Earlier this year, the World Health Organization published a warning about hearing loss and said that more than 1 billion young people are at risk for permanent hearing loss. The good news is that this hearing loss is preventable, and an expert recently joined Audacy to share more.
“That is an alarming statistic that, you know, over a billion young people are at risk,” MJ DeSousa, audiologist and director of patient experience for Beltone, told WWJ Newsradio’s Ryan Wrecker.
Additionally, an estimated 20% of teens already have some level of hearing loss, and that loss is typically permanent. By 2050, the WHO expects nearly 2.5 billion people to have some degree of hearing loss.
DeSousa said that preventing hearing loss “starts with being aware of what those risks are – and those risks are increased noise exposure.”
She said avoiding noise exposure is the easiest way to prevent hearing loss. However, that is easier said than done.
“Young people now, with our smartphones and tablets and things like that, we’re listening to sound through earbuds through headphones for more hours than ever before,” DeSousa explained. “And so, they’re getting much more exposure to just sound and often at a loud volume.”
Since hearing loss happens gradually, people often overlook the risks of noise exposure. DeSousa noted that it is a “tough challenge” to express how serious noise exposure is to young people. Challenging, but not impossible.
“Impress upon them that once they lose it, it’s permanent,” she said. Another tidbit that might help drive the point home is something called “threshold shift,” DeSousa added.
Threshold shift refers to the phenomenon where an individual’s hearing seems muffled after exposure to loud noise, such as attending a concert. This is a warning sign of unhealthy noise exposure, the type that people are more likely to experience permanent hearing damage from.
“We also have to factor in their changes in the auditory system that precede changes in that hearing test,” DeSousa told Wrecker. “And those can cause us to notice changes in noisy environments, for example, where we start to have to concentrate harder to hear what people are saying to us than before. And when we leave those environments, we’re more fatigued than we used to be.”
She recommends that people get hearing screenings to check if they have any signs of hearing loss. When hearing loss does occur, new technology is also making the future, and even the present, look brighter.
“Hearing aid use is still a little bit lower than it should be, and partly because that is our perception of hearing aids, those older, bigger, ineffective hearing aids that squeal,” said DeSousa. “And modern technology has completely revolutionized health care. With modern hearing aids they’re smaller, sleeker, more comfortable than ever before, and they use advanced digital technology.”