Category Archives: Hearing

Men (and Women) Can Lose Their Hearing by Listening to Loud Music

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You can lose a little or a lot of your hearing by listening too much with the volume turned up on your iPod or iPhone, or other device, because many of the earbuds in use aren’t very effective so people turn up the volume. Studies have found that users of these Apple devices can be listening at 100-105 decibels. This is well above the OSHA-recommended 85 decibels.

Remember, ears that get damaged stay damaged. They can’t be repaired. And when people talk about decibels (dBA), which is how loudness is measured, we need to remember that they are logarithmic, so that a small increase in the number means a big increase in the noise level (adding 10 dBA DOUBLES the noise level).

If you are socially-inclined and attend galas, they nearly always have dancing, to either a band or a DJ (sometimes a worse bet volume-wise because he has lots of watts at his command). Unfortunately, they almost always have live auctions too, and often when the auctioneer comes on the sound gets louder. (A similar boost happens sometimes when the ads play on radio or TV.) We recommend that you always carry earplugs, and use them when things get too loud. It’s a lot better than suffering hearing loss for the rest of your life.

Hearing Loss Causes Early Deaths But Is Preventable

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Why won’t men get hearing aids? Actually, both genders resist dealing with their age-related hearing declines. There’s an excellent article about hearing aids in general.

Some of the following information comes from it, but we have pursued a lot of sources, including some scholarly ones. Large numbers of older people have hearing loss (one source says 55 percent of those over 70), but most of them don’t deal with it (a different source says that only 14 percent of the 27 million over 50 with impaired hearing use a hearing aid). Some of the reasons for this include: (1) denial that they have a problem, (2) resistance to change, (3) the stigma of old age, (4) vanity, and (5) cost (hearing aids are expensive, and most are not paid for by medical insurance). But men and women deal with hearing decline differently: men consider a sign of weakness, while women worry that it makes them appear old.

Actually, some of the reasons that men die younger than women are the same that cause them to be deafer sooner. More men than women are exposed to loud noises because of military service (though women are now welcomed into combat roles (be careful what you wish for, ladies!), noisy occupations such as construction, and similar occupations. One can argue that both genders listen to too-loud music, but males appear to do it longer and louder, perhaps because they act macho.

Poor hearing in itself causes a lower quality of life because one is not fully informed or entertained, and does not participate fully in social situations. But the problem does not stop there. It worsens relationships with acquaintances and loved ones, leads to dementia, and can even cause accidents (especially falls)