Hearing Specialist Advice on Protecting Your Hearing
SoundLife Hearing Technologies offers a variety of different hearing aids and solutions for hearing impairments. Our hearing specialists are professionally trained and experienced in diagnosing hearing issues and finding the right technology to suit the right customer. However, our hearing specialists also care about hearing loss prevention.
There are a surprising number of factors you’re exposed to daily that can subtly and gradually damage your hearing, and there are measures you can take to protect it. In this blog, one of our hearing specialists gives you some on how to protect your hearing.
Earplugs and Ear Guards
Most people tend to associate using earplugs and other similar equipment with extremely loud environments like construction sites. In reality, many of the activities we undertake involve excessive levels of noise that can impact our hearing over time. How many of us have been to a club or a live event and found ourselves wincing at the sheer volume of everything going on?
These kind of situations are common, but using earplugs to protect your hearing isn’t. Many people will go into extremely loud environments without thinking about the risks of hearing loss. Fortunately, you can find a plethora of different products for hearing protection for a pretty low price. Low profile, silicone earplugs that are filtered to allow you to still hear while also protecting you from excessive noise have become more common in recent years.
However, any hearing specialist will advise you to be careful with these products. Make sure you can safely and easily insert and remove them from your ears, and avoid wearing them too often or for too long. You should also avoid using them when undertaking tasks that need your full attention, such as driving.
Headphones and Excessive Volume
Take a look around anywhere with more than a handful of people and you’ll likely see a decent number with headphones on or in their ears, connected directly into their smartphone. With the use of smartphones in almost every daily activity, headphone and earphone use has become ubiquitous.
Unfortunately, so have the side effects from listening at excessively loud volumes. While headphones and earphones themselves aren’t specifically the problem, people not thinking about just how loud they listen to them definitely is. How many times have you been able to hear the music from the ear buds of the person next to you? Listening at that kind of volume causes irreparable hearing damage.
Our advice is to keep your music, movies or podcasts at a lower level. Paying a little more for better headphones that allow you to hear more clearly at lower levels may well be worth it if you think long-term.
Q-Tips and Keeping Your Ears Clean
When it comes to keeping your ears clean, plenty of people still subscribe to the old method of sticking a Q-tip into their ear canal to dig out the wax. While your parents or grandparents may have insisted you needed to, any hearing specialist will tell you the exact opposite.
Cleaning out your ears using a Q-tip is a terrible idea, and often leads to painful, permanent damage. Typically, your ears do a good job of keeping themselves clean. In fact, the wax is there to protect your inner ear from damage and contaminants. If you do have excessive wax buildup, which can cause hearing problems, then contact a hearing professional for advice.
Regular Professional Check-Ups
Speaking of professionals, one of the best ways to protect your hearing from damage is to take care of it. Along with blocking out excessive noise, listening to headphones at lower volumes and not obsessively cleaning out your inner-ears, regular visits to a hearing specialist are a great way to monitor and maintain hearing health.
Contact A Hearing Specialist
Hopefully, these tips can help you alleviate some of the daily stress your ears come under, and help you to prolong the health of your hearing. If you are experiencing issues, you can get in touch with SoundLife Hearing Technologies to speak to a hearing specialist today. We’re here to help, and we’ll work with you to find the best solution for you.