The Danger From Noise When It Is Actually Music

By Yishane Lee

Les Paul Ambassador

John Colianni

Noise-induced hearing loss affects anyone exposed to very loud or chronic noise. It doesn’t matter if the “noise” is actually music. It has been estimated that up to half of classical orchestral musicians have hearing loss because of their work in music, practicing or performing up to eight hours a day. Sound levels onstage, no matter the music genre, can reach up to 110 decibels (dB), although it is not usually continuous. That is equivalent to a jackhammer—even if there’s a melody behind it.

Researchers at the Nofer Institute of Occupational Medicine in Poland measured the exposure for classical musicians as 81 to 90 dBA (A-weighted decibels, a unit of measure for how humans perceive sound) for 20 to 45 hours a week. In their study published in the International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics, they estimated that this exposure over the course of a career increases the risk of a hearing loss of 35 dB by 26 percent. At the greatest risk for hearing loss are those in the brass section—horn, trumpet, tuba—as well as those playing percussion, the study found.

Prolonged exposure at 85 dB (the sound of heavy traffic) will permanently damage the delicate hair cells of the inner ear, leading to hearing loss. Tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, is another potential problem. Roughly 90 percent of tinnitus cases occur with an underlying hearing loss.

Not surprisingly, rock and jazz musicians are not immune. Indeed, there are a number of well-known rock and pop musicians who have publicly discussed their hearing loss and/or tinnitus, among them Sting, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Phil Collins, and Will.i.am.

But hearing loss due to noise (or music) is completely preventable. A related study by the Polish scientists determined that brass players benefitted the most from the use of custom-molded, silicone earplugs with acoustic filters that reduced sound levels. Woodwind, percussion, and string players also benefited.

In 2013, the Les Paul Foundation and HHF teamed up to launch the Les Paul Ambassadors program. Guitar great Les Paul was determined to find a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus, and through his foundation’s support of HHF’s Hearing Restoration Project, an international research consortium of top hearing scientists, we have the opportunity to find a cure. Learn about the program and the first Ambassador, Lou Pallo, as well as our other Ambassadors saxophonist Chris Potter and jazz pianist John Colianni.

Learn more about NIHL and its risk factors, treatment, and prevention in our new Summer issue of Hearing Health magazine.

Protect Your Ears This July 4!

By Tara Guastella

The Fourth of July is a great time for barbecues, trips to the beach, and spending time with friends and family. But fireworks and firecrackers, ubiquitous to many Independence Day celebrations, not only are a potential fire hazard, they also can do permanent damage to one's ears.

These beautiful spectacles measure between 140 and 165 decibels. This means that even one minute of exposure to them can cause immediate, permanent hearing loss.  

When exposed to sounds that are too loud or loud sounds that last a long time, such as a fireworks display, delicate cells in our inner ear can be damaged, causing noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). These sensory hair cells in the inner ear convert sound energy into electrical signals that travel to the brain. Once damaged, our hair cells cannot grow back.

While you're enjoying summertime get-togethers, remember to pack ear protection, such as earplugs or earmuffs, and don't forget a pair for the kids! Also remember to Walk, Block, and Turn:

Walk away from loud sounds.

Block loud sounds with ear protection.

Turn the volume down (when you can control it).

Learn more about how loud is too loud today.

We wish you and your family a happy, healthy, and safe Fourth of July holiday!

Stay tuned for more about NIHL—its symptoms, prevention, treatment, and related conditions such as tinnitus—in the upcoming Summer issue of Hearing Health magazine. Get a free subscription by signing up here. We also wish to salute and thank our military service members, who are disproportionately affected by hearing loss and tinnitus as a result of their service, on this American holiday.

This Memorial Day, We Honor Our Veterans Who Disproportionately Suffer from Hearing Loss & Tinnitus

By Tara Guastella

In early May, I attended the Classy awards collaborative weekend in San Diego, where hundreds of people making a difference in the nonprofit sector came together to find ways to innovate and collaborate. During one of the sessions, I learned of a startling statistic: 22 veterans commit suicide each day.

When I heard this, the first thing that popped into my mind was the fact that 60 percent of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have hearing loss or tinnitus. These conditions have consistently been the top two health complaints at Veteran Affairs Medical Centers. Hearing loss is also linked to higher rates of depression.

Since hearing problems are so prevalent among military service members, as are such mental health concerns as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, I began to wonder what services are provided to veterans to help them adjust. I soon learned that organizations like the Easter Seals Dixon Center (whom I met at the Classy awards weekend) are building collaborative networks in local communities to provide a holistic approach to veteran care.

The Dixon Center has built a network of more than 20,000 organizations and like-minded individuals, serving over 560 communities. They help communities identify and mobilize direct services to support educational and employment opportunities alongside services for healthcare, legal and financial advice, and housing. I was happy to learn that they are actively working to meet the everyday needs of veterans and their families while also anticipating their future needs.

To help veterans cope with hearing issues, we launched a veterans resource center earlier this year. We highlight various treatments for tinnitus that are being clinically tested as well as the promise of a cure for everyone with hearing loss and tinnitus, including veterans, through our Hearing Restoration Project consortium. You’ll find profiles of several veterans impacted by hearing loss and tinnitus while serving overseas, and you too can share your experience with us. We also have a page dedicated to resources where veterans can find additional hearing and health-related support. The upcoming summer issue of Hearing Health magazine will focus specifically on noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus, highlighting these health issues in the military.

With providing continued support to our veteran community, I hope to learn that the suicide rates decrease in years to come.

Since these brave men and women are disproportionately impacted by hearing problems, which likely impacts many other aspects of their lives, the team at HHF wishes to honor all of our veterans this Memorial Day.

Help Mom Hear Better This Mother's Day

By Yishane Lee

Give the gift of hearing this Mother’s Day by taking your mom to get a hearing screening, and getting one yourself. One in five adults has a hearing loss—including adolescents—and the rate increases with age, with one in three seniors experiencing a hearing loss. But the average time between being diagnosed with a hearing loss and getting a hearing aid is seven years. That’s a long time to miss parts of conversations, misunderstand television dialogue, or be unable to fully enjoy a family gathering.

Now a new study puts more urgency into the need to check hearing. Researchers from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) found a link between hearing loss and an increased risk of depression and published the results in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery. The scientists examined data for 18,000 people and found that a decline in hearing more than doubled the risk for depression when compared with those who said they had excellent hearing.

Women ages 70 and older were particularly susceptible to depression with even a moderate hearing loss of 35 to 50 decibels. And when every level of hearing loss was considered, 14.7 percent of women of all ages were more likely to feel sad and depressed, compared with 9 percent of men with any degree hearing loss. The link between depression and hearing loss remained even when the researchers controlled for factors such as vision problems.

The NIDCD study underscores the importance of getting your hearing checked and treated, and of getting treated for depression as well in the event of a diagnosed hearing loss. However, and unfortunately, the researchers also found that depression was higher among those using hearing aids.

Don’t leave your mom out of the conversation. Book a hearing screening for both of you in honor of Mother’s Day. She’ll thank you, we promise!

Learn more about finding the right hearing health professional and taking care of your ears from the Spring issue of Hearing Health magazine:

• How to Find the Right Hearing Healthcare Professional for You

• All in Stride: Getting a Hearing Aid Was a Straightforward Shift for This Mother of Two

• How to Get the Most Out of Your Hearing Aids

• Hearing Loss and Brain Size

Surprising Facts About the Five Senses

By Tamara Keeney, EarQ, Guest Blogger

I used to think I knew a lot about the five senses. When I’m writing, I often use a person’s senses and incorporate different hypothetical situations to connect with a reader. After all, isn’t that something that everyone has in common? After doing some research on how the sense of hearing actually works, I realized that I didn’t really know much outside of my own perception. My technical knowledge was certainly lacking, so I decided that a blog post on surprising facts about the five senses would be a fun way to share what I had learned. Here are some of the “sensible facts” that I learned:

• Do you remember all those times the doctor told you not to use cotton swabs to clean earwax from your ear canals? Not only is there a danger of puncturing the eardrum, but there are cilia in the canal that push earwax out naturally, so there’s no need to use cotton swabs!

• People have admired the ear for centuries; ear piercing is one of the earliest known forms of body modification.

• The only senses that are types of mechanosensation are hearing and touch.

• The catfish has somewhere around 100,000 taste buds.

• Grizzly bears are able to smell food from a whopping 18 miles away!

• The purpose of whiskers is still being researched and discovered, but among the known purposes are water current detection and texture discrimination.

• On average, by the time a person reaches age 20, half of his or her taste receptors are gone.

Our senses allow us to experience the world around us and understand it in ways that let us interact uniquely with people, nature, and ourselves. There are so many different ways that humans and animals use their senses. It truly helps me to appreciate what my senses provide for me.

The original full list of surprising facts about the senses can be found here.

10 Fun Easter Facts From Our Mascot, the Baby Chick

By Tara Guastella

As you’ve seen on our previous blog posts, a baby chicken may hold the key to a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus. Chickens have the remarkable ability to restore their own hearing naturally by regrowing inner ear hair cells that, once they are damaged, lead to hearing loss.

In fact, most animals other than mammals can regenerate these delicate cells, regaining their hearing after the cells are damaged by noise, age, or ototoxic drugs. This is the basis for the work of our Hearing Restoration Project, which is aiming to translate this remarkable capacity to humans.

So with Easter right around the corner we thought our mascot, the baby chick, would provide you with 10 fun Easter facts:

1) Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Christ three days after his death. It is the oldest Christian holiday and the most important day of the church year.

2) Like rabbits and hares, eggs and chicks are often associated with Easter because, in pagan times, they were signs of fertility and new life.

3) After Halloween, Easter is the biggest candy-consuming holiday. About 120 million pounds of candy are bought each year, enough to fill four dump trucks.

4) Roughly 90 million chocolate bunnies, 91.4 billion eggs, and 700 million Peeps (sugar-coated marshmallow sweets) are produced each year in the United States.

5) About 76 percent of people eat the ears on chocolate bunnies first.

6) Half of the states in the United States have banned the practice of dyeing live chicks for Easter.

7) To help Americans in need, egg farmers across the country are donating more than 11 million eggs to food banks across the nation.

8) The White House hosts an Easter Egg Roll on its Front Lawn each year. This tradition was started by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878.

9) Like many holidays, Easter also has its own catchy tunes or carols such as “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” and “Easter Parade.”

10) Some 16 billion jelly beans are made specifically for Easter, which is enough to fill a plastic egg the size of a nine-story building.

If you celebrate Easter this coming Sunday and enjoy chick-shaped marshmallows or other fun Easter candy, remember that it is a little chick that is helping us to achieve the next great medical breakthrough: curing hearing loss and tinnitus.

Protect Your Ears (and Health) on St. Patrick's Day

By Yishane Lee

St. Patrick’s Day is a celebration of Ireland’s patron saint, who is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland. (The three-leaf clover is allegedly how he explained the Holy Trinity.) These days, the holiday is, for better or worse, associated with heavy drinking, and at the risk of dampening the festivities, we thought we should remind readers of the dangers of consuming excessive alcohol and hearing loss.

German researchers reported in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research that lifelong alcohol consumption damages the brain. Specifically, it leads to brain shrinkage. (Alzheimer’s disease has also been linked to brain tissue shrinkage.)

The disturbing news was that social drinkers with a lighter consumption of alcohol were just at risk as people who drank heavily, although more research is needed. To do their study, the scientists measured brain currents called brainstem auditory evoked potentials (BAEPs) to assess central auditory pathways in a group of 38 men who were undergoing tumor removal or plastic surgery.

Separately, a British report in the journal BMC Ear, Nose, and Throat Disorders found that drinking alcohol blunts lower frequencies—which happen to be the ones you need the most to understand speech.

Combine this with the difficulty people with hearing loss have mastering the “cocktail-party effect”—the ability to discern one person’s speech in the presence of a lot of background noise—and no wonder large, celebratory gatherings involving alcohol are a minefield for people with hearing loss as well as for those trying to protect their hearing. In other words, if you’re on your third or fourth Guinness and can’t understand the Irish bloke shouting about shamrocks (foreign accents are tricky, too!) in a crowded pub, have a tall glass of water next round.

There are yet more risks. Drinking alcohol also causes your blood vessels to expand. This puts you at risk for tinnitus. However, there has also been a hearing-protective effect ascribed to drinking red wine (or eating red grapes). This is due to the presence of resveratrol, a substance found in the skins of red grapes.

The bottom line? There’s no reason not to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a pint of Guinness, but as the saying goes, everything in moderation.

Catch the ReelAbilities Film Fest in New York City This Week

By Tara Guastella

The ReelAbilities Film Festival kicks off today in New York City and runs through next Tuesday. This is the largest film festival in the country—it includes films that are screened at more than a dozen locations across the U.S.—dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories, and artistic expressions of people with different disabilities.

Launched in 2007 in New York City, the festival presents award-winning films by and about people with disabilities in multiple locations throughout each hosting city. Post-screening discussions and other engaging programs bring together the community to explore, discuss, embrace, and celebrate the diversity of our shared human experience.

Festival highlights this year include Lindsey Dryden’s Lost and Sound, which follows three artists who lose their hearing and journey deep into sound and silence to rediscover music, and Sounds for Mazin, which chronicles how a 12-year-old boy with hearing loss looks forward to getting cochlear implants, but his friends make him second-guess the decision.

A special offer for friends of HHF - use code EFDHHF for $3 tickets to Lost and Sound at the JCC in Manhattan!

There are many additional films to enjoy: Check out the schedule for a complete listing and buy your tickets today.

If you’re not in the NYC area this weekend, don’t fret! The ReelAbilities Film Festival makes its way through many cities across the U.S., including Atlanta, Boston, Houston, the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington D.C., and many more. Find out more on the ReelAbilities website.

Congratulations to the First Deaf NFL Player to Play in the Super Bowl: Derrick Coleman!

By Tara Guastella

Hearing loss is sometimes considered an invisible disability. You usually can’t see hearing loss but the impact it has can be life-altering. Many even try to hide their hearing loss for fear of embarrassment. Others embrace it and do everything in their power to not let it hamper them. Seattle Seahawks fullback Derrick Coleman—who played in the Super Bowl Sunday—embraces it.

I was so moved when I first watched the Duracell commercial (below) that featured Coleman. Over the years at HHF we’ve been in touch with so many actors, sports stars, politicians, and other celebrities that are afraid of “coming out” about their hearing loss. But Coleman freely and openly talks about his hearing loss in a positive way.

Coleman, at the age of 23, broke the mold and has had an enormous impact on each and every person that experiences or knows someone who experiences hearing loss. He has become a role model for those young and old alike. He told the New York Times, “If you really want something, you find a way to make it happen.”

Coleman made it happen during last night’s game. And over the past few weeks he has made it happen for some of his biggest fans: children and young adults with hearing loss. He personally responded to an inspirational letter sent to him via Twitter from Riley Kovalcik, a 9-year-old girl who wears two hearing aids. A couple of days later Coleman surprised Riley and her twin sister with tickets to last night’s big game. Adham Talaat of Bridgewater, N.J., who is training for May’s NFL draft, believes that Coleman will pave the way for other players who are deaf. The senior at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., says he never had a deaf role model until he learned of Coleman.

I am so proud of Coleman and the Seahawks for their victory against the Denver Broncos last night (and this is coming from a diehard NY Giants fan!).

Do Your Super Bowl Sunday Plans Include Ear Plugs?

By Yishane Lee

Professional football games this season have put the spotlight on a disturbing trend: the purposely loud stadium, as a strategy to flummox the opposing team.

Leading the charge are the Seattle Seahawks, who made it to the Super Bowl XLVIII. Regardless of whether or not they beat the Denver Broncos this weekend, the Seahawks fans will already be remembered—for better or worse—as the noisiest in history. They broke the Guinness record twice this season, most recently with a rating of 137.6 decibels (dB) in December.

Seattle’s own Derrick Coleman, who doesn’t experience the din of the crowds, confronts his hearing loss head on in this Duracell commercial. Coleman has become an inspiration for all those with hearing loss.

At 130 dB, the human ear is subject to immediate and permanent hearing loss. By comparison, a jackhammer is 110 dB, an ambulance siren is 120 dB, and a jet taking off is 140 dB.

My ears hurt just thinking about this insanity. People routinely bring their children to games, subjecting them to lasting hearing damage. All of this is in the name of not only team spirit but, perhaps more importantly, messing up communication for the opposing team and causing them to make mistakes. According to a January 17 article in the Wall Street Journal, “Seahawk opponents committed 174 false start penalties since [Seattle’s CenturyLink Field] opened in 2002, the most in the National Football League.” During the NFC Championship game on January 19, San Francisco 49ers players were even fitted with custom earplugs to drown out the noise and protect their ears.

Some of the organizers of these extremely loud crowd roars—the fan association leaders—seem completely unperturbed by the risk of permanent hearing loss. Earlier this season, the Seattle Seahawks were in a noise-off with the Kansas City Chiefs, whose fans are led by Ty Rowton. (Alarmingly, he says he brings his kids to games, and they do not use ear plugs.) “If we can help our team win, that's what matters most to us. We don't think about hearing loss,” Rowton told Soundcheck, a public radio program, in December.

The author of a front-page New York Times article last November about the phenomenon, Joyce Cohen (who has hyperacusis), was also interviewed for the show, and said, “I think truly, ignorance rules the day. People have no idea, there's been no education about this.” While a Seattle hearing healthcare center donated 30,000 earplugs to fans, they were too big to fit children. A sixth-grader told Cohen that he endured a steady roar “so loud that the insides of you rattle.”

The noise from Seahawks fans is loud enough to trigger a seismograph, used to measure earthquakes. In 2011 the fans’ jumping, stomping, and screaming created enough sound energy equal to a magnitude 1 or 2 earthquake, according to the Seattle Times.

If you’re lucky enough to score tickets to this Sunday’s big game, please don’t forget a pair of earplugs. I’m all for rooting for your team, but not at the expense of your hearing. Frankly, this makes the painted, shirtless fans braving subzero temps seem like geniuses by comparison.