Prevention
How to prevent hearing loss
While some causes of hearing loss are inevitable, such as the natural aging process, it’s important to do what we can to protect our ears and prevent hearing loss.
If you already have a degree of hearing loss, try to maintain your hearing and prevent it from getting worse.
The best way to protect your hearing is to limit your exposure to loud noises. That means both loud noises on individual occasions, and extended periods of being in a noisy environment.
Here are some changes you can make that could help prevent hearing loss:
- Keep your music, TV and radio down — you should be able to easily talk to someone two metres away
- At clubs, live music and other loud events, wear earplugs, take frequent breaks and give your hearing ample recovery time (at least 12 hours) to recover afterwards
- Wear earplugs or ear protection equipment, such as earmuffs, in noisy workplaces
- If you use headphones or earphones, limit use to an hour at a time then take a break
- If you can, use noise-cancelling headphones that make it possible to listen to audio content without raising the volume to excessively to counteract background noise.
- Get your hearing regularly checked by an audiology professional to monitor your hearing health and detect hearing loss as early as possible.
Request an appointmentIf you would like to discuss your hearing with an audiology professional, book a free hearing assessment now at your local Freedom Hearing clinic.
How loud is too loud?
Audiology experts recommend keeping sound levels between 60 and 80 decibels to minimise the noise your ears are exposed to, and to reduce the risk of damage and hearing loss.
This decibel scale shows the average noise levels of common sounds.
The listening threshold for each individual is difference but in general, prolonged exposure to sounds above 85dB is harmful.
Generally speaking, if you need to raise your voice to communicate with someone a metre away, it’s a sign the ambient noise is above 90dB.
As it’s difficult to constantly measure decibel levels, we’ve written some handy tips to keep your headphones at a safe volume level. Check out this article, Five ways to check if your volume is too loud.