Sharpen Your Senses - Part 2
Get ready to sharpen your senses. We found these techniques in Men’s Health magazine.
- We’ll start with your schnoz. Your sense of smell deteriorates with age – that’s according to neurobiologist Dr. Alan Hirsch of the Smell & Taste Research Center in Chicago. By the time you’re 65, your ability to stop and smell the roses will be reduced by half. But you can fight off that decline simply by taking a deep whiff of a specific, pleasurable smell every day. Whether it’s your wife’s perfume or a pepperoni pizza. When you do that consistently over months, it will cause your body to create new scent receptors.
- To sharpen your sense of sight – take blinking breaks throughout the day. This is especially important for people who work on computers for long stretches, or who drive a lot. Both of those can exacerbate eye dryness – which is the number one cause of blurry vision – because you tend to be so focused visually that you don’t blink as often. But blinking works like windshield wipers, clearing the surface of your eye and encouraging tear production. So train yourself to blink every time you click your computer mouse or flick your turn signal in the car. And snack on trail mix – the nuts and seeds contain the B vitamins you need to ward off cataracts.
- On to your hearing: Music can either wreck your hearing or help you fine-tune it. The trick is maintaining a sane volume. Basically, if you’re listening to your iPod and you can’t hear what the person next to you is saying, it’s too loud. To fine-tune your hearing, listen to a piece of music and pick out one instrument and follow it throughout the song. That’s like resistance training for your ears and it’ll help you perceive more details in every day sounds. Also, go ahead and have one glass of red wine. There’s a wonder chemical in it that protects against noise-induced hearing damage.
