One Day Without Sound Raises Hearing Loss Awareness

Most of us take our hearing for granted. In fact, many people who have gone deaf admit that they didn’t fully appreciate their ability to hear until it was taken away. But now, the Miracle-Ear Foundation and its partners are promoting an event designed to prevent permanent hearing loss by artificially simulating deafness for a single day.

No Sound for a Day

One Day Without Sound is a daylong event where participants use noise-canceling headphones or earplugs to take away their ability to hear for one day. Obviously, one of the goals of the event is to highlight the importance of hearing in our everyday lives and to give people a sense of the challenges associated with hearing loss. But the organizers actually have much broader goals in mind.

The main purpose of One Day Without Sound is to raise awareness about ways to prevent hearing loss. Believe it or not, the vast majority of hearing loss isn’t genetic. Most people who lose their hearing do so because they’ve exposed themselves to harmful levels of noise, resulting in what’s known as noise-induced hearing loss.

Encouraging Hearing Protection

Noise-induced hearing loss is a growing problem around the world, especially with teens and young adults. Recently, the World Health Organization estimated that roughly one billion people under the age of 40 are on track to suffer some degree of hearing loss due to unsafe listening practices.

So what exactly causes noise-induced hearing loss? Put simply, noise-induced hearing loss is caused by exposing your auditory senses to sounds that are too loud. Once sound reaches a certain decibel level, it actually causes damage to your ears, and if that damage is severe enough, the damage can be permanent.

One of the goals of One Day Without Sound is to educate people about the types of activities that can cause noise-induced hearing loss. Some of the most common culprits include listening to music on your headphones at a high volume, regularly attending loud concerts, hanging out at overly crowded bars or nightclubs and working around heavy machinery without ear protection.

Generally speaking, if you turn off your headphones or walk out of a venue and there’s ringing in your ears, then you’ve likely just damaged your hearing.

The good news though is that noise-induced hearing loss is very preventable. If you pay attention to noise levels and limit your exposure to high-decibel sounds, then there’s a good chance that you’ll never have to go a day without hearing—unless, of course, you participate in One Day Without Sound.

If you or someone you know would like to learn more about hearing loss and how to treat it, please feel free to schedule a consultation or contact one of our representatives today!