Protect Your Hearing With These 5 Tips

Worker sitting on a folding chair wearing a red plaid shirt and work overalls getting ready to put protective headphones on.

Your sense of hearing is essential in your life and when you lose it, there will be no natural way for it to return But strangely, the general public tends to ignore hearing loss. In fact, permanent hearing loss affects one out of eight people (about 30 million people) over the age of 12 in the United States alone.

While there are treatments that can help you regain your hearing, like hearing aids, it’s such a simple thing to protect your ears from the start to prevent avoidable hearing loss.

Safeguard your hearing with these five tips:

Earbuds should be avoided

Earbuds are one of the biggest perils to hearing health today since they’ve come as an accessory to most mobile devices going back to the first MP3 devices in the early 2000s. Almost every smartphone available comes with a set of these little devices that sit snugly in your ear and pump sound directly into your ear canal. You can get irreversible hearing damage by listening to a movie or music on your mobile device at full volume for only 15 minutes. Over the ear style headphones, especially the ones with noise canceling technology, would be a better choice. No matter what devices you use, you should follow the 60/60 rule – keep the volume at 60% maximum and only use the devices for 60 minutes each day.

Keep your volume down

Your hearing can be damaged by other things besides earbuds. Loud sounds from a TV or radio can do as much harm if you regularly listen to them over a sustained period of time. Shooting ranges, concerts, construction zone, and other loud settings should be avoided. It may be unrealistic to completely avoid these situations especially if they’re part of your job. If that’s the situation, then you’ll want to take note of the next item on the list.

Utilize hearing protection

Hearing protection is essential if you work in a setting or enjoy hobbies that expose you to loud noises. 85 decibels over a period of 15 minutes is enough to cause hearing loss. To put that in perspective:

  • Jackhammers at a construction site generate 130 decibels, which could cause significant harm after a 40-hour workweek
  • At most concerts the headlining band plays for up to two hours at well over 120 decibels
  • The average gunshot clocks in at 149 decibels, which is multiplied and amplified over the course of a one hour trip to an indoor gun range

If you take part in any of these activities, you need to get a good set of earmuffs or earplugs.

Take auditory breaks

Sometimes you simply need to give your ears a rest. If you engaged in any of the activities listed above, you really should make sure to take some quiet time for yourself so your ears can rest and recuperate, even if you were using hearing protection. So after you leave a concert, you probably shouldn’t jump into your car and crank music.

Check your medicine

Your medicine may actually have a significant effect on your hearing. There are certain medications that have been proven to trigger hearing loss including certain heart and cancer medicines, aspirin, antibiotics, and anti-inflammatory medicine. Fortunately, medication related hearing loss usually only happens when more than one of these medications are taken together making it far less common.

Looking to find treatment for your hearing loss? Make an appointment with us for a hearing test.

Resources

https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/hearing_loss/how_does_loud_noise_cause_hearing_loss.html
https://armeddefense.org/hearing-protection
https://www.uofmhealth.org/health-library/tf3092

The site information is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. To receive personalized advice or treatment, schedule an appointment.

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