Your hearing is based on tiny, sensitive structures deep inside your head. Exposure to loud noise can damage these structures, resulting in cumulative (it adds up over time) hearing loss.


Steps

1. Don't listen to loud music. Stay away from noisy engines and machinery. Limit your use of headphones, and keep the volume turned down when you use them!
2. Wear hearing protection when doing potentially hearing-damaging activities. These include mowing the lawn, working in a wood shop, firing a gun and more.
3. Remembet this: the noise of a gun firing is much louder than it seems on television. Wear hearing protection if you are planning to shoot anything.
4. Get earplugs. Foam earplugs are available at any drugstore. You squeeze the plug to compress it, then stick it in your ear. It will expand to fill your ear canal, muffling some sound. You will still be able to hear what's going on, just not as clearly. Earplugs only lower noise about 29 decibels. This is not enough to make you completely immune to really loud sounds.
5. Be very careful if you stick cotton buds into your ears to clean them. Don't put them in too far.

Tips

• If your eardrum is broken, you will feel very intense pain and you won't be able to hear anything on the side with the broken eardrum.

Warnings

• There is no cure for noise-related hearing damage. Hearing aids only ease the problem by magnifying sounds as they enter your ear. They are expensive and may not always work, so try to take care of your hearing and don't lose it.