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How many people do you see wearing earbuds on a daily basis? Well, the more you wear them, the more likely you are to experience hearing damage.
Doctors are now saying that the biggest cause of hearing loss is these headphones. Because they go in the ears, your ears can experience 120 decibels or higher of pressure for several hours.
Turning up in-ear headphones to full volume for just fifteen minutes can be considered harmful.
One doctor says that “You once had a Walkman with two AA batteries and headphones that went over your ears. At high volume, the sound was so distorted and the battery life was poor. Nowadays, we have smart phones that are extremely complex computers with high-level fidelity.”
How does this happen? Sound travels from the earbud to the cochlea, which is responsible for transmitting sounds to the brain. There are some 20,000 hair cells there, and turning up your earbuds too loud for too long can damage or even kill them.
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Even worse, one new study discovered that nerve synapses can be even more likely to be damaged than hair cells, which accelerates their hearing loss.
The problem with this early hearing damage Is that most of it will go away within a few hours, and won’t obviously come back until later in life.
This ie especially true in the millennial demographic, which is seeing higher and higher rates of hearing loss and tinnitus. However, they’re not finding this hearing loss until they hit their twenties and thirties, which some millennials have now.
What’s the best way to protect against hearing loss? Doctors recommend the 60/60 rule, which means keeping the volume on your earbuds under 60 percent for a maximum of 60 minutes per day.
