It’s inevitable that as you age, your hearing will slowly worsen, your vision might become more blurry, and you might need a few minutes to work the stiffness out of your muscles and joints in the morning.
Fortunately, there are many effective ways you can both combat and work with disabilities. You don’t have to become helpless as the years go by.
It’s important to note that pride and stubbornness can get in the way of your own safety.
For example, many people who desperately need hearing aids refuse to get them for one reason or another. This means that other people have to raise their voice to communicate with them and that they won’t be able hear someone coming up behind them.
Hearing and vision are your primary means of detecting threats before they get too close. Having one sense without the other dramatically reduces your defenses.
Hearing aids these days continue to get cheaper, smaller, and have longer battery lives. Most of the time, nobody will have any idea you’re even wearing it.
If you need glasses to see either far away or up close, use them. It’s also good to have them ready and quickly accessible. For glasses that don’t need to be worn all the time, having them on a cord around your neck or even tucked into a breast pocket will help speed up the time it takes to put them on and look at possible threats.
Staying up to date on both hearing and eye doctor appointments is also a good habit to get into because deterioration happens so gradually, you may not don’t notice the decline until it’s brought to your attention by a professional.
Regardless of your age or the condition of your vision, good lighting is important for everyone. It helps you to quickly and accurately identify your target.
Author Bruce N. Eimer, PH.D. wrote about lighting in his article “Senior Citizen Defensive Realities” on USConcealedcarry.com:
“In addition to helping you locate and identify threats (as well as your keys), these intensely bright lights can temporarily blind your attacker, giving you a chance to get to safety or take some other appropriate course of action.” (Read more on USConcealedCarry.com)
The larger and heavier types of flashlights also make good impact weapons in a pinch.
And finally, consider where you’re holstering your gun. If it’s in the small of your back and can’t be reached easily, it should be relocated. Just because you used to be able to draw from a certain location doesn’t mean you can still draw from the same place now.