Whether you have an I Phone or Bluetooth or other fancy phone, you can download a decibel reader or a sound level meter, usually free. PLEASE do this. And please have your friends and relatives do this too.
Why? I am an Ear Nose Throat specialist. I treat hearing loss and tinnitus.
Jessica, a curly blond age seven came to see me. She has lost hearing. Why? When she was five, at a wedding, they plunked her in front of the eight-foot speakers. Those speakers put out enough energy to fry eggs. They fried her ear. If her dad or relative had used a sound meter he would have realized that the sound level was way too loud.
Fred, age 19, came to see me. He has tinnitus. Tinnitus is a subjective sound that only he can hear. This sound interferes with his thinking and his sleep and he may flunk out of college. He just loved to play his 3,000 dollar sound system loud enough to feel the music, feel the house shake. Without a decibel meter, he played too loud and now he has tinnitus and hearing loss.
You could buy a very accurate scientific sound meter, but you probably wouldn’t have it with you when you needed it. Wouldn’t look good carrying it into church or the wedding. But with a sound meter on your smart phone, you have this available any time to measure sound volume and take steps to save your hearing. The ones you can put on your smart phone are fine for this.
The number of persons losing hearing and getting tinnitus is rising in our culture. A great deal of the hearing loss and tinnitus comes from recreational noise that could have been prevented. With a sound meter, you know when the noise is dangerously loud.
Jim Taylor came to see me. He complained that after he used his diesel lawnmower he had difficulty hearing for a while. I had him download a sound level meter on his I phone while he was in my office. Once he realized how loud the machine was, he did get custom made earplugs made and wears them when his meter says 90 decibels.
Phillip Lopez works in a bank and developed hearing loss from noise. He loves his home workshop. He used glasses to protect his eyes. Now he uses the sound meter to know when the machinery is too loud and he must use protection.
A decibel is a standard unit of sound. You can work safely for eight hours at 80-85 decibels. Loud conversation is about 40-60 decibels. You can think of a decibel meter on your smart phone as a biofeedback device: the sound meter feeds back to you when the sound is too loud. There are other factors to consider. The length of time you are exposed to sound, how close you are to the sound, the state of your health, etc. Getting the sound reading is the important step.
When sound is too loud, the excess vibration can damage delicate cilia of the inner ear. When those cilia are broken, they do not repair.
Noise exposure can be a cause of hearing loss, tinnitus, high blood pressure, and heart complications. Once you have your sound meter, you can avoid these problems.
There is a condition called presbycusis. Persons may lose hearing with age. Sometimes they get tinnitus with that loss. Any hearing loss will be added to that age loss of hearing. In test animals, we find we can avoid the hearing loss of aging with certain antioxidant products and we use these today for presbycusis. Certainly, avoiding excessive noise will reduce hearing of aging.
If you know you are in noise you can take steps to protect your hearing. People work around jet engines that produce 150 decibels of sound. Yet they protect their ears with special earmuffs and do well.
But a usual problem is that the jackhammer operator is wearing ear protection because the jackhammer produces 100 decibels of noise. But his assistant standing near by isn’t using protection. Sometimes you get accustomed to the loud sound and are not aware that it is at a dangerous 100-decibel level. I no longer visit the restaurant where the sound level averaged 98 decibels.
It should be clear that if everyone has a decibel meter on his or her phone, then they can read the loudness and take steps to reduce or avoid dangerous sound levels. Prevention of hearing loss is best.
Jasmine K, age 29 was seen in my office for Tinnitus which she developed by attending Rock Concerts and sitting in front of speakers without ear protection. Once she got her sound level meter on her cell phone, she could record the degree of sound and move away from the speakers to a safer place.
Now you understand that millions of persons could have saved their hearing if they had had a decibel meter on their cell phone! We are speaking here of MILLIONS of people; and you can download that meter for free from many smart phone applications.
Unfortunately once someone has a hearing loss it is not possible—yet—to restore hearing. What is important is to save what hearing is left. Certain enzymes and antioxidants are important for this.
What is tinnitus? Tinnitus is a condition where you hear a sound but it is not from outside the head. It is being generated inside your head either in the ear, the nerve or the brain. There is no objective way to measure or detect Tinnitus. 50 million persons have Tinnitus, and ten million have symptoms due to tinnitus.
We are born with a defense system. When our ancestors would hear a noise outside the cave, it probably was a tiger and so the survival mechanism was to fight or flee. It was dark so they depended on sound to identify a danger. Persons who react to their tinnitus as though it were a tiger get relief when the body accepts that this is not a tiger.
Why do we get tinnitus with sound trauma? One theory is that the brain is aware of not receiving certain sounds due to hearing loss, so it generates that sound to make up for the missing sound. We treat tinnitus by supplying the nutrients that aid the total hearing system including the ear, nerve, midbrain and brain. There are excellent therapies for tinnitus available today.
- Please make sure your other family members do this too. My patients are installing decibel meters in their children’s phones and this will certainly help the next generation.
