7 tips to protect your hearing - Hear and Clear Care
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To understand the damage that loud sounds can have on our hearing, it is important to know how our ears and brain work to hear sound. To put it simply, our ears have sensory hair cells in the inner ear that vibrate as different frequencies of sound travel through the ear.  The movement of these little hairs cause electrical signals to travel up the auditory nerve towards the brain.

When you enjoy a loud concert for example, you may find that your ears ring, buzz or sound very muffled afterwards.  This indicates that there has been temporary damage to those sensory hair cells.  You may find that this will recover after a few hours or days.  However, a very loud sudden burst of sound or repeated exposure to loud sounds can cause permanent damage to this hair cells.  This can cause a permanent, noise induced hearing loss (NIHL).

As the hearing loss progresses, you may find that you have trouble hearing high-pitched sounds, speech is no longer as clear or you may have difficulty hearing when there is background noise.

The good news is that there are many ways to protect your ears from loud noises:

  1. Keep the volume down. The World Health Organization (2022) recommends that you set your device volume no higher than 60% of the maximum. You could even use an app to monitor your sound level, it should be less than 80dB.
  2. Use well-fitted noise cancelling headphones. This will ensure that you don’t increase the volume of your devices as the background noise increases.
  3. Use hearing protection such as ear plugs.
  4. Move away from noise sources when possible.This could include loudspeakers or loud machinery.
  5. Limit time spent in noisy environments. This allows the hair cells time to recover.
  6. Monitor sound levels. There are many apps available on Android or Apple devices that can help you to measure the level of background noise. The safest levels of sound are below 80dB.
  7. Regular hearing checks. If you have a hearing loss that appears suddenly or you suspect your hearing has declined, get a hearing test done. This will also provide a good baseline that we can monitor over time.

References

WHO Team. (2022). Deafness and hearing loss: Safe listening. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/deafness-and-hearing-loss-safe-listening