How to take care of your EARS?

[Johnk]

I was curious on the caretake of our ears. as engineers it is a very important.

Earwax...iHygenic.com

THis is all the info i found. I'm curious if a couple things could be done?
1. Ear drops?
2. Alchol with q-tip..? which burns...

some suggestions would be great. perhaps mineral oil and or baby oil.

[Johnk]

btw i was wondering if theres any free hearing test to check out my ears. About 2 years ago i went to a hearing doctor and they claim my hearing is fine. so i just suggestin that ppl should check there hearing docs maybe once every 3 years.
btw i use to wear tubes. HA

[retropete]

Actually, I found out recently that I've damaged my hearing from q-tips (among other things, probably). The doctor could tell from visual inspection within 30 seconds, and asked "You use q-tips, don't you?" I was shocked that he could tell just by looking.

He said, yeah, the ear drum is depressed.... and they're extraordinarily clean!

So I got the musician's earplugs and I'm looking into just using liquid solutions to clean my ears.

So profit from my mistake, and don't use q-tips. Please.

[mikey]

John i went to 2 doctors.One told me to get this stuff called Debrox earwax removal aid and that it would loosen up and come out.The other doc wanted me to use the Debrox and then go in for removal by a doctor.So far i haven't gone in and done it.I did tried the debrox once but i did n't do it for four days like it recomends.
Always use plugs if you use appliances or lawnmower ect. to save your hearing.

[Tom Hakala]

Originally Posted by retropete

don't use q-tips. Please.

that's what i was about to say when i saw this thread title!

[semtek]

From my experience the best ways to keep your hearing solid are:

1. Take breaks - I take a week-long break from making music, and listening to it over headphones, every so often. It seems to help significantly.

2. Don't wear in-ear earphones of any kind. They are insanely bad for your high freq hearing. Closed-back studio headphones aren't nearly so bad. The impact of having a speaker inside your ear is just terrible. I imagine it wasn't so bad in the days of tape because the recordings and the medium were not so bright. With MP3s its lunacy.

3. Wear plugs whenever at a gig, in a club, mowing the lawn, riding a motorbike... you get the idea. I strongly reccomend Hearos, having tried a number of different models.

4. Keep a healthy lifestyle - lots of caffeine and nicotine has been shown to contribute to tinnitus.

5. Keep the volume on your monitors down. Obviously.

[mikey]

i like these very comfortable ..i trim the part that sticks out on some i were at work
COM-FIT Earplugs

[triton]

If u are a pro the best thing u can do to keep yor ears clean is this ....

[Jackie Treehorn]

Reminds me of my first-ever post on Gearslutz (where everyone was talking about what to put in their ears to get the wax out-- "candling," etc.). My reply went like this:

------------------------
So much misinformation and bad advice on this thread!

ENT docs will tell you not to put anything in your ear that's sharper than your elbow (this includes Q-tips!!!!).

Wax is in your ears for a reason. It has insect-repelling properties (I'm an ER doc and I've pulled plenty of insects from the ears of freaked-out patients). A layer of wax on your external canal also repels water and keeps you from getting otitis externa, or "swimmer's ear." I see plenty of patients with swimmer's ear who protest, "But I clean my ears all the time!" Well, there you go.

Bottom line-- a little bit of wax in your ears is fine. Stop trying to outsmart God, mother nature, Darwin, or whatever higher force you believe in--- just leave your ears alone.

Now it's true that some people build up big amounts of wax that can completely fill the canal. People who are prone to that can use carbamide peroxide (sold over the counter) to soften and liquify the wax. People who still have wax should see a doctor (I have also seen eardrum perforations from people trying to forcefully irrigate their own ears. . . ears which didn't have any wax in them to begin with).

Finally, I could read 50 testimonials on how ear candling helped you, and that's fine-- good for you. Believing that it helped you and actually working are two different things. There is a huge placebo effect going on here. People want it to work and expect it to work because A) it seems to be somehow "organic" and "alternative," and B) getting people "invested" in a procedure (sticking something in your ear, holding still, lighting it, waiting, etc.) probably has an even greater placebo effect than just swallowing a pill. AT BEST, candling is a waste of time and money.

Now everybody go take two aspirin and start rocking in the morning.
-------------------------------------

Taking care of your ears has everything to do with the volume knob and nothing at all to do with Q-tips.

[triton]

... to keep your hearing perfect get yourself a pair of custom earplugs with an ER15 filter. They inject silicone in your ear to make a mould and insert a filter of your choice.Expensive but worth it.

While rigging up, the transient noise of the work ( say some lightguy banging the crap out of a truss pin with a metal hammer coz he lost his plastic one) is NOT good for u ... so i hv a pair of David Clarks for that and trance parties

I got more than 21yrs of live rock'n'roll and orchestra on the clock and i got no tinitus or damage, just damage in my joints from carting gear ...

In a studio u cld easily keep the noise down to a safe 90db a weighted.

Standard Ear tests at ear doctors are worth diddly-squat for us cos they only check u up from 100 hz till 8khz and they dont check dynamics.

[blackfish]

Originally Posted by triton

... to keep your hearing perfect get yourself a pair of custom earplugs with an ER15 filter. They inject silicone in your ear to make a mould and insert a filter of your choice.Expensive but worth it.

While rigging up, the transient noise of the work ( say some lightguy banging the crap out of a truss pin with a metal hammer coz he lost his plastic one) is NOT good for u ... so i hv a pair of David Clarks for that and trance parties

I got more than 21yrs of rock'n'roll and orchestra on the clock and i got no tinitus or damage, just damage in my joints from carting gear ...

In a studio u cld easily keep the noise down to a safe 90db a weighted.

Standard Ear tests at ear doctors are worth diddly-squat cos they only check u up from 100 hz till 8khz and they dont check dynamics.

so what type of test is recommended. i just came from an audiologist and when i expressed concern at the test not going below 125hz or above 8khz, she stated that was the only test she could do her machine didnt produce tones over the 8khz line. do tell sir, i wanna get my ears "rung out"

[mikey]

Originally Posted by Jackie Treehorn

Reminds me of my first-ever post on Gearslutz (where everyone was talking about what to put in their ears to get the wax out-- "candling," etc.). My reply went like this:

------------------------
So much misinformation and bad advice on this thread!

ENT docs will tell you not to put anything in your ear that's sharper than your elbow (this includes Q-tips!!!!).

Wax is in your ears for a reason. It has insect-repelling properties (I'm an ER doc and I've pulled plenty of insects from the ears of freaked-out patients). A layer of wax on your external canal also repels water and keeps you from getting otitis externa, or "swimmer's ear." I see plenty of patients with swimmer's ear who protest, "But I clean my ears all the time!" Well, there you go.

Bottom line-- a little bit of wax in your ears is fine. Stop trying to outsmart God, mother nature, Darwin, or whatever higher force you believe in--- just leave your ears alone.

Now it's true that some people build up big amounts of wax that can completely fill the canal. People who are prone to that can use carbamide peroxide (sold over the counter) to soften and liquify the wax. People who still have wax should see a doctor (I have also seen eardrum perforations from people trying to forcefully irrigate their own ears. . . ears which didn't have any wax in them to begin with).

Finally, I could read 50 testimonials on how ear candling helped you, and that's fine-- good for you. Believing that it helped you and actually working are two different things. There is a huge placebo effect going on here. People want it to work and expect it to work because A) it seems to be somehow "organic" and "alternative," and B) getting people "invested" in a procedure (sticking something in your ear, holding still, lighting it, waiting, etc.) probably has an even greater placebo effect than just swallowing a pill. AT BEST, candling is a waste of time and money.

Now everybody go take two aspirin and start rocking in the morning.
-------------------------------------

Taking care of your ears has everything to do with the volume knob and nothing at all to do with Q-tips.

I tend the Docs advise here.I'm gunna leve well enough alone

[chrisp2u]

Originally Posted by semtek

2. Don't wear in-ear earphones of any kind. They are insanely bad for your high freq hearing. Closed-back studio headphones aren't nearly so bad. The impact of having a speaker inside your ear is just terrible. I imagine it wasn't so bad in the days of tape because the recordings and the medium were not so bright. With MP3s its lunacy.

I can see this with ear buds, like those that come with ipods and stuff, but real (and good) IEM's would be a much different story I would think. You usually have to crank buds (and even cans) to mask/drown out all the ambient noise around, whereas with IEM's you can usually get 15-30db of isolation, meaning that you don't need as much volume.

I know when I've used my IEM's with my ipod, I usually have them set about 1/3 as much as I used to have the buds. YMMV.
---
c

[FFTT]

My hearing was destroyed by extended use of headphones during a solo recording project.
It's not just the volume, but the length of exposure that can do irreversable damage.\
I am now completely deaf in my right ear with more than 50% loss in the left side
and a permanent state of tinnitus that acts as a frequency wash to further
reduce what I can hear. It's truly maddening.

Limit any use of prescription pain medication especially opiate based pain killers like Percocet, Darvon, Tylenol 3.
These work by deadening microsopic nerve endings and can also cause irreversable
hearing loss.

Power tools and yard equipment should never be used without hearing protection.

Be very careful about any dental or upper respiratory infections.
These can also cause permanent damage.

You full timers really need to take extra care about exposure to sound and force yourself to take silence breaks, for days in some cases.

No project is worth risking your entire career for.

Limit the use of headphones for tracking at low levels and for brief mix checks,
otherwise use your nearfields.

Your ears are the one piece of gear no amount of money can replace.

[samwinston123]

A couple of years ago I had my ears checked and the doctor said that there was so much wax he was surprised I could hear anything at all. I now clean them regularly.

[AnAverageJoe]

Originally Posted by Johnk

btw i was wondering if theres any free hearing test to check out my ears.

at Sears Look for a company called Miracle Ear, They do free check ups, but the only catch is that you can't have a copy of your test results


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