"Deafness is expensive. Earplugs aren’t."
~David Owen, Volume Control: Hearing In A Deafening World
~David Owen, Volume Control: Hearing In A Deafening World
Brief but Important Considerations About Your Ears
1) Damage to your ears is permanent. Damaged ear parts don't regenerate.
2) At present, devices to make up for hearing loss (hearing aids, etc.) can't mimic the complexity of your hearing. They provide essential information, but the ears are too complex to fully replace.
3) The technological and packed world we live in creates regular opportunities for hearing loss.
4) Hearing loss can occur at volumes that don't feel like loss is occurring, and happens more frequently than you realize. OSHA regulations are inadequate to protect against hearing loss.
5) 1 in 5 Americans over the age of 12 (including 13% of school aged children) has permanent hearing loss, many from devices like ear buds that can create strain on the ears as powerful as a jet engine.
6) You need your ears to train your voice.
7) Buy ear plugs that you can keep on your key chain and have with you at all times.
8) If you go to bars, clubs, or concerts, always use hearing protection. If you work at one of these places, talk to your employers and insist upon hearing-focused updates to the work environment.
9) Your ears are hearing so much more than you are aware of right now, and can be trained to bring the world to you in vibrant, new auditory colors that also allow you to hear more clearly with less overall volume.
10) Your ears do more than process sound, they also help you balance and feel the world, process emotion, tell you where you are in the world, and help coordinate sensory input.
1) Damage to your ears is permanent. Damaged ear parts don't regenerate.
2) At present, devices to make up for hearing loss (hearing aids, etc.) can't mimic the complexity of your hearing. They provide essential information, but the ears are too complex to fully replace.
3) The technological and packed world we live in creates regular opportunities for hearing loss.
4) Hearing loss can occur at volumes that don't feel like loss is occurring, and happens more frequently than you realize. OSHA regulations are inadequate to protect against hearing loss.
5) 1 in 5 Americans over the age of 12 (including 13% of school aged children) has permanent hearing loss, many from devices like ear buds that can create strain on the ears as powerful as a jet engine.
6) You need your ears to train your voice.
7) Buy ear plugs that you can keep on your key chain and have with you at all times.
8) If you go to bars, clubs, or concerts, always use hearing protection. If you work at one of these places, talk to your employers and insist upon hearing-focused updates to the work environment.
9) Your ears are hearing so much more than you are aware of right now, and can be trained to bring the world to you in vibrant, new auditory colors that also allow you to hear more clearly with less overall volume.
10) Your ears do more than process sound, they also help you balance and feel the world, process emotion, tell you where you are in the world, and help coordinate sensory input.
Hearing has traditionally been an undervalued and misunderstood sense. Even for professions who train their hearing (musicians, actors, engineers, teachers, etc.), most are unaware of the profound complexity that the ears process and how to train the ears. Very few music schools, for example, teach courses on the ears, and most individuals leave music training unaware of what harmonics are, let alone how their ears work and interact with their brains.
Hearing loss has also been traditionally misunderstood. There can be no sharper cause for caring for one's hearing than the realization that damage to the inner ear is common and cannot be repaired. Even in cases of conductive hearing loss, when a mechanical element of the middle or outer ear can be medically repaired, the difference to the hearing mechanism is profound. Given new research on hearing and the astounding impacts of hearing on the voice (see Filtered Listening and Vocal Regions), to not make the care and protection of their hearing a daily goal is to run the risk of forfeiting vocal capacity.
Hearing loss has also been traditionally misunderstood. There can be no sharper cause for caring for one's hearing than the realization that damage to the inner ear is common and cannot be repaired. Even in cases of conductive hearing loss, when a mechanical element of the middle or outer ear can be medically repaired, the difference to the hearing mechanism is profound. Given new research on hearing and the astounding impacts of hearing on the voice (see Filtered Listening and Vocal Regions), to not make the care and protection of their hearing a daily goal is to run the risk of forfeiting vocal capacity.
“The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important, than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus: the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir and keeps us in the intellectual company of men.”
~Helen Keller in a letter to Ames Kerr Love,
a friend andScottish physician who worked with the deaf.
Quote from Volume Control page 6
~Helen Keller in a letter to Ames Kerr Love,
a friend andScottish physician who worked with the deaf.
Quote from Volume Control page 6
In his book Volume Control: Hearing In A Deafening World, David Owen explores the history of humanity's relationship with hearing, and the industry that has developed around common hearing loss in the 21st century. In it he explores the ways in which hearing has been shown to be helpful to highly skilled athletes, soldiers, and tradesmen, explanations of volume through the complicated decibel system, and incredible examples of how hearing has been (and continues to be) completely misunderstood over time. For example, today's hearing test measures a person's ability to hear sine waves (individual frequencies) but not how the ear integrates those individual frequencies into understanding the world. This misnomer, among others, has led OSHA to draft regulations that Owen describes as "the best that can be said about the rules is that they’re better than nothing" (pg 245). His summary of OSHA's formulas follows:
"Basically they [OSHA's regulations] say that if you work in a covered industry you can legally be exposed to eight continuous hours of 90-decibel noise (motorcycle eight meters away, lawn mower), or to two hours of 100-decibel noise (New York City subway car, jackhammer, kitchen blender, snowmobile), or to thirty minutes of 110-decibel noise (car horn one meter away, chain saw)–every day of your career. You can also be exposed, occasionally, to “impulse” noises as loud as gunshots. Employees whose exposure is close to the maximums are supposed to be tested at least once a year" (pg 245). The saddest part about the obvious lack of protection that these guidelines provide is that most people don't even protect themselves this much. Further, new research over the past fifteen year led by Mass. Ear and Eye have shown that ear damage that occurs in the inner ear, where the hair cells communicate with synapses that send signals to the brain, occur at much lower decibel levels, and are harder to trace the results of. The US military has been dreadfully slow to respond to the profound hearing loss that soldiers experience and have done for centuries. The economic costs are staggering: "Hearing-related disability payments to veterans in fiscal year 2010 amounted to almost a billion and a half dollars, according to the Department of Defense" (pg 64). Owen, David. Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World. Riverhead Books, New York, 2019. |
Owen continues his apt assessment of work place hearing regulations:
"Compounding the risk is the fact that enforcement of even existing standards has always been inconsistent. Robert Dobie told me, 'OSHA visits less than once percent of workplaces, on an annual basis, and they do that almost entirely in response to complaints. So if you run a noisy factory and you ignore noise regulations, you know that nothing is going to happen to you unless someone complains.' Employees who are subject to OSHA regulations, and even their employees, often argue that the hearing-protection standards the law requires them to meet are unnecessarily strict and too costly to implement. But every cochlear synaptopathy [hidden hearing loss] study conducted so far suggests that they’re not strict enough, in terms of actually preventing lifelong hearing loss, and that workers in the noisier sectors of the economy are permanently damaging their ears. [Charles] Liberman told me, “The workplace guidelines that have evolved over the past thirty or forty years are all based on the premise that, if an audiogram returns to normal after an exposure, then the exposure was really a nonexposure. And I think that everyone in the field would agree that that just isn’t true” (246-247). Work-related hearing damage is a huge issue for many vocalists who work in the service industry (waiters, bar tenders), teach exercise classes (always turn down upper harmonics, check your amplitude, and use microphones), singing with bands, orchestras, or even large choirs (use musicians ear plugs or in-ear monitors with noise canceling capacity), and even practicing or teaching in small rooms can be dangerous. If you are a professional vocalist you depend upon your hearing and will for your entire career. Take precautions to protect yourself and help those around you by recommending options and setting up ear-protecting systems. |
"The only plausible remedy for the foreseeable future is for people who are routinely exposed to dangerous noise levels–that is, virtually all of us–to take responsibility for our own ears, and for employers of all kinds, including those in unregulated industries, to decide that truly protecting the hearing of the people who work for them is the right thing to do, if only because it’s in everyone’s economic self-interest to prevent workers from deafening themselves"
~David Owen (pg 247).
~David Owen (pg 247).
Published research by Sharon Kujawa and Charles Liberman, the people who first demonstrated and named cochlear synaptopahy:
"Adding Insult To Injury: Cochlear Nerve Degeneration After 'Temporary' Noise-Induced Hearing Loss" "Acceleration of Age-Related Hearing Loss By Early Noise Exposure: Evidence Of A Misspent Youth" "Cochlear Synaptopathy In Acquired Sensorineural Hearing Loss: Manifestations and Mechanisms" Charles Liberman explains cochlear synaptopathy/hidden hearing loss in a lecture in Palm Springs, CA
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Cochlear Synaptopathy/Hidden Hearing Loss
Sharon Kujawa and Charles Liberman are the two researcher who first discovered and have continued to lead research on cochlear synaptopathy, or what is commonly known as "hidden hearing loss." As the BrainFacts.org video explains, when the ear receives volumes that exceed its ability to process them, the synapses that carry that information from the inner ear to the brain overload and rupture, yielding them incapable of communicating from then on. Further, once these synapses quit working, the auditory nervous system continues to degrade over time, adding to hearing loss and tinnitus. Owen describes the research into synaptopathy in detail. He quotes Charles Liberman as saying: “Before 2009, we thought that if, for instance, you go to a club or you go to a concert and you’re exposed to a lot of sounds, you might hear a ringing, a buzzing in your ears, from tinnitus, and you might feel a fullness, like cotton in your ears–but if you are lucky, the next day you wake up and everything seems to be fine. Then you have a hearing test, and your audiogram hasn’t changed, so you’re good. That’s what we thought. But in animal models in 2009 we discovered that that was not the case” (pg 239-240). He continues by saying that in order for the audiogram (the typical hearing test used today) to show loss, nearly 80% of the synapses for a particular frequency band would need to be damaged. The human ear has only 15,000 hair cells, only about 3,000 of which communicate frequency to the brain. How many of those are you willing to offer up to permanent destruction? Owen, David. Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World. Riverhead Books, New York, 2019. |
Common Misconceptions About Your Ears
The most common and most harmful misconception about human hearing is that if your ears don't hurt, you're not experiencing hearing loss. The ears only experience pain over 130dB, but hearing loss can occur as low as 80dB depending on the exposure distance and time. Other misconceptions include tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, that can occur in anyone of any age. Tinnitus effects millions of people, and can be mechanical or neurological in nature. One hypothesis is that tinnitus is similar to chronic pain that occurs when someone loses a limb. Because the brain doesn't have access to the nerves that were damaged, the thinking goes, the brain creates the sounds that it no longer receives. Loud music environments and ear buds alike are often viewed in casual ways, and can lead to significant hearing loss. The average club or bar exceeds 100dB in volume, causing hearing damage within 5 minutes or less. Ear buds can quickly exceed 100dB as well. We encourage people to use ear covering, noise cancelling headphones, and if you have to use ear buds, keep the volume very low. Understanding how the ear cleans itself is another frequent misunderstanding. Learning how to clean your ears in ways that aid your natural cleaning systems, and avoiding cotton swabs will also lead to ear health.
The most common and most harmful misconception about human hearing is that if your ears don't hurt, you're not experiencing hearing loss. The ears only experience pain over 130dB, but hearing loss can occur as low as 80dB depending on the exposure distance and time. Other misconceptions include tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, that can occur in anyone of any age. Tinnitus effects millions of people, and can be mechanical or neurological in nature. One hypothesis is that tinnitus is similar to chronic pain that occurs when someone loses a limb. Because the brain doesn't have access to the nerves that were damaged, the thinking goes, the brain creates the sounds that it no longer receives. Loud music environments and ear buds alike are often viewed in casual ways, and can lead to significant hearing loss. The average club or bar exceeds 100dB in volume, causing hearing damage within 5 minutes or less. Ear buds can quickly exceed 100dB as well. We encourage people to use ear covering, noise cancelling headphones, and if you have to use ear buds, keep the volume very low. Understanding how the ear cleans itself is another frequent misunderstanding. Learning how to clean your ears in ways that aid your natural cleaning systems, and avoiding cotton swabs will also lead to ear health.
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In a somewhat humorous, but disturbing, explanation, Owen describes ways in which hearing loss has been dealt with in the past. Although we aren't as focused on urine and poison as solutions to hearing, many of the misconceptions about hearing today continue to be nonsensical. He writes: "Thirty-six hundred years ago, Egyptian physicians treated people who had hearing problems by filling their ear canals with mixtures of olive oil, red lead, ant eggs, bat wings, and goat urine. Supposed cures in later centuries included mercury pills; oil made from earthworms or walnut bark; cauterization of the Eustachian tubes; applications of eardrops made from peach kernels fried in hog lard; drilling holes in the skull, to provide alternative “pathways” for sound; fracturing of the mastoid bone with a hammer, to jolt the ears into hearing; irritating skin behind the ear to raise pus-filled blisters, in the hope of drawing the deafness away; administering electric shocks; syringing ear canals with boiled urine or with water heated almost to boiling; massaging eardrums with pulses of compressed air; “Bleeding from the jugular veins” to reduce “congestion in the finer vessels”; having the patient jump from great heights or gargle while lying down; painting the tonsils with silver nitrate or with a poisonous compound extracted from hellebore roots; praying; exorcism; and opium. Some treatments–placing hot coals in the mouth–arose from a failure to grasp that the silence of the deaf was a result of their inability to hear, not their refusal to speak" (pg 117-118).
Owen, David. Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World. Riverhead Books, New York, 2019.
Owen, David. Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World. Riverhead Books, New York, 2019.
How To Protect Your Ears and Boost Your Hearing Experience
There are many hearing protection products on the market today. Some are inexpensive, some much more. At the least, all serious vocalists should have personal ear plugs like musicians ears that they keep on their key ring and wear in any crowded environment, where music is being played, or even in performance settings depending on the noise impact from those closest to you. If you feel that you might have some hearing loss see a doctor to explore options. In addition, there are over the counter products now that are far less expensive than hearing aids (like the Bose Hearphones), and that help to focus and amplify important harmonics while diminishing distracting information. Some play white noise to help with sleep, or even have noise canceling capacity. There are many ways to both protect your hearing and dip your toes easily into boosting your hearing experience. If you are someone who plays the TV loudly, for example, or hears ringing in your ears when you're trying to go to sleep, it may be time to look into some hearing helpers. If you are alive, and especially if you are a vocal professional, it's time to have hearing protection for the regularly loud environments everyone experiences.
Here are several examples of hearing protection products:
Eargasm Earplugs
Bose Hearphones (for a high tech version that also amplifies and noise reduces)
Musicians Earplugs (OTC or personalized, prices vary of course)
Etymotic ETY plugs
Lucid Audio
QuietOn sleep buds
Pluggerz Earplugs Sleep
Sports hearing devices (listed on Cabela's Outfitters, some are straight protection where others
increase softer sounds and decrease louder sounds)
There are many websites and videos describing how to protect your hearing, causes of hearing loss, and more niche elements related to the ear. Choose the one that communicates best to you, and share it with everyone you know. A few examples include the videos below and these articles: The Hearing Link Project, Johns Hopkins Medical, It's A Noisy Planet, and National Institute On Deafness.
There are many hearing protection products on the market today. Some are inexpensive, some much more. At the least, all serious vocalists should have personal ear plugs like musicians ears that they keep on their key ring and wear in any crowded environment, where music is being played, or even in performance settings depending on the noise impact from those closest to you. If you feel that you might have some hearing loss see a doctor to explore options. In addition, there are over the counter products now that are far less expensive than hearing aids (like the Bose Hearphones), and that help to focus and amplify important harmonics while diminishing distracting information. Some play white noise to help with sleep, or even have noise canceling capacity. There are many ways to both protect your hearing and dip your toes easily into boosting your hearing experience. If you are someone who plays the TV loudly, for example, or hears ringing in your ears when you're trying to go to sleep, it may be time to look into some hearing helpers. If you are alive, and especially if you are a vocal professional, it's time to have hearing protection for the regularly loud environments everyone experiences.
Here are several examples of hearing protection products:
Eargasm Earplugs
Bose Hearphones (for a high tech version that also amplifies and noise reduces)
Musicians Earplugs (OTC or personalized, prices vary of course)
Etymotic ETY plugs
Lucid Audio
QuietOn sleep buds
Pluggerz Earplugs Sleep
Sports hearing devices (listed on Cabela's Outfitters, some are straight protection where others
increase softer sounds and decrease louder sounds)
There are many websites and videos describing how to protect your hearing, causes of hearing loss, and more niche elements related to the ear. Choose the one that communicates best to you, and share it with everyone you know. A few examples include the videos below and these articles: The Hearing Link Project, Johns Hopkins Medical, It's A Noisy Planet, and National Institute On Deafness.
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Why do people listen to loud music?
Anyone who has been to a loud concert, exercise class, or dance club, or even listened to loud music at home knows the discomfort and distancing sensation of ringing, closed-up ears after the experience. Further, information about permanent hearing loss is more widespread today than ever before, but people still expose themselves to dangerous volume levels regularly for fun. Research suggests that the music above a certain decibel level induces the body into motion. The vestibular system, also managed by the inner ear, controls our sense of balance and motion. Neil Todd and Frederick Cody showed that decibel levels above 90dB set the body into motion, and called it the "rock-n-roll threshold". Philip Ball in the journal Nature describes it as: "Many fans of rock and dance music would agree with acoustics specialist Ken Dibble, who says, 'rock and roll just does not work below a certain threshold level'. Yet that level is. . .so extreme that it can permanently damage hearing." The body's response to loud music is similar to the body's response to roller coasters. Ball goes on to say that the response may be primarily from low frequency notes, which are possibly less damaging to the ears. For all of the people who like to turn the volume up, especially the rockers and DJs on stage and the dance class instructors, in addition to wearing ear plugs or in-ear monitors, try some experiments that reduce high harmonics and see how it feels. Don't get too comfortable cranking the bass, though. As Sarah Williams reports in Science, new research has also revealed that exposure to 90dB+ low frequencies can cause problems for the ears. Always wear ear plugs. Todd, Neil and Frederick Cody. "Vestibular Responses To Loud Dance Music." The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Volume 107, Issue 1, December 1999. Ball, Philip. "The One Goes To Eleven." Nature, January, 2000. Williams, Sarah C.P. "Sounds You Can't Hear Still Hurt Your Ears." Science, September, 2014. |
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“Everything about singing is organized around the ear;
it is the superior regulator.”
~Alfred Tomatis
it is the superior regulator.”
~Alfred Tomatis