Memories of the 28th Century

I was reminded again today that I didn’t destroy my hearing by listening to over-amplified music. It was just a jazz trio, but they put out enough noise to cause pain. This wasn’t the first time when I have suffered from loud music, and it isn’t my fault. Musicians usually have hearing loss from loud noise. This study says that “professional musicians are almost four times more likely to suffer noise-induced hearing loss than other people.” http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health...ng-loss-n93981. The overall result is not surprising, but a closer look told me that there are problems with this article; the data numbers don’t agree with the conclusions. 284,000 cases of hearing loss were found from a group of 3 million, and that is a rate of 9.5%. The rate among the 2200 professional musicians was 238, which is a rate of 10.8%. Apparently whoever wrote the article learned math from the climate change alarmists.

“Hearing loss starts with long or repeated exposures to sounds at or above 85 decibels, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.” (Also from that article) That is not a high sound level. And this article http://www.medicaldaily.com/musician...publics-279732 mentions that musicians are four times as likely to have hearing loss and 57% greater probability of tinnitus, but it doesn’t say what study by whom, etc.

This article by an academic appears to have more data, and the numbers appear to work.
http://www.medicaldaily.com/musician...publics-279732 From the available numbers professional musicians, both classical and rock, are at risk of hearing loss from exposure to loud noise. There is a group dedicated to the awareness of the problem, HEARnet. http://www.hearnet.com/. This site has information about hearing loss and preventing hearing loss.

This article cites a Finnish study that has some more details, and it appears that the numbers were calculated correctly. This mentions a condition that I was not familiar with, hyperacusis. This is “a hearing disorder characterized by reduced tolerance to specific sound levels not normally regarded as loud for people with normal hearing.”
http://www.hear-it.org/Classical-mus...r-hearing-loss

I have known musicians and music enthusiast for decades, and one guy who has been listening to amplified live music for decades, and now it is very painful for me to listen to music around him, because he’ll crank the volume to the max. Another musician I know mentioned that he and his wife were lying still in the early morning, and his wife mentioned all the birds she could hear, but he couldn’t hear any. I have noticed that there is one bird song that I can only hear parts of; chunks in the middle are outside my hearing range, because I seem to have lost the highest parts of the sound spectrum. I can still hear conversation, even high pitched voices of young children, but those pieces of birdsongs are gone, and I don’t know how many other sounds I am also missing.

There are several free online hearing tests, and I tried the one at http://www.starkey.com/online-hearing-test. I missed the highest pitch on the first test, which doesn’t surprise me. If I get a chance I’ll have an audiologist test my hearings, because I am somewhat dubious of free online tests.

Apparently there is some hope for hearing lost as a result of loud sounds. The hair cell can regenerate. http://hms.harvard.edu/news/hearing-...-damage-1-9-13 Otherwise make sure that you avoid loud noise and keep your ears clean. That article has other useful suggestions, and I am considering taking to using earplugs.
I’m not advocating this, but I can understand how it might work in some cases. http://hub.jhu.edu/2014/02/05/blindness-hearing-loss

This post isn’t as pointed as some, but I learned while researching the matter, and I’m not surprised that I can still hear, but I may have hyperacusis, because I do find sounds that many people enjoy to be painfully loud. I think that’s better than not being about to hear. Earplugs might help this. And after the vision problems I’ve had I’m not going to gamble on another sense.