Sixteen ways to protect your ears

by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition

Photo credit: Matheus Bertelli

Sarah Phillips wrote about 16 ways to protect your ears in The Guardian. I have a few quibbles with these methods, but most of them are sound (Deliberate word choice!) To me, the important thing is that her article is one of several on the topic of protecting one’s hearing that have appeared recently.

Older readers will remember when many people smoked, when it was acceptable to have a few drinks in a bar or at dinner and then drive home and when eating red meat every night was a sign that one had made enough money to live well. The public perceptions of smoking, driving after drinking and eating meat all changed. As I commented last week to my noise colleagues, maybe the public is beginning to realize that hearing is precious and noise is bad for the ears.

What are my quibbles with what Phillips wrote? There’s no evidence that getting one’s hearing tested has any benefit and there is only one FDA-approved treatment for tinnitus. She also implies that hearing loss with age is normal, when the evidence suggests that what is commonly called age-related hearing loss or presbycusis is largely the result of excessive noise exposure over one’s lifetime.

But the subheading in her story is 100% correct: “Turn the volume down.”

Because if something sounds loud, it’s too loud and one’s auditory health is at risk. If one can’t turn down the volume, leave the noisy environment or insert one’s earplugs and one’s ears should last an entire lifetime.