It is said that young people now have to go out with three sets: mobile phones, masks, and headphones.
Whether you are socially afraid, or have more business calls, or go to work to touch fish, learn to refresh the needs, wearing headphones is originally a personal matter, Dr. Huaxi should not talk more,
But in recent years, more and more people have caused hearing damage due to not paying attention to the way of use, duration, and volume, and they are getting younger and younger, and Dr. Huaxi has to manage: wearing headphones for a long time will really cause hearing damage!
"Where is it so scary, oh, there are so many heavy headphone dependents around, I don't see a single person suffering?!"
Don't be so confident, come, let's look at the following four questions -
Q1
Do you often put on headphones to sleep?
Q2
Do you have to wear headphones every time you take the subway?
Q3
Have you barely cleaned or disinfected your headphones?
Q4
Do you wear headphones for more than 4 hours a day?
If you chose "yes" to at least one of these four questions, congratulations, you've become a person at risk of hearing loss.
Below, Meng Zhaoli, deputy chief physician of the Ear, Nose, Pharyngology, Head and Neck Surgery Hearing Center of West China Hospital of Sichuan University, will talk about why wearing headphones will affect hearing, which headphones will cause hearing damage, and whether bone conduction headphones really have no impact on hearing.
One
In the Ear, Nose and Throat Hearing Clinic of West China Hospital, our doctors can meet such patients every day. They are often because of tinnitus, ear tightness to see the doctor, after examination of hearing has a certain degree of damage, in the detailed consultation, the doctor found that many people have a long time to wear headphones, wear headphones to sleep and other habits. And in recent years, such patients have a tendency to become younger and younger, the youngest patients are even junior high school students who are only teenagers.
In fact, this is not an individual situation encountered by our West China Hospital, there are common problems in the country and even the world due to excessive use of headphones affecting hearing, do not believe it -
In the "China Hearing Health Report (2021)" released on November 9 this year, it was proposed that "the common long-term use of ear habits such as headphones by adolescents has become a very prominent public health problem and has not been widely taken seriously." ”
In March, the World Health Organization (WHO) released its first World Hearing Report, which also mentioned that 1.1 billion people aged 12 to 5 years worldwide are at risk of hearing loss due to exposure to noise in entertainment environments (such as concerts and sporting events) and the use of personal audio equipment.
At the same time, the WHO also estimates that by 2050, nearly 2.5 billion people (one in four) worldwide will have hearing loss. That is to say, after another 30 years, sitting at a table playing mahjong, at least 1 card holder can't hear the card friend say "paste", and is still playing cards!
Two
1
Inner ear hair cells
There is a very important cell in the human cochlea, called the inner ear hair cell, which is mainly responsible for recognizing the sound information, passing it to the nerve cells, transmitting it to the brain, and we can hear and hear clearly that various sounds are inseparable from it.
2
After the inner ear hair cells die, they cannot regenerate
Ordinary people have about 40,000 hair cells, which gradually apopt to death after birth, and if there are some "accidents" during the period, the inner ear hair cells will die faster. Although it sounds like this hair cell is only the ordinary kind of trillions of cells in the human body, but people are very individual, the more they die, the more people will not hear or hear the sound, and more importantly, the inner ear hair cells die one less and cannot be regenerated.
3
Effects of wearing headphones on hair cells in the inner ear
Inner ear hair cells can be said to be super labor models, not only have been at work during the day, accepting and processing various ambient sounds, conversations, etc., even when you are sleeping, people are still on night shift, otherwise why are you woken up by the alarm clock, awakened by the snoring sound of your husband, awakened by the buzz of mosquitoes?
In addition to the 24-hour workload, if you wear headphones for a long time and turn the volume on to a large scale at the same time, it is equivalent to shouting the inner ear hair cells and then go to the reinforcement class. "Death by overwork" You all know? Similarly, overwork can lead to a decrease in the number and damage of inner ear hair cells, speeding up the rate of death, making it unresponsive or even ineffective when transmitting sound, ultimately leading to irreversible hearing damage.
Three
After explaining the effect of wearing headphones on the hair cells of the inner ear, the following will be a detailed discussion of these methods of using headphones, which are very dangerous.
1
Wear headphones for a long time and at a high volume
Tell you, as long as it is a loud sound, whether it is music or quarrel, it is a noise that is harmful to hearing!
In the noise of 80 decibels, the exposure can not exceed 8 hours, and for every additional 3 decibels, the noise time that can be exposed will be reduced by half. That is to say, in order to protect your hearing, you can only stay for 8 hours continuously in an environment of 80 decibels, beyond which it will cause damage to your hearing; and if you stay in an environment of 83 decibels, you can only stay for 4 hours at most, and if you exceed it, you may cause noise-induced deafness.
As for how loud is 80 decibels? So for example, you know, the general player total volume is 120 decibels, 70% of the total volume reached 84 decibels, if you turn on the sound again, to reach about 100 decibels, less than fifteen minutes your inner ear hair cells may have several to strike, hearing will be damaged.
To name a few more common situations in daily life -
Two people whispered:
20 dB
Two people talking normally:
50 dB
Horn on the side of the road:
70 dB
Motorcycle Sounds:
90 dB
Sound of the bus:
100 dB
Sound of the aircraft:
120 dB
Look, for some headphone enthusiasts, the volume is turned on to 80 decibels, which is just a daily operation.
2
Wear headphones in noisy environments
In addition to the situation of actively adjusting the sound of the headphones too much, there are many people who passively increase the volume of the headphones - for example, due to the high noise of the environment, in order to hear the sound of the headphones clearly, the volume can only be adjusted more, and the hearing is damaged.
The most common is to wear headphones when sitting on the subway, according to calculations, the sound of the subway running is about 50 to 70 decibels, in order to hear the sound of the headphone head, the volume is mostly more than 80, and even adjusted to 100 to be able to barely hear, and in this process, your ears have suffered from double noise, you say why not hurt the hearing?!
3
Wear headphones to sleep
There are many people with this habit, whether you are subjectively accustomed to wearing headphones to listen to stories, music to sleep, or objectively do not want to be woken up by the snoring of your roommate \ husband, as long as you sleep poke and have been wearing headphones, this is very damaging to the ears and hearing!
This is because if you listen to music and sleep poke, your ears will be exposed to noise for hours on end! Greatly increases the risk of damage to hair cells in the inner ear. So, unless you have to, you really don't want to wear headphones to sleep.
04
Headphones are not cleaned and disinfected regularly
Friends who wear headphones every day, how often do you clean your headphones? Have you ever taken alcohol pads or the like to detoxify your headphones? If the answer is "no", then this habit of use may also hurt the ear.
Because of wearing headphones for a long time, the air in the ear canal is not smooth and relatively humid, not only is it easy to grow ear feces, but also becomes a "greenhouse" suitable for bacteria and fungal reproduction, which is easy to cause bacterial or fungal infections. If at this time your headphones are already attached to a little bacteria, fungi, that is not even worse? The most immediate effect is to cause inflammation and even affect hearing.
Four
1. Tinnitus. When you take off your headphones and you hear not the sounds of your surroundings, but the sound of "hissing", you have to be careful, this tinnitus can be a sign of hearing loss.
2. After wearing headphones suddenly turn on the volume very large, after taking off the headphones, there is ear tightness, hearing loss, there may be a noise-induced knocking deafness or temporary threshold shift (that is, temporary hearing loss), to rush to the hospital for treatment.
3. After removing the headphones, the ears appear yellow secretions, the ears itch, beware of infection, or go to the hospital to find a doctor to help!
Five
Although the best way to deal with the hearing damage caused by wearing headphones is not to wear headphones, we also know that this is not very realistic, so we hope that everyone will pay attention to the following points during use to minimize the impact of headphones on hearing.
1. Select the headset like this:
There are several types of headphones, we recommend choosing this -
In quiet environments, over-ear headphones are preferred, followed by pressed ear headphones, and finally in-ear headphones.
Over-ear
Pressed ear type
In-ear
(Compared to press-ear headphones, the ear-on-ear type is the kind that can wrap the ear.)
In a noisy environment, it is not recommended to wear headphones, but if you really want to wear them, you should try to use active noise-canceling headphones, process external noise through the chip, and reduce the interference sound, so that the volume of the headphones can be heard without being turned up.
Special tip: when buying headphones, do not because the merchant says that it is an active noise reduction headset, I think there must be this effect, before CCTV has also been exposed, the noise reduction headphones that do not meet the standards are not in the minority, and try to choose large brand products when purchasing.
2. Wear headphones and pay attention to the 3 60 principles
When wearing headphones, do not exceed 60% of the maximum volume, do not use continuously for more than 60 minutes, and it is best not to exceed 60 decibels of sound.
3. Control the total amount of time you wear headphones every day
The total time that ordinary people use headphones every day should not exceed 3 to 4 hours, and minors should not exceed 1 to 2 hours. Again, don't wear headphones to sleep!
4. Do a good job of cleaning and disinfecting headphones
In addition to daily cleaning, it is recommended to regularly use alcohol pads to wipe the headphones for disinfection to prevent fungal growth in the ear canal.
By the way, if you need to borrow earphones for others to use, it is best to clean and disinfect before and after use to avoid cross-infection.
Six
In recent years, bone conduction headphones with the slogan of "no damage to hearing", sucked a large wave of powder, considering that there are many friends who do not know that bone conduction headphones have not even been used, here is a simple explanation.
People have two ways of listening to sound, one is air conduction, and the other is bone conduction. People use air conduction to listen to sound in 90% of the cases, and most headphones also use this way to transmit sound to the ears and brain. Bone conduction headphones, is the use of bone conduction principles, sound conduction will cause skull vibration, causing the vibration of the inner ear lymphatic fluid, after the inner ear hair cells for acoustic and electrical conversion, let people hear the sound.
Compared with traditional headphones, bone conduction headphones do have its advantages, such as not having to be stuffed into the ear, fungal infections are not easy to appear; there is no need to plug the ears when using, so that you can hear ambient sounds other than headphones, especially loved by sports enthusiasts.
However, it is not that the bone conduction headphones must not damage the hearing without touching the ears, and Dr. Huaxi should seriously tell you that as long as it is a headset, there is definitely a risk of hearing damage! You think, and then a bone conduction, this sound will also be transmitted to the inner ear, so that the inner ear hair cells vibrate to hear well, if you open the volume is large, wear for a long time, it is not as easy to make the inner ear hair cells work overtime to die of overwork!
Seven
"Doctor, fortunately, I have the habit of wearing headphones, originally to save money, read this popular science to know, it is simply to protect my ears and hearing, oh also!"
Mo busy, there are many factors that damage hearing, wearing headphones is only one of them, especially the following habits that affect hearing, may recruit more people -
1. Make long phone calls, especially if a phone call exceeds 1 hour!
2. Pluck your ears yourself.
3. Blow your nose vigorously. Wow, if you don't pay attention to the action of blowing your nose, you may also squeeze the nose into the Eustachian tube to cause otitis media, which will lead to hearing problems!
4. Stay up late. Anyway, after the World Cup every four years, our hospital will treat a group of people who stay up late to watch the ball and cause sudden deafness.
Doctor, I know it's not good to sleep with headphones on.
But don't you think headphones have a mysterious power?
As soon as you wear it, you will sleep in seconds,
If you don't wear it, you don't poke it,
What do you mean by that?
(The author of this article is Meng Zhaoli, deputy chief physician of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, and the picture comes from the Internet)
Source: West China Hospital of Sichuan University (WeChat public account)