Don’t be deaf to the dangers of loud music Ignore the warning signs at your peril, writes They can come back years later as a distressing disability
IF YOU’RE unlucky, all it takes is one loud concert to spark a lifetime of ear problems – a constellation of symptoms that include not just hearing loss but also ringing in the ears, sound sensitivity, a feeling of aural fullness and even chronic ear pain.
Scientists are just now starting to understand the more nuanced workings of the inner ear, or cochlea, a tiny, snailshaped organ buried deep inside a skull bone – and about how noise exposure can gum up the complicated system in multiple ways.
Many people are familiar with muffled hearing and ringing ears – called tinnitus – after a concert or loud sporting event. Even if these symptoms go away within days, they can portend permanent ear damage, even years later.
The effect of noise is cumulative, insidious and, researchers say, irreversible. “Over the course of one’s lifetime, the damage builds up,” said Paul Fuchs, a professor of otolaryngology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the US.
Among teens, many of whom are wedded to ear buds and loud music, nearly 20 percent report some hearing loss. Tinnitus, a usually relentless ringing that can be much more distressing than hearing loss, plagues 10 to 15 percent of adults, according to various studies.
Chris Munson, 55, an engineer and former home-audio enthusiast, loved his music loud in his younger days. He also had tinnitus that came and went.
In hindsight, he said: “It was absolutely a warning sign, but if you don’t know how to read those warning signs, you ignore them.”
One day eight years ago – having listened to excerpts from films including TheMatrix with his elaborate home-theatre set-up the previous night – Munson awoke with “my head in a ball of sound”, he said.
The ringing worsened over time, spreading from one ear to both and expanding from one steady tone to several fluctuating ones. This time, the ringing didn’t go away. Instead, it worsened over time.
Soon afterwards, Munson also developed mild hyperacusis – a sensitivity that renders everyday noises uncomfortably loud or even painful. He describes his tinnitus as a screaming, constant multi-tone with no real-world correlation.
Now he gets an ache in the ear canal from the hum of the refrigerator and the snap of a pop top.
To avoid clinking dishware, which causes him ear pain, his family eats off paper plates. The home theatre gathers dust. “Your ears have a budget,” he said. “Spend it too quickly and you’re broke.” by these same pain fibres, GarcíaAñoveros said.
“What they’re detecting is not necessarily sound. They could be detecting spilt contents of damaged cells – a sensation from your ear that is not a hearing sensation.” impossible to predict whose ears will prove to be “tough” or “tender”, as researchers put it.
Christine Reiners, 49, never thought twice about the loud tunes she listened to as a teenager. A few years ago, she started taking exercise classes. They ran just twice a week for an hour, but the music blared.
Last year, she woke one night with “the sound of an alarm” in her head. It never stopped. “It’s horrible – a high-pitched screech,” she said, sometimes joined by a chirp. She has trouble sleeping and concentrating.
Reiners has visited many doctors, receiving such misdiagnoses as an ear infection, intracranial hypertension and sinusitis. She even had sinus surgery, which didn’t help.
“It’s hard knowing that it’s not going to get any better,” said Reiners, a mother of two. “I’m praying it doesn’t get worse.”
According to hearing specialists, limiting the volume and duration of noise exposure goes a long way towards safety, as does the proper use of hearing protection such as earplugs or protective earmuffs. A rule of thumb: earplugs are needed when the noise is so loud that people sitting next to each other must raise their voices to be heard.
Because there are no ways to fix noise-induced hearing problems, “the only solution is prevention”, said Larry E Roberts, a professor emeritus and auditory neuroscientist at McMaster University in Canada. He views loud noise as a public-health hazard akin to smoking, and he would like to see aggressive public-awareness campaigns.
Research is starting on ways to reverse hearing impairments, but “the challenge of restoring functional hearing with molecular engineering is great and is likely decades away”, Roberts said. “Think of smoking. We can do lung transplants, but this is not the solution for lung cancer.” – The Washington Post