Ways To Protect Your Hearing In Our Loud World

6 ways to protect your hearing in our loud world

09:43 AM CDT on Tuesday, July 27, 2010
By DAPHNE HOWLAND / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

The world is getting louder, and it's hurting our ears.

"We used to see hearing loss in older people, starting in their 50s and 60s, and especially in people whose employment is noisy, like mechanics, farmers, ranchers who are on tractors all day long, and people who frequently fire guns," says Steven Zupancic, an audiologist at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences in Lubbock. "Unfortunately, we've started to see a shift in age, with younger people losing some hearing. Younger people have iPods stuck in their ears, and over time that can wear down your system."

People generally are unaware that sound can injure your ears. Sound affects small clumps of delicate hairlike stems that change it into the electrical impulses the brain needs to interpret sound. These hair cells wave like grasses in the wind, and, like grasses in the wind, can lose their ability to bounce back if sound is too forceful, especially if it's forceful over time.

You can protect your hearing from irreversible damage, and even if you have lost some hearing, you can improve your experience of sound.

What to watch for: Noise, which includes sound that you are enjoying, such as music or a football game, is dangerous if you have to shout to be heard above it, if it hurts your ears, or if, once things are quiet again, you experience muffled hearing or ringing in your ears, according to the American Academy of Audiology.

Especially if you are young, your ears often can recover from a few chunks of time with too-loud noise. Burdening your hair cells too much too often has a price, however.

Be careful with your music. Audiologists advocate "turning it to the left," that is, turning down the volume on devices such as iPods and car stereos.

"If you listen lower, you can listen longer," says Brian Fligor, a Harvard researcher, audiologist and musician. "Small increments are huge."

For example, listen to your mp3 player at 80 percent of its maximum volume, and you should turn it off after an hour and a half. Lower it to about 75 percent of the volume, and you can afford to listen just under four hours, Fligor says.

Buy better earphones. Fligor's research has found that people automatically raise the volume when it's difficult to hear over background noise (a common problem at the gym, when mowing the lawn or on public transportation) and automatically lower it when sound is purer. It pays to get high-quality headphones that provide better sound and that fit better into your ear canal to block competing outside noise.

Wear ear plugs in loud situations such as school dances, nightclubs, football games or activities like farming, hunting or marching band, ear protection is key. Using cheap orange rubber earplugs is better than nothing, but they muffle sound and don't block the sound of your own voice, breathing or gum-chewing, ruining your listening experience, an effect known as occlusion. Earplugs that fit snugly into your ear canal will allow in better sound, just at a lower volume, and can go deep enough to prevent occlusion, Zupancic says.

High-quality earplugs also can be custom-made by an audiologist, which is important for musicians or those interested in maximizing their hearing experience while protecting their hearing.

Watch for signs of hearing loss. Because hearing loss usually occurs over time, and because loss can occur at different frequencies, it can be difficult to perceive, says Kerry Ormson, an audiologist from Amarillo serving his second term on the Texas State Board for Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology. Age-related hearing loss tends to begin in men after age 50, in women after age 60. Wives and daughters often notice a man's hearing loss before he does. They'll say he doesn't hear them; he'll insist they are mumbling.

If people are telling you that you haven't heard them, if you think they're not speaking clearly, if you find yourself sitting closer to a speaker at a meeting, or if you can't hear in crowded situations, it's time to see an audiologist, Ormson says. You may not need a hearing aid yet, but an audiologist can determine whether you have hearing loss and what to do about it.

Be patient with your hearing aid. It's important to keep expectations realistic, he says. Hearing aids cannot restore your hearing to what it was before. In fact, they can only amplify every sound coming into your ear. Your brain is able to minimize sounds you don't want to hear, like the hubbub at a party, and accentuate what you do want to hear, like someone talking to you.

While a hearing aid can be "as useless as a doorstop" in crowded rooms or rooms with terrible acoustics, it can improve your ability to listen to people at home and at work, says Ormson, and that can save energy and frustration.

"It takes a lot of energy to listen," he says. "And to comprehend and understand. It doesn't take any energy to hear."

Daphne Howland is a freelance writer in Portland, Maine.

healthyliving@dallasnews.com



Steven Zupancic