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Please let us know how your testing-out goes. Someone here discovered, by accident, that her hearing-aid-qualified deafness pretty much abated when she eliminated dairy consumption (despite being in a known several-generational paternal hard-of-hearing line). I'm sorry you've had to go through all of that, Holly, and hope what you're testing, or something else, helps resolve the problem.

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May 31, 2023Liked by Holly MathNerd

That was fascinating, especially since I’m still new at being hearing-impaired. All my life I’ve avoided gunfire, explosions, and rock concerts (different facets of the same thing, IMHO), so I've wondered what happened.

I guess being white isn’t quite as supreme as it’s made out to be …

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May 31, 2023Liked by Holly MathNerd

A lot of ground covered there. Rush Limbaugh, who had a cochlear implant, used to say deafness was the only disability that people got mad at you for.

And on the bright side, my son insisted on wearing hearing protection to his prom this year. Last year he had a really hard time with audio overstimulation. I warned him people might think it’s dorky, but whatever.

Well, the reaction was the opposite. His date, and a few other people, thought it was brilliant and they should have done the same.

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May 31, 2023Liked by Holly MathNerd

Thanks for this, Holly. As someone who has gradually degraded my own hearing over the last 35 years or so by listening to thrash metal at top volume (either with headphones or in the car) prior to sports or while working out, I can vouch for accumulated noise damage. I had no idea that age-related hearing loss might not be real though -- I always just assumed it was a given.

I accidentally discovered another way to reduce hearing a few years ago, so I thought I'd share it as a cautionary example since it's relatively on-topic. I've had pretty constant, very annoying Eustachian tube dysfunction for several years now, and one of the things my ENT doctor tried as a potential fix was to insert a tympanostomy tube in one of my ears (if it had worked, he'd have put one in the other ear as well). It didn't help, but the incision got infected and resulted in some uncomfortable fluid buildup. It was irritating enough that I finally tried applying a few swimmer's ear drops to try to dry up the fluid. Some portion of the ear drops naturally went through the tube, and when the liquid reached my inner ear, it felt like a white-hot metal wire had touched my cochlear nerve. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life and it took several minutes for the burning sensation to start calming down, during which time I was in a state of near-panic. Once the pain had mostly subsided, I noticed that my hearing in that ear was maybe half what it had been. It very slowly restored itself over the next year and a half or so, but for most of that time, anytime I was driving and someone was in the passenger seat next to me, I had to ask him/her to repeat virtually everything s/he said. I assume the alcohol or some other ingredient in the ear drops damaged the cochlear nerve in that ear and that it simply takes a long time for that kind of damage to properly regenerate & heal.

TL;DR summary: don't use swimmer's ear drops if you have tubes in your ears. It will hurt like hell and it'll be a while before you hear well again.

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May 31, 2023Liked by Holly MathNerd

Thank you, Holly. I remember our high school cafeteria being brutally loud. Hard to shield the kids from experiencing that every day.

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I used to work as a live sound engineer mixing concerts. It amazes me how cavalier the attitudes in the industry are toward hearing safety. It's insane how loud many concerts and other events are. I'm not normally a fan of regulation but it's pretty clear to me that the USA needs more safety regulations around the level of amplified sound at events.

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May 31, 2023Liked by Holly MathNerd

I've been in audio tests where the lady giving the test observes that I've obviously been around gunfire since I can't hear certain frequencies.

That's partly due to my first deployment (I was around an artillery battery) and partly because I shoot without ear-pro in every once in a blue moon (my profile pic is me shooting an M1 Garand without ear-pro). My reasoning is that if you want train as realistically as possible, then you should be familiar with how the gun is going to sound (if you have to pull out a piece and use it in a self-defense scenario, I highly doubt you'll happen to have ear-pro in).

The last time I did that, though, I stepped inside and I noticed (not for the first time) that music in particular sounds warbly and distorted after doing that. It was Boccherini's "La Musica Notturna delle Strade di Madrid", a piece of music I love, and I remember thinking, "man, I gotta cut this shit out".

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May 31, 2023Liked by Holly MathNerd

I opened this up at the ENT’s office waiting for the audiologist to test my hearing. I’ve had chronic ear problems since I was a baby chalked up to anatomy and now I’ll add fair skin to the causative factors. Today I officially qualify for hearing aids! Now if I can only convince my husband, who’s just as fair-skinned and an Army vet to boot, that hearing aids don’t or won’t take away your ability to hear. 🙄

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Given that almost every (former) longish service infantry soldier I know has right ear hearing loss and every artilleryman hearing loss in both it certainly makes sense that repeated abuse is one of the causes. And that therefore reduced abuse makes it better

There is another thing that impacts hearing in old people, earwax buildup. Many elderly people (such as my father) seem to have chronic earwax buildup that needs periodic attention to dewax. When the wax has built up they are very very deaf but because it tends to be a gradual thing they often don't seem to notice

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Holly - I hope everyone appreciates your "public service" announcements and more especially your offers to step up for people who need extra help to implement them, whether it's a complimentary subscription, math help, or assistance in setting the controls on a device, your offers are generous in giving your time, skills and resources.

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Jun 1, 2023·edited Jun 1, 2023

"..you owe it to [your children] to protect them from their own stupidity..." Obviously true but still a hilarious collection of words. Likely because it explains the human condition. Every day is a fight against my own stupidity. I know I'm not the only one.

Re: activism, when you still used Twitter you once got into it with one of those types who you suspected might be, let's say, equivocating about being deaf. You said there were linguistic tells that informed your suspicion and I asked what those tells were. You said to remind you to write something about it later. I feel guilty about merely reminding but it would be interesting to learn about some time. Or perhaps they fit in a comment? ☺

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This and the following comments were super-helpful to me, Holly! Thank you loads.

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Fascinating read, Holly. Thank you for the advice too.

Has anybody else noticed how poor the acoustics are in many buildings too, especially the cheaper commercial ones? On top of that, there tends to be a good deal of human activity inside and often loud music.

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So true.

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Indeed. Fuck The Media. 🤪

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