Erin Nolan, a Navy veteran, says her chronic tinnitus is especially upsetting when her young children are speaking to her but she can’t process what they’re saying because the tinnitus is drawing all her focus. “I worry they think that Mommy doesn’t care because she isn’t listening,” she says.
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New HHF Videos Feature Powerful Interviews About Hearing Loss and Tinnitus Coinciding with October’s National Protect Your Hearing Month and as part of Hearing Health Foundation’s “Keep Listening” prevention campaign, HHF is rolling out a new video series that presents the stories of people from all walks of life and their challenges with noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) and tinnitus. These include sometimes heartbreaking accounts by individuals whose lives have been upended by NIHL and tinnitus and regrets about how easily they could have protected their hearing—had they fully realized the risk to their ears. “Keep Listening” aims to kick off a major culture shift so that everyone will protect their hearing in the same way we all now routinely protect our skin from harmful rays and our lungs from cigarette smoke. The stories underscore the message that we can all avoid hearing loss from noise—and the brain, heart, and mental problems that can come with it—through simple precautions like wearing earplugs in noisy places and turning down the volume on headphones. For those of us already coping with hearing loss or tinnitus, we also need to protect our hearing from further damage from noise. Jon Barton is a Marine infantry veteran who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The pressure from a rocket propelled grenade aimed at a building where his team was bivouacked pierced his eardrum, and as a platoon
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commander he regularly rode in light armored vehicles that had very noisy turrets. Barton admits he did not realize that playing video games with the volume turned up on his headphones—one of the ways he and his buddies relax—is potentially worsening his hearing loss and tinnitus. A fellow veteran, Erin Nolan, describes how her chronic tinnitus diverts her focus from her young children, which she fears her children may interpret as inattention. Daniel Rivera, a structural engineer, describes his emotional turmoil caused by debilitating tinnitus, which developed after attending an all-day concert where he stood close to the speakers. Rivera says he now sees that his hearing may have already been impaired because he listened to music on headphones, loudly, in grad school to tune out ambient noises when studying. This may have primed his ears to be further damaged at the concert. The video series was shot in Los Angeles in late August by the multimedia production company PICROW, which produced the Emmy award–winning TV series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Modern Love,” “Transparent,” and “Goliath.” Director Peter Lang has helmed many film and video projects including health content for USAA, MassMutual, Thomson Reuters, and RWJBarnabas Health. The video series will be released over the course of October at hhf.org/keeplistening.
