The hearing gradually deteriorates for factors that are often not in our control. Fortunately, There are things you can do to protect your ears.
For most people, hearing gradually deteriorates with age, and approximately half of the time that deterioration is caused by genetic factors They are not in our control.
But years of regularly attending concerts in which the room rumbles, for example, they can aggravate audition loss, and it could now have to strive to hear a movie or follow group conversations.
“When we are young, we think that nothing can threaten us,” said Howard Francis, a professor of Otolaryngology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Duke. But 55 percent of American adults have a disabled hearing loss from 75 years. And if hearing loss is not attended, It can increase the risk of developing conditions such as dementia and depression.
Fortunately, there are measures that you can take to protect your ears. This is what experts suggest you do, and what you should avoid.
Yes: Be careful with strong sounds
Apart from aging, Exposure to strong noise is the most frequent cause of hearing loss. And the more time you are exposed, the more likely your audition is damaged, said Dunia Abdul-Aziz, an otolaryngologist entitled of the Harvard School of Medicine.
Hearing an extremely strong sound, as an explosion, even once once, can cause permanent auditory injuries. But hearing loss is more often the result of a “cumulative exposure that you will notice later in life,” added Abdul-Aziz.
The concerts are an obvious culprit, but you can also lose audition after years of seeing fireworks, handling noisy machinery, attending exercise classes with strident music or using headphones at full volume.
Repeated exhibition to sounds from some 85 decibels (such as the one who makes an electric tool) can potentially damage your audition, according to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). Strong sounds can damage the numb cells of the inner ear that translate the sound into electrical signals that the brain can understand. Once those cilia are damaged, they do not grow again, experts said.
It may be difficult to know if your environment is loud enough to cause damage, but there are signs to pay attention to: if you have to shout to talk to someone who is a few meters away, your audition is likely to be in danger, according to the OSHA. Many cell phones and watches can also alert you if your environment reaches potentially harmful volumes, said Patricia Gaffney, president of the American Audiology Academy. The same goes for the volume of music in your headphones.
If noisy environments contribute to the environment of a space, you don’t have to avoid them completely. Instead, wear caps for the ears, said Abdul-Aziz.
“It’s the best thing you can do,” said Nandini Govil, a pediatric otolaryngologist at Children’s Healthcare in Atlanta and the University of Emory.
No: use swabs
You can feel the temptation to use cotton sticks to scratch a itching or take off your earwax. But resists that impulse.
The cutaneous ear cells are “almost like a conveyor belt,” said Francis: When new cutaneous cells grow, dead cells migrate to the outside and drag the earwax with them. Therefore, it is not usually necessary that you clean your ears yourself, and use a swab carries its risks.
These little cotton sticks can push the wax into the ear and cause its accumulation, Francis said. If a swab penetrates too much into the ear, it can pierce the eardrum and cause hearing loss, Govil said. And rarely, the force that is exerted by introducing the rod in the ear can dislocate the small bones behind the eardrum and that help transmit the sound through the ear, Abdul-Aziz said.
Cotton pieces can also stood inside the ear and obstruct the audition, Govil added.
If you still want to clean your ears, consider the possibility of rubbing a warm wipe on the outside without entering the auditory duct, said Frank Lin, a professor of otolaryngology at Johns Hopkins University. If you have accumulation in the duct and you do not have other hearing problems, you can buy drops to soften the earwax without a medical recipe and rinse the ear with warm water using a rubber pear syringe, Francis added.
Yes: Check your audition
In the same way you check the blood pressure once a year, Also consider the possibility of measuring audition at home or with a doctor regularly, said Lin.
It is easy for your audition to give you equal when it is a “black box” that you don’t know, he explained. But hearing tests give you a score. And when you see your audition made in a number, “it is very revealing,” he said. “The numbers do not lie.”
The World Health Organization recommends that adults from 50 years of age be tested every five years, until 64. Then, the tests can be done more often, each or three years.
No: Ignore auditory changes
If you experience sudden hearing loss in one or both ears, Tract it as a medical emergency and go to an otolaryngologist or audiologist before 72 hours have passedsaid Gaffney.
Sudden hearing loss is usually being managed by “a lot of steroids,” he explained, but the more expects, the less effective they will be.
“Some people think when they have sudden loss of hearing: ‘Well, I’ll wait to see if it improves,” Gaffney said. But “you have the time counted.”