5 Great Ways to Lose Your Hearing Obviously, no one actually wants to lose their ability to hear sounds. There’s nothing quite like listening to a bird chirping, a person talking, or observing absolute silence in the middle of nowhere. You don’t often learn to appreciate it until the ability is gone. How often do you stop to listen to a bird sing, or your child talking? How often do you kneel down at night and pour out thanks to Heaven for your ability to hear the sounds around you? If you’re anything like everyone else, it is a very rare experience indeed. It’s easy to forget that you even hear. Sometimes you’ll wish you couldn’t as your boss, customer, or neighbor start chewing you out for something that was or was not your fault. How blissful would it be to put your fingers in your ears and block them out for a moment? There is a time and a place for it, but you likely wouldn’t want to lose your hearing forever. If all goes well, you’ll never have to know what it’s like to lose it forever. Life will go on; you will be able to hear everything for the rest of your life. This is not a guaranteed way to end the story though, especially with the modern technology and practices that reduce your ability to hear on a daily basis. You’d be surprised what kinds of things do you more damage than good.
How to Lose the Gift of Hearing without Even Trying First, nearly all factors influencing the loss of hearing are caused by being around loud noises consistently for long periods of time. Putting your ear next to a forty foot speaker blasting full volume every day for a year will make you deaf in no time. You can achieve the same effect by being around consistent loud noises over a twenty year career without protection. Working the jack hammer or playing in a band for a career without any kind of protection will have a devastating effect on your ear drums. Second, headphones also have the same effect. True, modern technology has made it possible to blast the music without disturbing anyone around you, but that doesn’t mean that your body likes it all. Try lowering the volume of your music by about 20% to 30% and see if you can still hear the music. If you can, then try keeping it at that volume to save yourself damage.
Once you get used to that volume, lower it again by the same amount; rinse and repeat until you find a volume that works, but doesn’t hurt. Driving with the top down can hurt you as well. Third, consistently cruising with the top down is a loud experience. The wind in your ears, the sounds of the road and other traffic can often exceed the minimum amount of decibels required to damage your hearing. Put your windows up to reduce some of that sound and try not to drive on the highway with the top down to help your hearing. Also consider putting in some light weight ear plugs. Fourth, when you intake too many sugary treats you increase your risk for diabetes. Diabetes has been found to unbalance the nutrients needed to sustain good hearing. Finally, smoking badly affects the amount of oxygenated blood flow. You need this to sustain good hearing your entire life. The longer you smoke, the worse it hurts your ears. A captioned telephone and other like technologies can certainly aid you should you experience bad hearing loss. Do you really want to have to rely on a captioned telephone when you could be hearing properly though? Consider that every time you turn the music up, drive with the top down or take an extra puff.