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.
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 …
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.
I remember on one show he said that having a CI helped him out in some ways since he was able to "plug" directly into whatever audio he was trying to listen to.
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.
Hi, Refenestrated, has your ENT mentioned reflux to you? Mine is considered “occult” because I don’t have symptoms of discomfort, but it has affected my Eustachian tubes, which were already compromised, by affecting the pressure relationships--an insight developed by Italian drs. One of his recommendations is to eat very lightly in the evening--no protein or fat--and when I follow it, it really makes a difference.
Hi Anne -- my ENT didn’t bring up reflux as best as I can recall (it’s been about three years since I last saw him) but I have, in my sometimes obsessive research on the topic, read that it can be a cause of ETD. I used to wake up often in the middle of the night with reflux symptoms like heartburn, and after I read that, I started taking a Pepcid every night when I go to bed. I no longer wake up with heartburn but it hasn’t made a dent in the ETD. The only thing I’ve tried that helped at all was having the balloon dilation procedure during the summer of 2020; it worked great, but unfortunately only for a month or so, after which the ETD redeveloped and has persisted since.
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.
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".
Hmm a natural experiment suggests itself: comparing hearing loss at those frequencies between gun cultures; non-gun cultures; and those that were once gun cultures and have gone anti-gun with blanket banning recently.
I was reading about an admiral just prior to going into action putting RN-issued glass earplugs in in WWI; this is really a thing we knew about and should have acted on yonks ago. To be clear I'm NOT advocating banning guns AT ALL. This is the usual 'Being stupid in positions where you know better and are high enough up to do something positive about it' nonsense that plagues modernity.
Speaking of the Navy; there are three materials under the description "Asbestos", only one of them is actually dangerous. In WWII we treated warships with the dangerous kind and merchant ships with the safe. We are very nonchalent about those we send in harms way for the common good.
I’m sure there’s a study somewhere out there, but it would be hard to know if it has useful data or not.
I don’t go out to bars or concerts, so guns are usually the loudest activity I do.
To their credit in WW2 and onwards, infantryman usually haven’t worn earpro in a combat environment because it would decrease their situational awareness. That’s starting to change now with technology like noice cancelling earmuffs above a certain decibel level and the application of suppressors on standard issue rifles.
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. 🙄
I just put "liked" with a "heart" b/c it was the only acknowledgement available, but I'd have put "sad" if that were available. Because it *is* plenty sad.
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
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.
"..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? ☺
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.
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.
It's testing a hearing aid, not a potential cure. At the rate my hearing is diminishing, I will need cochlear implants in about 10 years.
Maybe so, but if it helps, that's helpful. I hope it goes well.
I recall now that when I quit dairy in my teens I had a loooong stretch without any ear issues!
I'm going to think about that. Thanks for posting.
I misspoke myself. That was wheat-consumption, not dairy.
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 …
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.
This is so true. I've pretended to catch what someone said to avoid annoying then with a third "what?" On approximately eleventy-nine occasions.
I have, too, nodding and smiling and not knowing what was going on. Thanks for admitting that (literally "encouraging" me to do so, too).
The Late Great Rush. I still miss that man.
I remember on one show he said that having a CI helped him out in some ways since he was able to "plug" directly into whatever audio he was trying to listen to.
Yes. My hearing aids are Bluetooth enabled. Best thing ever.
Thank you for that helpful information.
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.
DAAAAAMN.
Hi, Refenestrated, has your ENT mentioned reflux to you? Mine is considered “occult” because I don’t have symptoms of discomfort, but it has affected my Eustachian tubes, which were already compromised, by affecting the pressure relationships--an insight developed by Italian drs. One of his recommendations is to eat very lightly in the evening--no protein or fat--and when I follow it, it really makes a difference.
Hi Anne -- my ENT didn’t bring up reflux as best as I can recall (it’s been about three years since I last saw him) but I have, in my sometimes obsessive research on the topic, read that it can be a cause of ETD. I used to wake up often in the middle of the night with reflux symptoms like heartburn, and after I read that, I started taking a Pepcid every night when I go to bed. I no longer wake up with heartburn but it hasn’t made a dent in the ETD. The only thing I’ve tried that helped at all was having the balloon dilation procedure during the summer of 2020; it worked great, but unfortunately only for a month or so, after which the ETD redeveloped and has persisted since.
Thanks you two; you connected some dots I'd missed. I'll be making a doctors appointment tomorrow. Cheers Anne and R.
Thanks you two; you connected some dots I'd missed. I'll be making a doctors appointment tomorrow. Cheers Anne and R.
Thank you, Holly. I remember our high school cafeteria being brutally loud. Hard to shield the kids from experiencing that every day.
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.
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".
Hmm a natural experiment suggests itself: comparing hearing loss at those frequencies between gun cultures; non-gun cultures; and those that were once gun cultures and have gone anti-gun with blanket banning recently.
I was reading about an admiral just prior to going into action putting RN-issued glass earplugs in in WWI; this is really a thing we knew about and should have acted on yonks ago. To be clear I'm NOT advocating banning guns AT ALL. This is the usual 'Being stupid in positions where you know better and are high enough up to do something positive about it' nonsense that plagues modernity.
Speaking of the Navy; there are three materials under the description "Asbestos", only one of them is actually dangerous. In WWII we treated warships with the dangerous kind and merchant ships with the safe. We are very nonchalent about those we send in harms way for the common good.
I’m sure there’s a study somewhere out there, but it would be hard to know if it has useful data or not.
I don’t go out to bars or concerts, so guns are usually the loudest activity I do.
To their credit in WW2 and onwards, infantryman usually haven’t worn earpro in a combat environment because it would decrease their situational awareness. That’s starting to change now with technology like noice cancelling earmuffs above a certain decibel level and the application of suppressors on standard issue rifles.
I should clarify that applying suppressors is more for tactical reasons than for long term health concerns.
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. 🙄
I have no idea where that misconception comes from, but it's pervasive. And false. When hearing is gone, it's gone.
I just put "liked" with a "heart" b/c it was the only acknowledgement available, but I'd have put "sad" if that were available. Because it *is* plenty sad.
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
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.
"..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? ☺
This and the following comments were super-helpful to me, Holly! Thank you loads.
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.
So true.
Indeed. Fuck The Media. 🤪