The Amazing Health Aids That Can Help You Age Better

Getting older comes with a few unavoidable realities.

Hearing may not be as sharp as it once was.

Vision can change.

Balance can become less reliable.

Sleep can become harder to understand.

You may recover more slowly from exercise.

Blood pressure, blood sugar and heart rhythm can become more important to keep an eye on.

For much of human history, the answer was simply:

Adapt.

Today, we have another option.

Get some help from technology.

And the technology available to older adults is becoming remarkably sophisticated.

Your hearing aid isn’t just about hearing

Walk into a group of older adults and you’ll often find several people wearing hearing aids.

It can be easy to think of them as little devices that simply make things louder.

They’re much more sophisticated than that.

Modern hearing aids can selectively amplify speech, reduce background noise and connect wirelessly to phones and other devices.

But the potential benefit goes beyond hearing the conversation at the dinner table.

Hearing loss is associated with social isolation and other health concerns, and it has also been associated with an increased risk of cognitive decline.

And one of the most interesting studies in this area found something remarkable.

In an NIH-funded randomized clinical trial of 977 adults ages 70 to 84, hearing aids did not slow cognitive decline in the entire study population.

But among participants who entered the study with higher risk of dementia, those assigned to the hearing intervention experienced an almost 50% reduction in the rate of cognitive decline compared with the health-education group over three years.

That’s not proof that hearing aids prevent dementia.

The main analysis of the entire study population did not find a significant difference in cognitive decline.

But the findings suggest that treating hearing loss may have benefits that go considerably beyond simply hearing better.

Then there are the devices that watch you

You don’t have to wear a medical device to get useful information about your health.

A smartwatch or smart ring can continuously collect information that would have been difficult—or impossible—for an ordinary person to obtain just a few decades ago.

Depending on the device, that can include things such as:

• Heart rate
• Resting heart rate
• Sleep duration
• Sleep patterns
• Activity and steps
• Exercise
• Heart-rate variability
• Blood oxygen estimates
• Temperature trends
• And, with some devices, heart-rhythm information

That’s where something like a smart ring becomes interesting.

Instead of taking a measurement once in a while, you can begin to see patterns.

Maybe your resting heart rate has been creeping upward.

Maybe you’re sleeping less.

Maybe your activity has dropped.

Maybe your body temperature has changed.

None of those measurements necessarily tells you that something is wrong.

But a pattern can give you a reason to pay attention.

And sometimes the simplest information is the most useful

Wearable activity trackers aren’t magic.

But research involving older adults has found that activity-tracker interventions can increase daily steps and physical activity, at least over the short term.

A 2023 systematic review and meta-analysis of 45 randomized trials involving 7,144 participants found that wearable activity trackers increased daily steps, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and total physical activity compared with control conditions.

More recent research suggests that the benefits may not last indefinitely, which is an important reminder that the device itself isn’t the magic ingredient.

The power comes from what you do with the information.

The feedback loop is simple:

Measure → notice → adjust → measure again.

Knowing that you’ve taken 3,200 steps isn’t particularly useful unless you do something with that information.

Technology can compensate for things age takes away

This may be the most interesting part.

We tend to think of aging as a process of losing abilities.

But technology increasingly allows us to replace, supplement or compensate for some of those losses.

Hearing getting worse?

There are hearing aids.

Vision getting worse?

There are glasses, magnifiers and increasingly sophisticated visual aids.

Balance becoming less reliable?

There are canes, walkers, grab bars and other mobility aids.

Blood pressure becoming important?

You can monitor it at home.

Sleep becoming mysterious?

Wearables can help reveal patterns.

Physical activity becoming harder to judge?

A tracker can show you what you’re actually doing.

Need help remembering medications?

Technology can provide reminders.

And if something changes, you may have information you can take to your healthcare provider rather than simply saying:

“I don’t feel quite right.”

The goal isn’t to measure everything

There is an important catch.

These devices are tools, not doctors.

Consumer wearables can provide useful information, but their accuracy varies by device, measurement and individual circumstances.

A smart ring might tell you that your resting heart rate went up.

It can’t tell you why.

You might be getting sick.

You might have slept badly.

You might have had a hard workout.

You might have had a stressful day.

Or it might simply be normal variation.

And some claims made by consumer devices go far beyond what the evidence supports.

For example, the FDA has specifically warned consumers not to use smartwatches or smart rings that claim to measure blood glucose without piercing the skin. The FDA says it has not authorized, cleared or approved any smartwatch or smart ring that independently measures or estimates blood glucose in this way.

That’s a useful lesson:

The more sophisticated a device sounds, the more important it is to ask what has actually been validated.

The best use of these technologies isn’t to become obsessed with every number.

It’s to become more aware of your own patterns.

Maybe we should stop thinking of these devices as signs of aging

There’s something psychologically interesting happening here.

Some people resist hearing aids, walkers, glasses or other aids because they don’t want to feel old.

But perhaps we’re looking at it backward.

Wearing glasses doesn’t mean you’ve failed at seeing.

A hearing aid doesn’t mean you’ve failed at hearing.

A smart ring doesn’t mean you’re sick.

A cane doesn’t mean you’re incapable.

A blood-pressure monitor doesn’t mean something is wrong.

These things can simply mean:

You’re using the tools available to you.

And there’s something rather empowering about that.

The new advantage of getting older

Previous generations had considerably less information about their own bodies.

Today, a 70-year-old can potentially know more about their sleep, activity, hearing, blood pressure, heart rhythm and other aspects of their health than a 40-year-old could have known just a generation or two ago.

That doesn’t make aging disappear.

But it may change the game.

Instead of asking:

“What am I losing because I’m getting older?”

we might increasingly ask:

“What can I use to help me keep doing what I want to do?”

That’s a very different way of looking at aging.

And perhaps that’s one of the most interesting developments in growing older today.

The goal isn’t to pretend we’re 40.

It’s to use reasonable tools to help us make the most of 70, 80, 90—and whatever comes next.