“You go to any concert right now, you’ll notice that all the musicians are wearing earplugs,” says Dr. Alan Wild, a longtime St. Louis otolaryngologist with SLU Care. “They’re doing that to protect their hearing.”
Most of us, though, do little to guard against an increasingly noisy planet—which contributes to hearing loss at all ages, not just among teens (or baby boomers) at rock concerts. Loud noise comes at us from all directions: iPods, lawn mowers, video games, hair dryers, power tools, ambulances, movies… All can cause hearing loss with prolonged exposure, says Wild.
“If you’re going to go to a concert and sit in the front row or right in front of the speakers, you can expect that you’re going to sustain some injury to your hearing, but those injuries are usually short-lived,” he says. “Unfortunately, some people go to concert after concert and have repeated injury and end up with hearing loss.”
Amanda Ortmann, an audiologist at Washington University School of Medicine’s Adult Audiology Clinic, concurs. “Many people are exposed to loud sound almost all the time wearing iPods. It’s not only how loud it is, but how long you’re listening to music,” she says. “If you just turn it down a little bit, your ear can tolerate the sound for perhaps double the time. Listening to music pretty loud for just 10 minutes, that’s probably not going to be that damaging. But if you do that for three hours, that’s going to cause some harm.”
Sound waves enter the ear canal and hit the eardrum, which is attached to three small bones that transfer the sound to the cochlea—the end organ of the hearing nerve. “That cochlea—which is about the size of your pinky nail—is filled with fluid and thousands upon thousands of hair cells that respond to sound in a normal ear,” explains Ortmann. “When you get damage in your ear, hair cells die and can’t respond to sound.”
When that happens, she says, “Not only do sounds have to be louder in order for the neighboring cells to respond to it, but also things sound more distant, kind of smeared in a way. As we get more damage, we lose the ability to separate out one sound source from another,” says Ortmann.
In addition to hearing loss caused by man-made noises, there’s a natural loss of hearing facility as we age, says Wild. “It typically begins during your fifties, affecting primarily the high tones, so that by the time you get into your seventies, you’ve lost some of your ability to discriminate sounds. You can hear the volume, but it may not be distinct to you,” particularly if there is background noise or distracting sound affecting a conversation.
An aging population is contributing to rising concern about hearing loss, says Ortmann: “We’re at a time when baby boomers are getting to be older adults, so there are going to be a lot of people in need of services from audiologists to help them hear better.”
Further, a louder world threatens good hearing. “I don’t think there is a hearing-loss epidemic right now, but I think everybody is waiting for the other shoe to drop,” says Wild. “The younger generation—and maybe not even that young—are so heavily involved with iPods and listening at inappropriate volume levels that we anticipate there may be an explosion in the number of cases in another 20 years.”
The good news is, the same digital technology that’s enabled iPods and other MP3 players has also spawned a new generation
of smaller, more effective hearing aids. The state-of-the-art devices employ processing schemes that reduce ambient noise while emphasizing and enhancing speech, selectively amplifying certain frequencies and filtering out others. Some hearing aids even employ wireless connectivity to connect remotely to cellphones, TVs, and iPods.
The stigma that some associate with wearing a hearing aid also is being addressed by smaller devices with sleeker styles and colors that blend better with your skin or hair, says Ortmann. “I hope that one day we would overcome the stigma of hearing aids and make it look like fun and technology,” she says, likening the improved devices to designer eyeglasses.
If you believe you’re suffering from hearing loss, Ortmann suggests first getting your hearing tested by a certified and licensed audiologist to see how much of a loss you have, if any. Your primary care physician can likely refer you to someone, she says.
And many people with only slight hearing loss may not need a hearing aid to take full part in conversations, she notes—there are some simple strategies you may be able to employ instead.
Those include:
• Using the mute button. Don’t try to converse with background noise from a TV or stereo muddying the audio waters.
• Selecting prime seating. At noisy restaurants or other venues, try to choose a quieter table. Sit closer to a wall or back corner to limit ambient noise.
• Looking at the talker and being alert for context. What you miss with your ears can often be filled in by watching a person’s lips and body language and using the context of the conversation to reconstruct what was said. In many situations, you can rephrase what you did hear into a question to elicit information you may have missed.
An audiologist can provide other options to help in certain situations, such as earphones for personal amplified TV listening, adds Ortmann. She also has a fix for those who turn up the volume on their headphones to drown out surrounding noise. “You can get what’s called a custom sleeve put onto the iPod or MP3 player headphone that’s a custom mold of your ear,” she says. This blocks out environmental sound and enables you to listen at a lower volume.
Currently, though, there’s no cure for hearing loss.
“Once it’s gone, it’s gone,” says Ortmann. “There’s a lot of research being done in using pharmaceuticals to prevent noise-induced hearing loss, and in regenerating the hair cells, but it’s not there yet.”
Freelance writer, author, and St. Louis native Rick Skwiot divides his time between Key West and St. Louis. His latest book, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico: Memoir of a Sensual Quest for Spiritual Healing, was published last fall by Antaeus Books
