste problems in patients who have been on certain powerful medications or have had sinus infections, viruses or head injuries."

Although your sense of smell isn't as critical as, say, eyesight, it's still something worth preserving: Damage your olfactory sense and you're in danger of not being able to sense gas leaks, smoke, spoiled food or know when the baby needs a diaper change (for some, the latter may be a good thing). You may also commit unwitting odiferous offensiveness with your own body aroma, or, perhaps worse, with overzealously applied cologne.

Hear no evil

The inner ear is a busy place where delicate bony structures vibrate in response to sound waves. The vibrations move hair-like projections that send impulses up the auditory nerve to the brain. Everything is fine when the tiny bones receive vibrations in the range of normal conversation, about 60 decibels, but not so when decibel levels increase.

"Most hearing loss is the result of aging. But prolonged exposure to noise levels above 90 decibels can be very damaging," says Rick A. Friedman, MD, PhD, a physician at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles. "We call it 'acoustic trauma,' and it's not just from loud music at a rock concert. Many people go for the kind of sound that vibrates your chest. Over time, that'll give anyone hearing loss."

Friedman also fingers sports events (crowd noise, race car engines, etc.), gunfire, recreational noise (motorcycles, snowmobiles, watercraft), and yard work (lawn mowers and leaf blowers). "It's a noisy world out there, so whenever you can, try to reduce the noise level you (and others) are being exposed to," he says. "For example, turn down the volume of the car stereo, especially with Junior vibrating in the carseat between the 400-watt crossover bass-booster subwoofers."