Can bananas help your hearing? Maybe!
“In the same way that we are told to drink milk to keep our bones strong we are now being encouraged to eat bananas to protect our hearing.”
Why? It all has to do with potassium (and aldosterone).
Potassium is an important mineral for the “fluid in your inner ear”, where the noises you hear are translated into “electrical impulses the brain interprets as sound.” Aldosterone, on the other hand, is a steroid hormone “produced in the adrenal cortex”, which can drop and affect your sodium and potassium benchmarks.
Though eating foods rich in potassium will not affect your aldosterone levels, some say they can help your overall health, and possibly your hearing health as well. If your potassium levels are low — which can affect your hearing — it only makes sense to increase your potassium intake. It certainly won’t hurt (though we always recommend talking to a doctor before any major increase in mineral or supplement consumption).
So eat that banana. Eat a couple. And consider, maybe, keeping your ears open for future developments in aldosterone treatment, which have been shown by some to slow the “progression of age-related hearing loss.”
