Protect Your Ears! Hearing Loss is No Joke!

published in Surrender to the Flow 2012: 

Protect Your Ears! Hearing Loss is No Joke!

By Mike Akers – Milford, MA

The human ear is one of the most intricate organs in biology and perhaps one of the easiest to damage.  The worst part about this is once the damage is sustained, it is not going to get any better.  It is also hard to detect symptoms in the early stages of hearing damage beyond the occasional ringing that may or may not go away. 

To simplify, your inner ear is made up of three tiny bones that cause vibrations and electrify a pulse to the brain replicating the sound you hear every day of your life.  With age, the hearing diminishes and damage only makes hearing worse.  Tinnitus is a result of exposing your inner ear to sounds greater than what is known as the threshold of hearing and threshold of pain to an audiologist.  When you are experiencing symptoms of tinnitus, your ears are constantly whistling and buzzing and will never reverse.   There are temporary lubricants and eardrops that soothe the painful symptoms, but the main point to drive home about hearing loss is that once you lose it, you will not be hearing the same ever again without the use of technology.  Even then, the spectrum of sound your ears are able to pick up will be incredibly lessened.

There are several affordable safety measures to consider whether you are a musician, concert spectator or a runway traffic controller at a busy airport.  Simple rubber earplugs are designed to block the sound from entering the ear canal entirely.  They are fairly cheap and can be found at any local drug store.  However, one attending a concert might not want to block the entire spectrum of sound from their senses and there are certainly other options available.  Etymotic Research Inc. has designed a high fidelity earplug that takes the sound one is exposed to and filters it to a much safer level of sensory.  They are designed to simulate the normal response of the ear canal, so as sound enters the plug the listener hears it as it is meant to be.  According to their website, these plugs reduce the dB level by about 20 units and are fairly cheap as well ($12.95).  The next option would be to visit an audiology professional and have custom molded earpieces with similar technology found in the Etymotics plugs.  That can get costly, but in the eyes of a music lover who never wants to lose their hearing, it is priceless.

The typical sound pressure decibel level at a concert would be right around 130 dB.  This is more than the human ear was designed to handle by properties of nature and can lead to permanent hearing loss depending on the amount of exposure. Adding another 50 dB to that would be on the verge of deafening. A typical conversation or office ambience reaches levels of about 50-60 dB, so you can see the comparison in numbers. It takes just less than 180 dB to completely blow your eardrums, so hopefully this stresses how important and delicate the human ear is.  

The self-consciousness one might struggle with in wearing hearing protection in public is worth much less than the price of hearing and enjoying music alone.  The common perception of a spectator wearing earplugs at a concert is as follows: Why would you want to wear earplugs at a concert?  After reading this piece I will hope you see the value in taking these measures. Using the Etymotics plugs as an example, you actually hear the music coming from the sound system with less distortion making it that much more clear.  Those annoyed by folks talking in your section, the high fidelity earplugs will certainly have added value on that front.  Wearing them for the first time I myself was skeptical but quickly adapted to their usage. 

A music lover without their sense of hearing and perception is much like a visual artist without an imagination.  Your hearing is a tool of nature.  If it is abused, it will dissipate.  Think of how much you love music, and how disappointed you would be if you never had the opportunity to hear it the same way again.  Or ever hear at all.  Hearing loss in entirely preventable, and might be one of the five senses humans take for granted the most.