Listen before you wear the headphone

Listen before you wear the headphone

These days, almost everybody is plugged to one gadget or the other, whether while walking, driving, in the restaurant, while relaxing at home or in the office. It’s the world of technology and everyone seems to savour the pleasure of being in his own world, to the exclusion of others.

Whether you are listening to music on your iPod or iPad, desktop or laptop, mobile phone or whatever, the headset comes in handy, and there are so many mini gadgets to aid listening to anything on the go.

The snag here is that most people, especially adolescents, seem oblivious to the dangers posed by unrestrained noise to the overall health of the ear. And when combined with other external sources of noise like generators and loud music in public places, it is not a surprise that many people are gradually losing their hearing ability and only get to know the extent of the damage when they can no longer hear as much as they used to.

The World Health Orgnisation notes that there are 360 million persons in the world with disabling hearing loss, which represents 5.3 per cent of the world’s population. Sadly, 32 million of these are children.

Worse still, the statistics infer, the majority of people with moderate-to-profound hearing loss live in low and middle-income countries. The health body also notes that though 50 per cent of the factors which lead to hearing loss can be prevented, people still become deaf, nevertheless.

The world of the hearing-impaired is unfamiliar to those whose ears function optimally. In place of the normal conversation, the deaf gesticulates, making use of the American Sign Language, which is the dominant sign language of those in that social category.

Hearing families with deaf children often adopt ad hoc home sign — an idiosyncratic set of hand gestures — for simple communication.

Deafness is a form of communication disorder and refers to the complete loss of hearing in one or both ears. Experts say hearing loss refers to both complete and partial loss of the ability to hear.

Clinical Audiologist, Dr. Simeon Afolabi, of the Hearing and Speech Consult, says the human ear performs the task of translating the analogue sound waves in air into digitised nerve impulses in the organs of hearing.

Afolabi says there are two forms of hearing loss: conductive and nerve hearing losses. “Conductive loss makes the sound seem faint or distant; and it could be caused by anything interfering with the first stage of sound processing,” he says.

He explains that common causes of conductive hearing loss include the presence of wax in the outer ear passage and fluid in the middle ear. “Other conditions include otosclerosis, which jams the bony linkage between the ear drum and the inner ear. It can also be caused by damage to the ear drum as a result of chronic infection.”

Experts say conductive losses can almost always be repaired by either medicine, surgery or a combination of both.

Nerve hearing loss — otherwise called sensorineural or perceptive hearing loss — includes the cochlea and the eighth cranial nerve, which are tucked away inside the bones at the bottom of the skull. In addition to affecting the loudness of hearing, nerve hearing loss produces distortion of the sounds entering the ear. “Someone with this kind of hearing loss may be aware of sounds but makes error deciding exactly what the sounds represent,” Afolabi says further.

People with nerve hearing loss have difficulty communicating with anybody and it usually leads to stigmatisation, experts say.

Until recently, most hearing losses were seen as disease of old age, as nearly one out of every three persons over 65 is affected. However, Development Paediatrician/Director, Phonics Hearing Centre, Dr. Bolajoko Olusanya, says six out of the 1,000 babies born in developing countries have otitis media (an inflammation of the middle ear, characterised by pain, dizziness and impaired hearing) at birth; and by age six when they start school, 13.9 per cent have hearing problems as a result of other environmental problems.

By teenage, Olusanya says, the noise decibel introduced into the ears via the headphones, loud music and related stuff could lead to hearing impairment. The experts say exposure to sound level that is 85 decibel or over, in an eight-hour period, should be avoided, as this may result in hearing loss eventually.

Apart from noise, another cause of hearing loss is ototoxic medications. The MD/CEO of Sanford Heights Hearing Centre, Maplewood, New Jersey, USA, Dr. Irene Okeke-Igbokwe (who also founded the Nigerian Army Audiological Centre, Yaba, Lagos), says some commonly used medications such as aminoglycosides (a class of antibiotics) and anti-malarials can lead to irreversible hearing loss.

Okeke-Igbokwe says ototoxicity can be prevented through awareness among health-care providers and rational use of drugs. Olusanya warns people against patronising unregistered drug outlets, advising that they should rather consult doctors whenever they have health issues.

She also advises against cleaning the ears with cotton buds which, she says, upsets the delicate balance of the ear.

Olusanya says, “Ear has a natural cleansing mechanism, and attempting to remove the wax, which has anti-bacterial properties, may make it susceptible to bacterial infection.”

The experts also say that hearing loss is preventable through public health actions that include     immunisation, healthy ear and hearing care habits, and effective treatment for both acute and chronic ear conditions.

They also say that, left untreated, hearing loss affects communication and can contribute to social