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Show Thursday, November 22, THE HERALD, Provo, Utah, 1990 - Page Overly loud music causing permanent tueairing loss By PETER JARET Universal Press Syndicate It was 1969 and in a Chicago ; suburb basement the "Sounds in Motion" were practicing. I was on electric piano, my brother lead guitar. And my father, as usual, was hovering at the top of the stairs, shouting, "Turn that racket down or we'll all go deaf!" I don't know when I Erst began to notice myself straining to make said. "Usually the damage takes place over years of exposure to noise." seemed, was mumbling. Wherever I went, the background noise would drown out what my companions were saying. And I was aware of something else, especially when the world was d very quiet: a buzzing in my ears, a steady whoosh of white noise. But it wasn't until Pete Towu-shen- d and "The Who" returned for one last tour that I began to worry. Looking a little long in the tooth 20 years aftr his appearance at Woodstock, Townshend was also a little hard of hearing. At a press conference kicking off the tour, Townshend admitted bis sacrifice to the years of rock and rolL "You wake up with a piece of your ears gone," he said. "I think it's worth saying that there is a price to pay for that: It's premature deafness and ringing and slotty hearing." Suddenly I wondered if my own years of rock & roll had taken whis- their toll. The Another common symptom of sensorineural hearing loss was the ringing I'd noticed in my ears. Will called it tinnitus. Again, researchers dont know exactly why, but damaged nerves often begin to relay faulty messages, perceived as ringing, buzzing or whistling. If you've ever left a loud concert or put in a few hours behind a chain saw and noticed your ears ringing, that's tinnitus. "Tinnitus is an early sign of hearing loss," Will said. "At first it's usully teporary. Given a rest, ears can recover up to a point But if noise damage continues, the ringing becomes permanent" "it never goes away?" "I hate to say never. But in your case, after this much time, I have to say probably not You wont recover the hearing you've lost, either. Sensory ceils in the ear can't regenerate. Once they're gone, they're gone." "Will it get any worse?" "If you dont protect your ears, I'd say almost certainly. Besides, some amount of hearing loss is normal with age at least among people living in industrialized coun- out conversations. Everyone, it high-pitche- high-pitch- ed "We know how to prevent most forms of hearing ioss. i can talk myself hoarse about it. But tell me, who's listening?" Maurice Miller was that what tling in my ears Townshend meant by ringing and slotty hearing? In a soundproof booth at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center, audiolo-giToni Will slipped headphones over my ears and handed me a switch on the end of a long cord. Every time I heard a tone, she told me, I should push the button. With Will hidden from view at a control panel outside the booth, the tones began some others so low I felt more than I heard them. It was easy at first Then I began to strain. Was that a tone? Or that? I couldn't teH Finally Will's voice came over the st high-pitche- headphones. "Here's something you probably DON'T want to hear," she said. The test indicated that I had a distinct hearing loss. The bad news was charted on a form called an audiogram. The sequence of tones had been used to measure my hearing thresholds the softest sounds I could hear at various pitches. If my ears had been perfect, the audiogram would have shown a flat or somewhat wavy line. Mine n looked more like a view of the Grand Canyon flat on the left (the sounds), flat on the far right (the highest pitches), with a deep V in cross-sectio- low-pitch- the middle where my hearing dropped off. It was a classic '"noise aotch," a textbook example of damage. There are two main kinds of hearing loss, Will explained. One, called conductive loss 'caused often by ear infections ), tends to cut down on sounds. If you've ever had your ears plugged with water, you know the sensation of conductive loss. The more common form, particularly in adults, is called sensorineural loss. Sensory cells in the inner ear, deiqnod to convert sound waves to nerve signals, are damaged or destroyed. "Ouch," I said. "And noise is enough to do that?" "Probably not all at once," Will noise-induc- ed low-pitch- ed Noise zaps hearing in other ways. While quiet sounds become too soft to hear, loud sounds may become irritatingly harsh. "Speak in a quiet voice," said Will, "and someone with sensorineural hearing loss will have trouble hearing. Raise your voice and they're likely to say, 'You don't need to times louder than a subway car. That's enough to do permanent damage." Miller is even more worried about customized car stereos that boast several speakers and sound levels that reach 130 decibels. "That's roughly the sound of a jet engine at takeoff. And believe me, we see the casualties in our clinic all the Ume people in their vulnerable to noise damage," said Peter Dallos, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University's Auditory Physiology Laboratory. "Inner hair cells have about 90 percent of the nerve connections from the brain, so it's obvious that their job is simply to transmit sound signals. But those outer hair cells actually behave less like sensory cells than muscle cells." SHOUT.'" don't have to be a rock & roller to be at risk. Sound levels in the percussion section of a symphony orchestra can be louder than a roaring subway train, peaking at more than 105 decibels. You Polo people past retirement" Of course, noise-induchearing loss occurs gradually over time, and few people are willing to admit they're growing hard of hearing. "The outer row of (the ear's) hair cells seems to be especially ed It's ridiculously simple to save your ears: Avoid loud noises.' ',If you have to shout to converse over background noise, it's too loud,"' Miller said. "And the sound is Wo loud if someone sitting next to you can hear the music coming outjdf stereo." your Walkman-styl- e t You don't have to be a rod( "L roller to be at risk. Sound levels lp the percussion section of a symphp-n- y orchestra can be louder thaua roaring subway train, peakingat more than 105 decibels. Said Meredith, "More and more classicatfy trained musicians are tucking .earplugs in before the conductor raises the baton." Ralph Lauren HOLIDAY GIFTS by RALPH LAUREN rin. Gutter. A-- Qrem University Mall 4 mm nm Fillip "Imagine you're riding a New York subway," Miller said. "The sound level is about 100 decibels loud enough to have to shout over. The decibel scale, like the Richter scale for earthquakes, is logarithmic. So 110 decibels is 10 times as loud as that; 120 decibels is 100 J) 1 HOLIDAY NOW THRU DECEMBER 1,1990!! ds ears. V HAPPY Indeed, in much the same way that your knee kicks out at the tap of a rubber mallet, these outer hair cells appear to give a little kick when they're stimulated by sound impulses, increasing the sound energy reaching the inner hair cells by as much as 40 decibels enough to make a faint whisper 30s and 40s with the kind of hearing loss we used to see only in tries." By age 65, one in three Americans suffers hearing loss serious enough to interfere with communication. In one recent study, researchers found that some symptoms commonly blamed on Alzheimer's disease unresponsiveness and confusion, for instance can actually be the effects of hearing loss. Among those fortunate enough to reach their 90s, nine out of 10 will have impaired hearing. And it looks like a great many of us aren't waitin that long. Back in 1969, the summer of Woodstock, audiologist David Lipscomb set about testing the ears of incoming freshmen at the University of Tennessee. Eighteen-year-olare past the age of childhood ear infections but are still too young to be suffering the effects of aging. They should have the most consistently sharp ears around. Researchers in the 1930s and 1950s had tested to set the standard for what the human ear can hear. Lipscomb found that by comparison, the Woodstock generation was in deep trouble. Nearly a third of the students tested showed signs of hearing loss. Among the male students, one in eight had damage severe enough to interfere with communication. Rock & roll, most audiologists suspected, was to blame. Live concerts commonly reached sound levels about 120 decibels louder than a jackhammer. Until the 1950s, most hearing loss was associated with workplace an occupational hazard. noise Now, it seemed, people were going deaf just for fun. And the fun kept getting riskier. In the early 1980s, audiologist Maurice H. Miller of New York's Lenox Hill Hospital was alarmed to hear the noise pouring out of his kids' Walkman-styl- e stereo tape players. So he grabbed a sound level meter and set off into the streets of New York. Stopping anyone carrying a personal stereo,' he measured sounds of 115 decibels and higher pouring out of tiny earpieces directly into vulnerable fully audible. "We think outer hair cells may be the first to go. Exposing them to excessive sound energy is like exposing voung trees to a eale force wind. The force of the energy is enough to shake them apart. Eventually the cells die and are The rereplaced by scar tissue. sult," said Dallos, "is gradual, irreversible hearing loss." What exasperates most audiologists is that it doesn't have to happen. As Maurice Miller said, "We know how to prevent most forms of hearing loss. I can talk myself hoarse about it But tell me, who's listening?" 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