How To Protect Your Hearing

Health & Medical Blog

If you listen to your headphones at full-blast or are constantly around loud noises, you are at risk of losing your hearing aid. In order to avoid hearing loss, follow these important hearing protection tips:

Reduce Headphone Use

Research now proves that listening to headphones can be damaging to your ears. In fact, it is one of the leading causes of hearing loss for children and teens. Not only does the volume of the audio coming out of the headphones matter, but so does the duration.

If you have teens that listen to music loudly with their earbuds, encourage them to at least lower the volume, but also take them out and listen to the music straight out the device. Some newer devices might also have programming that keeps the volume at a certain level.

Avoid Noise Exposure

If you are around loud noises for prolonged periods of time, make sure you protect your ears with earplugs. This can be anything from a car race where you hear the car's loud engines for three hours straight, to living near a restaurant where a lot of bikers ride their motorcycles by your house constantly.

Earplugs are inexpensive and easy to find at any drug store. Put them in your ears when you are going to be around loud noises, especially for long periods of time. If you are at home when these noises occur, you can also wear noise-cancelling headphones.

Wear Ear Protection at Work

Many occupations require you to be around loud noises for the majority of the day. Make sure your employer provides you with good ear protection. You are at risk for premature hearing loss if you are exposed to loud noises in a factory, on construction sites, in the military, while working as a trucker, or if you work in the mining, farming, firefighting, or entertainment industries. There are different forms of ear protection for these types of occupations depending on the types of noises you are exposed to.

Get Regular Ear Check-Ups

An audiologist is able to look for early warning signs of hearing loss, possible saving your hearing. Make sure you have a regular hearing check-up where they can look inside your ears and perform various hearing tests. If your hearing is starting to wane, they will provide recommendations for how to prevent further hearing loss. They can also provide hearing aids to help improve your lost hearing.

To learn more, contact a company such as Otolaryngology Plastic Surgery Associates PC with any questions you have.

Share

3 June 2015

why is an optometrist visit necessary?

When was the last time you went to an optometrist? If you are like most people, you only go when your glasses break or you run out of contact lenses. Very few people actually follow the guidelines of having their eyes checked each year. Not sure why it is necessary to visit your optometrist each year? You can learn all about the different exams and tests that your optometrist runs and why they are done. Knowing what can go wrong with your eyes and what can be done if the ailments are detected early could help to encourage you to get to the optometrist more often.