Earbuds and Hearing Loss
Many teenagers do not pay attention to hearing protection, and have serious hearing problems even at a young age, which must be paid attention to by the whole society. The biggest factor affecting the hearing of teenagers is the improper use of earphones, which is manifested in the use of earphones for a long time and at high volume. This bad habit poses a serious threat to hearing and can even lead to deafness.
Many teenagers like to play online games. In order to pursue sound effects, they wear headphones when playing. Hanging MP3, MP4, whether you are walking, riding in a car or doing things, you can always listen to music, and think this is a very fashionable thing. Some people even go to bed accompanied by music, and the music rang in their ears all night after falling asleep. These bad habits have accumulated over time, causing many people to experience tinnitus symptoms, and some people have begun to experience hearing loss.
When it comes to hearing loss, many people have misunderstandings, thinking that hearing loss is something that happens only to the elderly and has nothing to do with young people, so they don’t pay attention to the protection of hearing, and only go to see a doctor when tinnitus or even hearing loss occurs , and this is already a bit late.
Scientists have found that the maximum intensity of sound that human hearing can withstand is 90 decibels. Experiments have shown that long-term exposure to sound stimulation above 105 decibels can cause permanent hearing damage. The maximum volume of many MP3s and MP4s on the market is as high as 120 decibels, which is equivalent to the volume of an ambulance siren. Prolonged use of these devices at high volume will inevitably damage hearing. Over time, the auditory nerve cells in the inner ear will be severely damaged, which may lead to permanent hearing loss.
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How to minimize the damage of earphones to hearing?
First of all, we need to understand the impact of various types of earphones on the eardrum.
Types of earphones:
At present, earphones include earplugs (plug-in type), ear-hanging type (on-ear type) and head-mounted type (full cover type). To understand why different types of earphones have slightly different effects on hearing, we must first understand the ear structure and pathways of sound.
The structure of the ear
The ear is composed of a position sense organ and an auditory organ. Although the functions of the two are different, they are closely related in structure. The ear is divided into three parts: the outer ear, the middle ear, and the inner ear.
The outer ear has a prominent helix that collects sound waves and sends them along the ear canal to the eardrum. The eardrum is a tissue-thin, tense membrane about the size of a pinky fingernail. The sound waves of ordinary conversation can make the eardrum vibrate very slightly. This kind of vibration is difficult to see even with a microscope, but it is the key to enter the world of sound. The middle ear is a narrow tympanic chamber between the eardrum and the inner ear, about half an inch long and a quarter inch wide, filled with air and communicated with the snuff through the eustachian tube to keep the chamber in balance with the atmospheric pressure. There are three auditory ossicles (malleus, incus, and stapes) connected in a chain from the tympanic membrane to the inner ear to transmit the vibration of the tympanic membrane. These three small bones are ingeniously connected together to form a ring, accept the vibration of the eardrum, amplify the sound wave 22 times, and then transmit it to the inner ear by a small membrane called the "oval window" (the stapes is attached to this membrane). , After a series of complex procedures, the sound is transmitted from the inner ear to the auditory center of the brain, and we hear the way the sound is transmitted to the inner ear. In addition to the air transmission mentioned above, there is also a way of bone conduction, which is simply sound waves. Vibrations through the skull are transmitted to the inner ear where sound is produced.
Studies have shown that earphones are the most harmful to hearing.
The length of the external auditory canal is only 2.5 to 3.5 cm. When the earphones are inserted into the external auditory canal, a rather narrow "resonance box" is formed. The sound through this "resonance box" stimulates the tympanic membrane more strongly than earphones that are not inserted into the external auditory canal. Much larger, so the degree of hearing damage is also much greater.
The sound effect of headphones is obvious to all. In order to obtain the same effect as headphones, the earphone engineers used the natural structure of the human external auditory canal to form a resonance cavity in order to achieve the purpose of enhancing sound quality. For example, in order to pursue a strong low-frequency effect, the earplug earphones use a long flute-type leak-proof design, and the shape of the earplugs is designed to fit the shape of the external auditory canal, so that the earplugs and the external auditory canal are closely attached, and the external auditory canal is used directly. As a bass resonance chamber, this enables us to hear a stronger bass effect.
In terms of craftsmanship, this is of course an ingenious design, but the damage to hearing is quite serious. In short-term use, due to the considerable repair function of the human body, the slightly damaged hearing can be restored in time, and the user will not feel obvious hearing damage, but if the hearing cannot be recovered naturally within 2 to 8 weeks, it may develop into Permanent hearing loss, it can be seen that if such earphones are used for a long time, there will undoubtedly be a risk of hearing damage. Over time, when tinnitus develops and hearing loss becomes apparent, the patient realizes its severity, but by then it is often too late.
Studies have shown that noise stimulation will first cause hearing damage at 4000 Hz, and other high-frequency ranges will also be damaged to a certain extent. In addition, even if the sound source is non-noisy, if the volume continues to be too high, it will cause damage to the cochlea and cause hearing loss. The reason may be that after the cochlea is exposed to excessive sound stimulation for a long time, the metabolism of the tissue cells will be disordered and the peripheral receptors will be damaged. .
Since the human language frequency is between 500 and 2000 Hz, the hearing loss above this frequency is often not perceived by the patient, so the hearing loss in the non-language frequency area often has no conscious hearing impairment, so they will not change their lifestyle, let alone Will seek medical treatment, the result of doing so will make the situation worse and worse, and also miss the best time for treatment.
Due to the constraints of the environment, people will rely on earphones to receive information in many cases (answering calls, listening to the radio, listening to music, listening to foreign languages), if you pay a little attention, you will find that 70-80% of the passengers on the subway are bowing their heads Fiddle with phones while at least half of them are wearing earbuds. In order to cater to consumers' preferences, some manufacturers have also specially introduced so-called "extra bass" earphones, and these factors will increase the risk of hearing damage.
In contrast, headphones have much less damage to hearing than earphones, and their sound field and wearing comfort are better. This kind of earphone creates a nearly closed sound environment by wrapping the outer ear, and the speaker part is farther away from the ear canal, so it is less harmful to hearing than earplug earphones.
For ordinary people, it is unrealistic for people to give up the music appreciation function of devices such as walkmans and smartphones just because wearing headphones may damage their hearing, but at least we can give up using earphones and use earphones instead. Headphones with less damage, this is the experience of Europeans in exchange for a generation of painful lessons. You should know that with the current medical level, it is very difficult to recover after hearing damage.
Earphones
Ear-hanging earphones refer to a type of earphones that add auxiliary hanging decorations on the side of the earphones for ease of use. In order to avoid damage to hearing, and because the designer used aluminum alloy material and metal wire drawing technology in the production of the earhook, the earhook earphones often have a fashionable appearance and are very popular among young consumers. At the same time, its ear-hook design also makes it easy to wear during exercise, suitable for people who listen to music while exercising. But it also has obvious disadvantages, one is sound leakage, and the other is that it is not suitable for people who wear glasses. However, from the perspective of avoiding hearing damage, sound leakage is actually the advantage of earphones. Ear-hook earphones cannot be closely attached to the external auditory canal like earplug earphones. This structure will cause sound leakage, but it is precisely the sound leakage that weakens the direct stimulation to the tympanic membrane, thereby reducing the damage to hearing.
Therefore, a balance should be considered when choosing headphones. Sound quality and sound effects are of course important, but long-term hearing health also needs to be considered.
In any case, the following principles need to be kept in mind by everyone who often uses headphones:
- Do not wear earphones for a long time, and let your ears rest every half hour. Adults should not wear earphones for more than 3 hours a day, and teenagers should not wear earphones for more than 2 hours, and it is better to use them intermittently.
- Don't turn up the volume too much.
- The volume of the earphones can be adjusted, and the volume should be controlled below 80 decibels, so that the sound is comfortable and pleasing to the ear. Anything over 85 decibels is noise.
- Don't listen to earphones while sleeping. Press the ear on the side of the earphone on the pillow, which will aggravate the stimulation of sound waves on the tympanic membrane and aggravate ear damage.
- It is better to use headphones, because this kind of headphones will cause less damage to hearing than embedded headphones.
