there's certain things we can't avoid our genetics and things like that but but sound induced hearing
loss is actually a hundred percent preventable using our ears and listening to each other is
probably the most crucial part of being a musician or a music teacher of all the things that we need
the most our hearing is probably more important than any lesson any expensive instrument and yet
for some reason hearing protection is probably one of the most overlooked and misunderstood things
for anyone involved in music I can say firsthand as a percussionist and someone who taught marching
band for years I really wish that I knew some of the science behind hearing protection and
what is actually going on when we as musicians simply do our craft or try to teach our craft
or even help out as a parent as you're going to see in this video JW Pepper has put together some
great resources for music teachers and musicians regarding Wellness covering all kinds of topics
from physical technique on the instrument vocal tips for singers and even mental health tips and
today in this video we wanted to get right to the science behind hearing protection to clear up a
lot of the myths that are out there and we thought the best way to do that was to consult an expert
so we went out to the University of Pittsburgh to the school of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
to speak directly with Dr Catherine Palmer who handles hearing protection of all kinds
but specifically works with musicians to help with the constant need of protecting the most important
instrument that we have are here so let's hear no pun intended from Dr Palmer and see what insights
she can share with us and if you find any of this information helpful you want to learn more we have
links below at our dedicated Wellness landing page and please consider subscribing it really
helps get the word out there about these kinds of topics I am a professor at the University of
Pittsburgh in the department of communication science and disorders and in the department of
otolaryngology and then I serve as the Director of Audiology for the integrated
UPMC health system so in that capacity We Run The Musicians hearings Center which we opened
in early 2000 where we we certainly want to protect anybody's hearing but we do focus on
musicians because they often don't realize there's hearing protection that will work for them and let
their music sound correct but safe when they do those activities I've been doing this since 1990.
the most common kind of hearing loss is damage to the sensory organ to the inner ear so that
damage can happen through genetics people can be born with hearing loss but as we age it can
be related to age related changes which often bundle in things like certain medications can
hurt that part of your ear and sound noise and the most common damage to the inner ear is noise
and and we try not to actually call it noise anymore but sound damage because when we say
noise people often think of something they don't like to hear but it actually has nothing to do
with the thing you're hearing it has to do with how loud it is and how long you listen to it so
it's really just sounding damage and that damage is happening to what are called hair cells so in
the sensory organ we have these little hair cells and when sound comes into the ear it moves fluid
that's in that space that disrupts these hair cells and they trigger the nerve of hearing so
if the sound is so loud it disturbs the hair cells in a way that damages them they die off
and no longer transmit those particular pitches that were damaged a good example of that is let's
say you're exposed to really loud sounds so what you might experience immediately is a sense of
fullness in your ears you might have a sense of decreased hearing and you might hear ringing in
your ears which we call tinnitus so that is short term some of that might resolve the first couple
times you're exposed to loud sound but over time those things are going to continue so the hearing
loss you experience from sound damage typically is gradual so in the beginning you don't notice a lot
but over time the first thing you notice is you're not really hearing well in complex listening
situations like if you're out with friends and it's noisy you're not hearing as well as
everybody else and then over time that that gets worse and you notice more of that hearing loss
and that's one of the problems with noise induced or sound induced hearing loss is it doesn't make
your ears bleed you're not in pain where if those things happen people would do something really
quickly but it's it's really you know a hidden kind of problem in the beginning that then takes
on you know a larger context for people they have more difficulty and that ringing in the
ears can be some of their most serious difficulty actually having a constant sound in your ears can
be really disruptive and particularly disruptive for musicians people make the mistake too we see
older musicians who are like ah I already damaged my hearing there's nothing I can do that is the
wrong attitude you want to preserve what you've got you don't want to increase it for exactly what
you said because the more damage the more likely you'll have those discrimination problems and the
more likely you'll have that constant ringing in your ears and you think of someone like Beethoven
people often talk about Beethoven because he ended up deaf and yet wrote Amazing Music but it we
um had the chance to review a lot of his letters and his writings and when you review those the
thing he complained about was not his hearing loss it was the Roaring tinnitus in his ear that really
made him very disturbed you know it just was constant for him so I never want to minimize that
because we focus on hearing loss but preventing having tinnitus is really huge for musicians
any pitched sound can damage hearing and that's really important people tend to pick on the
piccolo players and oh okay well I'm here to defend you um you are no more dangerous than
any of the other instruments it does not matter in terms of sound whether it's low or high pitch
sound it really is all about level and length of time which is what we call dose how long you
listen to it how loud it is regardless of pitch and that's that throughout your whole day so again
we always say to musicians what other things are you doing and where maybe could you be protecting
your hearing you know throughout the day but in terms of damage you're absolutely right it's those
higher pitches that we lose first and then that kind of moves down to the lower pitches and those
higher pitches are critical for distinguishing speech because they tend to be things like F's
and T's and THS yep so that is what you lose first but you think about something like a marching band
the data are you have about four seconds until you have damage so there is no yeah there is no four
second rehearsal that I'm aware of so really for something like that you know that kind of sound
you simply have to be wearing hearing protection or you are going to end up with hearing loss the
thing is if you think of college kids they're not going to notice it now if they have tinnitus they
may notice that sooner but the hearing loss they're not going to notice until probably
five years after they graduate and then they're going to start noticing that oh I don't really
hear as well and noise as my friends do things like that so it's a very gradual process [Music]
the highest prevalence of hearing loss is in aging adults but that wraps in exposure to sounds and
aging so then if you just look at any particular group The Musicians are highly exposed group and
so they do have a high prevalence of hearing loss if they're not using hearing protection
and it used to be that you had to go out and buy a sound level meter to measure these kinds of things
so for a lot of band directors they thought that's not what they're going to want to do so now really
you can have an app right on your phone so the app we use is from niosh which is from one of the
government agencies who thinks about noise so a band director or any individual musician can just
open that up in their phone it's a free app they can see how loud things are but one nice thing
about that app is you can push record and do it over a whole session and then you can go back and
see like the Peaks and the average over time so it can be really informative and I think help people
make these kinds of decisions because people who've been around round loud sound a lot often
don't realize how loud it is and they'll think ah it's not that loud but that kind of helps to have
the data to say oh yeah it is actually that loud and historically musicians didn't wear hearing
protection because what we had available when you used it definitely protected your hearing but it
took out some pitches more than others so then for musicians that's unacceptable then they're
not hearing their music correctly of course then they didn't wear the hearing protection ended up
with hearing loss and they're also not hearing their music correctly so it's really a lose-lose
in that and then you know about 20 years ago musician earplugs came on the market and what's
exciting about them is they bring down the pitches equally so you have the correct perception of the
sound it's just lower any hearing protection they wear if they wear it correctly is going to protect
their hearing so I do I do want to say that but for many musicians they'll end up rejecting
it again if it takes out some pitches more than others there are even instances of like drummers
using the wrong kind of protection and they end up with wrist problems because they're actually
hitting their drums harder because they're trying to make up for that difference so they're very
affordable products that are musician plugs and What musician plugs if they're labeled that way
what they're saying to you is if you wear them correctly everything is going to still sound right
it'll have Fidelity it'll be correct in terms of the pitch relationships but it'll decrease
and it is important that people put the hearing protection incorrectly we always recommend you
reach over your head pull up on your ear that straightens your ear canal so you can really
put in the musician plug nice and deeply while you still can hold on to it so you can get it out that
makes your own voice sound more natural while you're wearing it and then it gives you better
better protection and then if you're worried about the fit or if it's really protecting you
an audiologist can put a microphone in your ear and actually measure the protection so we can tell
you if the frequencies are aligning correctly and we can tell you if it's actually reducing
sound for you we have these charts of of how quickly any different instrument user
will be have damaged hearing and drummers really immediately have damage typically so they do need
they definitely need to wear hearing protection full-time and they often need a higher level
of protection so that may mean getting a custom musician plug so then an audiologist puts silicone
in the ear gets the shape of the ear builds that and then there are different filters that can be
used so the drummers can use a higher filter to be safe ideally it would be great to have
a baseline hearing test because that's part of when you think of a singer really appreciates
their voice right vocal health is something they learn about you know in most music programs people
don't learn about hearing protection yet hearing is really part of their instrument in that sense
so having Baseline hearing testing is great that's covered by Insurance that's accessible to people
and then the audiologist can recommend hearing protection but musicians hearing protection is a
available over the counter and so if someone doesn't want to go down that path they should just
go ahead and protect their hearing they don't need to have had a hearing test they don't have to have
anything measured so I wouldn't want that to be a barrier they absolutely can start wearing hearing
protection we always want to be clear we're not saying music is dangerous or people shouldn't do
it and we just want to make it safe when we do that and then we approached the pit band when
um Brad Townsend joined us and and that was exciting because we went to make a proposal
to try to convince him and when we sat down he said why don't we have hearing protection
so that made that a quick meeting we highly encourage them to use it and we make sure that
at the beginning of the Year everyone has high quality hearing protection and then we also have
extras as the year goes on in case somebody loses theirs or forgets theirs when I came here I was
really surprised and impressed and happy that the Audiology Department approached me before I even
had a chance to approach them and we're lucky enough that the University of Pittsburgh they
bring us high quality hearing protection for the whole band every year and they come in and they
do a little presentation on why it's important and how to how to use it properly and how to use
it effectively and I can tell you again the here the drummers especially are religious
about it they they were theirs all the time and um the rest of the band like I said we encourage it
and make sure that we have it available for them they appreciated that we were we were offering the
hearing protection and wanted to do something for them to um keep their health and safety
in mind and I know they really appreciate that the Audiology department at Pitt was reaching
out to us and providing us with the with the protection we started with our middle schools
and high schools in the Pittsburgh Public Schools actually and we continue that's a free program for
the Pittsburgh Public Schools and then our suburbs got involved we have about 35 high schools now
that provide non-custom musician earplugs for their students and we go and teach them about
them if they want that information and then it's fun because when we work with the pit band and
Pitt you know provides hearing protection for for all the pit band players we meet the freshmen you
know one we say this is awesome that the pit band does this but we always have them raise their hand
if they're coming from high schools where they use hearing protection and it is rewarding that every
year more hands go up so that's that's good to see kids are the fastest growing group of people
with noise-induced hearing loss so that hopefully gets people's attention so we have to be thinking
about that and secondly all the animal data point to the fact that if kids have damage to their
hearing they end up having more damage over time so if you think of it it's like their hair cells
get damaged and that creates kind of an unhealthy environment in that part of the sensory organ and
more hair cells die out around them so you know there have been a number of Articles now I'm kind
of making us more aware of really thinking about protecting kids because they're going to end up
with more damage over time even if they've stopped listening to loud sounds it's going to continue
because of the original damage okay there was a lot of really great information here and if
you want to find out more from Dr Palmer we have a lot of other great tips that she shared with us on
our social media so definitely go follow us there for more great tips on musician hearing protection
also if you want to find out more about musician Wellness JW Pepper has created a dedicated page
to this cover covering all kinds of things we have articles and other great interviews coming out so
be sure to check out that great resource the link is in the description below along with a direct
link to the musician's hearing plug that was talked about in this video JW Pepper would like
to thank the University of Pittsburgh the school of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Dr Catherine
Palmer and Dr Brad Townsend the director of bands for the University of Pittsburgh their commitment
and advocacy for hearing protection is really amazing and the work that the school provides
for other local schools and getting awareness out there to young people is invaluable and not just
for young people I can say meeting Dr Palmer and hearing some of the things she said regarding even
protecting the hearing that you have as someone who has major hearing loss from not protecting
myself on the marching man field this has been great advice for me and I will certainly look to
protect the hearing that I have now I love music and I love teaching and I never want to miss out
on those things so we hope that you found this video helpful if you did please give us a thumbs
up remember to check out all the resources that we have below for musicians wellness and don't
forget to subscribe so you don't miss any of the new content that we have coming out at JW Pepper
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