Uh, seriously? Right now we have a huge public health issue with young people and hearing loss. It isn't some scam. Turns out the ipod/iphone revolution came with some external costs.
"If a person takes a subway to go from one place to the other for half an hour in the morning and a half an hour in the evening, and every day has to turn up the volume on his device because there is so much of noise of the train and everything around, and is listening to - let us say 100 db (decibels) for one hour every day, his hearing is going to get irreversibly damaged in a few years, in a couple of years time, for sure."
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Instead of subway, replace that with loud open-plan office and instead of one hour per day, replace that with 8+ hours. I think we need to address hearing damage the same way we started addressing RSI in the office back in the 80s. There are a lot of people who have no idea how much they are damaging their ears.
Uh, seriously? Right now we have a huge public health issue with young people and hearing loss.
Isn't that the best kind of thing to use in a scam? Much more believable :) Parent didn't say "it's a scam", (s)he said "get a second opinion", which sounds like good advise to me.
That is correct, however, I didn't suggest that the the entire public health problem of hearing loss is only a false perception that is result of wide-spread overdiagnosis, which was the bulk of your counter-argument to my post. (If that were the case, what use would there be in getting a second opinion?)
I wouldn't jump to any hasty conclusions based on being tested once, with one audiologist's piece of equipment. How do you know it didn't have a calibration problem or other malfunction. Bad gain in some analog circuit or whatever, and the measurement is decibels off.
Also, I'd have my ear canals cleaned thoroughly, and stay away from loud noise for a couple of days before the test, and any foods or medications that can affect hearing. If you're on antibiotics for something, don't book a hearing test. You want your real hearing tested.
(I was on ciprofloxacin recently, and things didn't sound right until a day after the last pill. My Sennheiser phones sounded like $5 dollar store earbuds, and I couldn't get a decent tone out of my guitar amplifier rig, though I played with the 32 band equalizer and other controls endlessly.)
Not even dishonest, but biased by an obvious vested interest, which subconsciously leads them to exaggerate the diagnosis. Some people have it as a personality trait to make mountains out of molehills. For any alleged condition, if you get three opinions from three specialists, they will differ even though everyone is honest.
You might actually have the hearing of a 45-year-old at 32, but due to some interpretive latitude and instrumentation error, they can get away with reporting it as a 66-year-old.
It's not just the ipod revolution, it was happening in the walkman era, starting about the time sony came out with the little turbo headphones. (which then morphed into the earbuds)
The killer was the balance between bass and treble, the phones were plenty loud enough, they just had no bass response to speak of until the treble was loud enough to cause permanent hearing damage. Earbuds today might be a little better, but they're still fighting the physics.
I did damage to my hearing until I bought good headphones (Grado SR60. They were ~60 back in 1992, not much more than that now). They had more bass at 2 than the earbuds had at 9. There were a couple of tracks that demo'd the effect really well, where a drum or bass line just wasn't there in the little earphones.
Now, my hearing drops off above 12khz and below about 35. And it's much harder to hear things when there's other distracting noise going on. I can tell someone's talking, just not what they're saying. This is especially true when someone's yelling from another room over the not terribly loud music in my office. It's also really bad talking to someone on the phone, but I'm not sure how much of that is hearing loss and how much is crappy cell connections.
Focus on noise isolation. Using ER-4P (https://www.etymotic.com/consumer/earphones/er4.html) with triple-flange tips is about the best you can get. Better even than $1000+ customs (exception made for Noble silicon customs).
One problem with $1000 ear plugs (and $1000 speaker cables, etc) is that some of the microphones used to record the music only cost a hundred bucks, and it passed through numerous 10 cent op-amp chips in various studio equipment.
I have some Etymotic earplugs, which I use at nightclubs, gigs and concerts, but from the way they feel I don't think it would be good for my ears to use them daily.
Assuming you aren't actually pushing them in far enough to press against your eardrums, you're fine.
The physical feeling you get is just pressure on your outer ear canal - it might be uncomfortable (though it shouldn't be, try a different size plug) but it won't lead to hearing loss.
The kind of hearing loss that article is talking about is only caused by exposure to loud noise, and you're only going to be better off wearing earplugs for that.
I have noise isolation earbuds and always turn them REALLY low (like 1-3 on the volume scale on the mac). I'm always shocked at how loud people have their headphones.
Here's where I'm coming from: I wish they would push to make the train a bit quieter. (I'm thankful for having a good network in Chicago) Take a ride to the airport on the blueline in Chicago, fly to London, and when you're on the tube you'll notice a world of difference in the noise level.
It goes from a loud clanking to the hum of the tube.
To my expierience (since 2009), ANC works really great with steady tones such as the constant humming on a passenger plane or the motor sound of a sports plane.
But for voices, walking steps of folks, cars around you: not so much.
Active noise cancelling should only really be needed in very loud environments, like the subway. In an office you should be fine with a well fitting set of closed back on/over-ear headphones.
I have a pair of Denon AH-D340 and I can't hear a damn thing with them on, even with a noisy conversation happening right next to me. I use them at 1/3 volume on my macbook most of the time. They have a lovely flat unhyped response as well, despite being styled after beats by dre.
If your office is as loud as a subway, my heart goes out to you.
Those fancy in ear monitoring ones are probably even better, but I personally find them uncomfortable.
There is a sound to active noise cancellation systems. Not really white noise, but a sort of faint, high-pitched noise.
It's not audible in airplane or other loud environemnts, but I never understood how you can work with that in your ears. Apparently some people doesn't find it irritating. But make sure to try someone else's before you spend hundreds on dollars on one for the office.
Purely anecdotal, but in my opinion in-ear-monitors (like the Sure or Etymotics) are much better at blocking out sounds than an active noise cancelling headphone like the Bose QCs.
I know there are some prescription drugs that can reduce hearing, but they're standard drugs like Ibuprofen, if you're old and take lots of them. I think. I've never heard of any illegal drugs having that effect..
As to RSI being psychological... after Googling around a bit I find a handful of (paraphrasing) "RSI may be to some extent influenced by stress", but nothing that it is 'entirely psychological'? Can you cite sources?
Prolonged use of opioids in high doses can cause permanent damage to the inner ear. Rush Limbaugh famously abused oxycontin and that's likely why he had to get cochlear implants.
It's also possible you didn't ever have great hearing. (Do you have any "before" audiogram to compare against, from when you were a child?)