There’s a new disease in our noisy neighborhood.  It’s called NITS – noise-induced hearing threshold shifts. To appreciate what your ears have to put up with, let’s spend a day in the life of an eardrum and its supporting structures.  You wake up with the noise of an alarm clock, the ear-piercing whistle of a train, the bark of a dog, the backfire of a car, or the construction hammering next door – and the day has only just begun.  Then comes the blow dryer for your hair, the blender for your breakfast, the traffic noise en route to work, and the iPod in your ear. During the day you have vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, chain saws, leaf blowers, and loud TV commercials.  Throw in a smattering of slamming doors and screaming children.  By the end of the day, your eardrums are still shaking.

Just like protecting your joints from getting stiff from too much wear and tear, you can delay the stiffening of all those middle-ear structures by selecting the sounds that strike your eardrum. Since hearing is basically about the vibrations of lots of tiny moving parts, it stands to reason that the best way to prevent ARHL (age-related hearing loss) is to soften the sounds that strike the parts. Muffle loud noises.  As much as possible, cover your ears to reduce loud, disturbing sounds.