Let’s be real: there’s a significant chance that you, reading this article, have some kind of minor physical or medical ailment that you have mitigated through the use of some kind of treatment or tool. Many people wear contact lenses to correct their vision, many use electronic hearing aids to assist with hearing loss or deterioration, and a vast number of people suffer from allergies that make certain seasons or exposure to specific items unbearably uncomfortable.

But, can you reliably get contact lenses or hearing aid batteries or antihistamine tablets once things go south? Today on Rob Raskins’ Millionaire Survivalist, we’re going to address how to get rid of your reliance on disposable remedies.

Medical and Cybernetic Enhancements for the Future

Modern medicine and technology have made things like chronic hearing loss something of the past. Every day, doctors and scientists funded by donations from millionaires like us make ailments less and less likely to affect your everyday life. If you’re not taking advantage of the phenomenal permanent fixes that are now available to you, then you are missing out on your own personal protection.

Fix Your Eyes

Everyone these days has heard of Lasik surgery. Essentially, a surgeon makes a tiny and precise cut on your cornea, opening up a passage into the working parts of the eye itself. Then, using a high-powered but very small laser, they will reshape the cornea itself to alleviate imperfections in your eye’s lens. The result is an almost-always permanent improvement to your eyesight, which removes the necessity for external enhancements like contacts or glasses.

Listen, if you have bad eyesight and haven’t been treated with Lasik yet, you are behind the times. You won’t be able to reliably acquire contact lenses or glasses replacements once the SHTF, so if you go into an apocalypse scenario with bad eyes you are at a distinct disadvantage. Go right now and get your eyes fixed immediately. Treatment for each eye averages at a measly $3,000 or so, so for it being as affordable as it is, you should just go and have it done first thing.

There’s a small possibility that the eye will, over a period of several years, continue to readjust itself in the same manner that it originally did to make your original impairment. However, this is not only very rare, but if it DOES happen it takes several years to do so. By the time you need vision correction again, the chances are that society will have returned back to normal and you’ll have your availability back. The bottom line is, you’re wasting your time if your eyes aren’t perfect.

Fix Your Ears

A significant portion of Americans experience some level of hearing loss, and of that portion, many make use of a mechanical hearing aid. These small devices are often inserted into the ear canal externally, and are powered by small button cell batteries. While they tend to work well initially, there are several dangers that they pose. Impingement of the ear canal due to pushing earwax back into it constantly with the insertion of the hearing aid is very common, as is improper calibration of the amplifier damaging the eardrum even more.

We don’t need any of that. That’s something to leave in the past, because dealing with that on top of an EOTWAWKI scenario is unnecessary. No, you can forget the faulty devices because science has the option of cochlear implants and middle-ear implants. The middle-ear implant works well with partial hearing loss, and is a permanent solution to it.

A surgeon will implant a receiver and a working end into your ear, attaching it to either one of the cochlear bones or near the eardrum itself. Then, an external processor attaches to the receiver and processes sound in your environment. Unlike a normal hearing aid, this does not amplify sound at all. Instead, it transmits it to the inner ear and physically moves the ear’s working parts. This produces actually natural-sounding sound, a far better result than standard hearing aids.

These implants cost around $15,000 per ear, and take about 8 weeks to fully implant and activate. Both affordable and safe, this option doesn’t exactly restore your hearing to perfect, but it does improve it without the use of a stick-in hearing aid. If you need it, you can get it done.

Fix Your Sinuses

Allergies are pervasive and difficult to control on the best of days, and this possible solution is the most experimental and expensive of the ones listed here. We’re getting into the real heavy science now. Let’s talk about the possibilities of gene therapy.

In 2017, a study at University of Queensland found that there is a possibility of a single dose of gene therapy could produce a lifetime immunity to allergens. Allergies are basically your body’s immune system reacting to a false positive and trying to expel the offending otherwise-benign substance from the body. When the body reacts to an allergen, histamine responses cause white blood cells to go into full defense mode.

The reason that these responses happen is because immune cells called T-cells recognize the proteins in an allergen and compare them to the “memory” of previous exposures. Here’s where gene therapy comes in. Thanks to the study’s findings, it’s possible to functionally erase the T-cells’ memory of the allergen protein, and therefore make them uninterested in attacking the allergen. The pricetag on this one is a respectable $650,000, but if you can get it, it’s worth never having to deal with potentially lethal allergies again.

The Bottom Line

You can’t assume that you will have access to disposable, single-use supplies in the future. Why not simply fix the problems that you have before they become real trouble? Science exists for the purpose of making your life easier, and in an EOTW scenario, you’ll thank yourself for having the foresight to permanently fix anything that you had going before.