Prolonged noise exposure is one of the main causes of hearing loss. What do most people think of when they mention noise exposure? It is public transportation (subways and highways), construction tools (a punching machine, a jackhammer), noisy events (rock concerts, sports competitions), etc. Indeed, these factors pose a serious threat to our hearing. But you can protect yourself from them. For example, you can move to a quieter place. At work, you can wear earplugs or earmuffs. Try to limit rock concerts or take protective earplugs with you.
But there are other sources of noise exposure that we face every day without thinking about the consequences. The consequences come in the form of hearing loss and other difficulties!
Is hearing loss a serious problem?
First, let’s find out if hearing loss is as dangerous as the doctors say it is. “It’s okay if I don’t understand what we’re talking about. It’s not hard for me to ask again! And I don’t have a problem turning up the volume of my phone or TV.” That’s what many Americans think and refuse to visit the doctor at the first sign of hearing loss. As you can guess, such conclusions are fundamentally wrong. Hearing care has effective methods of hearing correction. Today the most popular solution is the daily use of hearing aids Staten Island! These small electronic devices restore the ability to hear and understand people, but unfortunately, not all patients are in a hurry to use them.
Hearing loss affects all aspects of our lives, reducing the quality of our lives. New difficulties can be divided into several groups. Let’s take a closer look at each of them.
Physiological difficulties
The first thing people with hearing loss experience is a hearing impairment. The greater the degree of the problem, the more difficult it is for the person to communicate and interact with the environment. And it’s not just about communicating and living in the community. You can imagine what can happen if you won’t able to hear an approaching car!
The brain is always adapting to new conditions. When hearing loss occurs, it rearranges its work to continue analyzing incoming sound signals. Accordingly, other parts of the brain reduce their activity, which decreases the person’s cognitive abilities. As a result, memory and mental thinking suffer. There is a high chance of developing dementia! In addition, people often experience headaches and dizziness, which can lead to falls. Rapid fatigue at work and irritability are all consequences of hearing loss. And these are just the main symptoms! They vary from person to person.
Psychological problems
A person with hearing loss has difficulty communicating with others. Such a condition is tolerable at first and with a mild degree of the disorder. But over time, the situation worsens. Next, the person isolates from society and communicates less. Such behavior leads to psychological disorders such as depression. Depression often accompanies patients with hearing loss who do not want treatment.
As you can see, hearing loss is a serious problem. It affects all areas of human activity!
What does this have to do with computer games?
So we found out that noise exposure affects our hearing. But few people realize that noise-induced hearing loss can occur in far less obvious situations. For example, if you play too many computer games. You run the risk of getting hearing loss if you are an avid gamer and love to use headphones.
Sound waves from headphones do not disperse in space. They enter the ear canal and hit the eardrum, which begins to vibrate. The vibration is transmitted through the middle ear bones to the cochlea in the inner ear. Here, hair cells convert the mechanical sound vibrations into a nerve impulse that the brain recognizes as sound. These cells are very sensitive to loud sounds. Too prolonged noise exposure can lead to irreversible damage and death of these cells, which leads to permanent hearing loss.
Over-the-ear headphones completely isolate the user from outside sounds by directing game sound to the eardrum, and in-canal headphones do it only partially.
Loudness levels of 85 dB or higher are a risk factor for hearing loss. The more powerful and prolonged the daily noise exposure, the greater the role of this factor. Daily exposure to 100 dB for 15 minutes is enough to cause gradual hearing loss. How do you know when noise exposure is excessive? It’s quite an important factor for gamers. Unfortunately, there are no highly accurate techniques for measuring sound volume in the home. (Cialis) Therefore, if you often play with headphones, you risk losing your hearing just like an engineer or a constructor!
What can I do to keep my hearing?
More than 2 billion people in the world are addicted to computer games. Among them are not only teenagers but also quite mature and even elderly people. Remember, you should take care of your hearing at any age. Can you preserve your hearing without denying yourself the pleasures of gaming? Yes, you can! Try to follow the 60/60 rule. The rule is to set the volume of a computer game to no more than 60% of the maximum and to limit the game session to sixty minutes. After that time, no matter how much you want to continue, remove your headset and take a 15 to 20-minute break.
Control over the sound level during a computer game is certainly necessary. How to organize it? There is a simple test. If in headphones amid the game, you do not hear a speaker who is one meter away from you, then the sound is too loud. If your ears ring or all sounds seem muffled after removing the gaming headphones, the volume is at a dangerous level. Such a volume level will bring you closer to hearing loss.
One last piece of advice. Have your hearing health checked regularly. Audiologists recommend doing it at least once a year! In such a way, you’ll see the beginning of hearing loss in time.
