Hearing damage in defensive situations?

[gezzer]

Huh?

 

[mljdeckard]

roflmao

 

[sicario103]

Posted by Eleven Mike

sicario103: never afraid of the flames.

lol. burn baby burn

Posted by hso

Please discontinue this training practice immediately.

Yeah, I think I will. Never hurts to be on the safe side. We third world countries lol.

Posted by Soybomb

sicario103 - Have you had a hearing test lately? We can't always tell when our hearing has been damaged on our own.

No, I haven't had a hearing test lately. I know its hard to tell on your own but with what I can tell; my hearing is like it always been. And I been exposed to alot of loud noises from alot of shooting, loud music in car/clubs, lots and lots of close range firework explosions to the annoying screams from my girl when she's mad lol. But seriously, I'm going to take the advise to heart and be on the safe side.

 

[Eleven Mike]

In 1995, I went to a Nine Inch Nails/Marilyn Manson concert

And you admit this?

 

[Mr. Ouchie]

When you can't hear someone breaking it, it affects your HD strategy.

I've tinnitus and sometimes it's awful. It's more from playing in too many bands with sadistic drummers than anything else, because I always wear ear protection when shooting. Or even when running the vacuum, now. My dad (ex-military) has it much worse, sometimes he can't sleep at night because of the ringing in his ears.

And there is nothing that can be done about it.

 

[mljdeckard]

eleven mike-

NIN sucked, I hoped they would play their older stuff. That day was the first time I had ever heard of Marilyn Manson, he didn't actually play, he got banned, he just came out and whined. I haven't touched either of them since.

The Jim Rose Sideshow Circus made me laugh my butt off though.

When I saw Van Halen (twice) and INXS there, they just played too loud, and it all got lost. Other bands that don't play as loud do ok there.

19 kilo/97 echo

 

[luzyfuerza]

A technician who worked for me once had significant hearing loss and tinnitus. He said that the toughest thing about the condition was that it cut him off from the people he loved.

He said that when he turns up the TV enough that he can hear, the loud sound drives others away. His hearing difficulties cause him to miss the fine inflections in words and voices that communicate much of the emotional content of what we say. He found that when people have to speak more loudly than normal to reach him, they seem to say as little as necessary. He also said that he really missed hearing things which happened behind him, or to one side...where his eyes couldn't help him interpret the limited sound information that was reaching his brain.

He also said that hearing aids amplified both what he wanted to hear as well as the unwanted sounds that are always around us. They didn't help him at all.

He illustrated the effect of tinnitus by turning on a TV with white noise, turning up the volume, and then talking normally. Imagine going through life with that kind of noise always around you. Really tough.

He lost his hearing as a result of exposure to industrial noise. Gunfire does the same thing.

I'm convinced...I always wear plugs when I shoot. I add muffs if I'm shooting something that doesn't require a good cheek meld.

I like being able to relate to the people around me that I love.

 

[KC&97TA]

Originally Posted by 11M
On-topic: I have often heard that adrenaline has some sort of effect on the ears, such that shooters don't hear the report when they are in fear for their life and the ears do not sustain damage. Does anyone know whether this is true? [\quote]

This is some what true; my first 5 fire fights in Iraq involved small arms and remote exposeure to the M2 and MK19, my ears never rang till the 6th fire fight which was drawn out and extreemly loud.

In tactical breaching "smart hearing protection", ie, the electronic muffs are used or an ear plug and radio ear piece are used. In an indoor shooting situation, the noise is reflected off of walls and ceilings, if there's carpet and furniture some of the noise waves are obsorbed, but a shoot house is extreemly loud even on the outside. This type of "SWAT style shooting" is done over and over for training, which leads to very few actuall entrys and would most deffinetly cause major hearing loss.

For the average everyday person, fireing a 15 round mag off in a HD situation, is going to cause a minor loss of hearing, that will most likely go away after a few days. I keep my electronic muffs near my guns, but so far haven't put them on when I've heard bumps in the night, just like I haven't put on safety glasses when I hear strange noises at night.

If you're only planning to shoot 15 rounds of a small caliber or a few rounds of 12 ga, I think you could consider the damage minimal... if you plan on getting into a shoot out like in the movie HEAT or the Hollywood Bank Robberies or shoot Zombies from the ridgeline with a M2, I'd wear the ear protection and eye protection too.

 

[Zen21Tao]

How do you keep from having permenant or even temporary ear abuse in a gunfight (imagine if you are in an enclosed house or car)

1. Ask your attacker to wait for you to put your plugs in then draw down on him.

2. Use a suppressor on you carry gun.

 

[GEM]

I recall that there is no validity to statement that stress protects the ears. Not hearing the sound is an attentional or cognitive effect and not a physiological one. There has been some statements that muscles in the ear, blah, blah - but damage is from destruction of hair cells or receptors.

Some damage is not detectable unless you get a high tech exam - by the time you hear ringing you probably had a load of damage if you've shot unprotected a bit.

To do what Doug did is a prime exampe of the wrong thing to do.

 

[Prince Yamato]

the number of shots in home defense- probably 1-10 - won't cause permanent damage unless say, the shotgun goes off right next to your ear. Don't practice w/o using hearing protection though... bad idea.

 

[Lonestar]

Hearing loss in a Self Defense situation is better than the outcome of just not having a firearm.

I have some minor hearing loss from concerts and listening to a lot of heavy metal in the 80's. I lost my hearing to bands like Metallica played things call Guitars and drums, something that requires some talent to play. You young whipper snappers lost your hearing to some techno computerized music button pusher

Shooting guns at the range, I would wear hearing protection.

 

[2400]

How do you keep from having permenant or even temporary ear abuse in a gunfight (imagine if you are in an enclosed house or car)

There's nothing you can do to prevent it. If you're involved in any kind of gunfight or shooting this will not be at the top of your list of things to worry about.

 

[.38 Special]

There has been some statements that muscles in the ear, blah, blah - but damage is from destruction of hair cells or receptors.

I think I'm the source of the blah, blah part.

Essentially, you have three tiny little bones that connect the eardrum to the inner ear. The inner ear is where the hair cells are located. Eardrum vibrates, bones carry the vibration to the fluid-filled inner ear, hair cells connect to nerve endings where electrical impulses are generated and sent to the brain. Grossly simplified, but you get the picture.

The three little bones are connected to a pair of little muscles. In response to very loud noises the muscles contract, limiting the motion of the bones and thus the amount of energy making it into the inner ear.

The main problem is that these muscles can't respond to an impulse sound like gunfire. You may get some protection from this reflex after the intitial shot, but some damage will already have occurred. Moreover, the reflex isn't really capable of effectively dealing with 170+ dB sounds of gunfire.

There is some research that indicates this reflex can be triggered by stress other than from sound; things like extreme fear and/or excitement. This may play a role in auditory exclusion, but the jury is still out.

</lecture>

 

[.38 Special]

the number of shots in home defense- probably 1-10 - won't cause permanent damage unless say, the shotgun goes off right next to your ear.

This, unfortunately, can't be said with any certainty or even likelihood.

 

[Frandy]

On original post: Nope, in a SD situation, you do what you can and must, and then you accept the auditory results.

On the rest: Others have added their stories and opinions. Mine...

If you are shooting without hearing protection, good luck amigos. I'm 58. When 18 and shooting my Garand at an outdoor range, we were told to cease firing so we could all check targets. I (foolishly) removed my hearing protection and a shooter two stalls over fired his black powder rifle. My left ear began ringing and hasn't stopped ringing since. Tinnitus. For life. And though I always wear hearing protection when I shoot, I listen to music, walk and drive in cities, hear chainsaws and leaf blowers...you know...all the modern conveniences of life that are around us. My ears are hardly the better for any of this. And yeah, it's hard at parties and it's a pain in the butt for my wife when we watch TV and I want it louder. The hearing damage affects my everyday life.

So, do what you want. But, don't fool yourself...

 

[Eleven Mike]

I lost my hearing to bands like Metallica played things call Guitars and drums, something that requires some talent to play. You young whipper snappers lost your hearing to some techno computerized music button pusher

I don't understand this complaint. Why is a musician less talented because he doesn't use the same set of skills as some other? Does a rock guitarist with an electric guitar necessarily have more skill than someone who uses other electronic equipment to produce music? Can Mr. Lonestar or his Metallic heroes produce "electronic" music that anyone would wish to listen to?

 

[GEM]

Lecture mode on - while muscle contractions might have some small effect in auditory exclusion - it is not the major effect in perceptual narrowing or selective attention.

Folks can choose to focus attention on a location in auditory space to the exclusion of another message in auditory space. Since determining auditory space is based on using both ears for localization cues - weakening the signal in an ear through a muscle contraction can't explain these more powerful effects.

The phenomena called auditory exclusion are really selective attention effects based on allocating capacity to a message and/or selective filtering of the message.

The bottom line as in our previous lecture - auditory exclusion or selective attention isn't going to protect your ears from damage of the initial impulse pressure wave. That's one of the arguments against electric earmuffs - the first impulse can still cause damage before the filter kicks in.

Anyway - one may have to fire guns without protection in an emergency - but do it repeatedly and on purpose is not a good substitute for high SATs.

 

[pax]

Scrambling on my way out the door, but found this in my email box just now:

... he can take N Acetyl Cysteine- about 600mg each morning and each night. It will help to reduce the possibility for permanent damage. Tell him to see an audiologist immediately, they can inject him with steroids that may save whatever frequency of his hearing that was affected. The problem is that naturally occuring toxins are released in the ear when we hear damagingly loud noises- and the N Acetyl Cysteine is one of very few things that can neutralize those toxins and help the hair cells in your ear to heal. Be sure to tell him that he needs to talk to his doctor before he does ANY of this, because he could have an adverse reaction to the NAC. Magnesium helps too, in proper dosages. Tell him to check out thehearingpill.com also. Again, he needs to see a doctor.

Source is an unknown friend.

pax

 

[hso]

"Hearing Pill"

I attended a seminar this year on hearing protection and one of the chairs was a researcher with the US Army. She and I talked about hearing damage due to small arms fire and she touched upon this dietary supplement N Acetyl Cysteine testing for preserving hearing. She said that perliminary data looks good, but only for those individuals just exposed. It doesn't seem to have any beneficial effects for folks that were exposed to noise more than 10 day previously. You'd take it before and right after noise exposure and it may reduce the damage you'd take. The study isn't expected to be completed for another couple of years.

 

[0din]

There was a prof. at the college I attended that regularly wore clam-shell type hearing protection anytime he was outside. Even on the (relatively) quiet trip from class to class. He was a nutjob.

I never had a class with him, but one of my friends did, and he said the prof. claimed that since humans would never encounter in a natural environment the dB levels of the modern world, he felt it necessary to protect his hearing. Furthermore, he claimed that when "man freed himself of pointless technology, and returned to nature" he'd remove his hearing protection, ready to enjoy the benefits of protecting it all these years.

So I guess having 20 years of poor hearing while using the protectors is an even trade for post-apacolyptic auditory superiority?

Ladies and gentlemen, the tenured college professor. (don't get to close to the cage!)

Professor Kaczynski?

 

[ETXhiker]

MLJDeckard said:

A 100-watt Marshall guitar stack will do more damage than a 1000 Watt Ampeg bass amp stack.

No kidding. That was me in the seventies and eighties. The top cabinet was usually unplugged, but with the 100watt (later a 50watt as I tried to bring it down a notch) it was murder on the ears. I play through much smaller amps now, but I have tinnitus very bad. Sounds like dozens of high pitched crickets singing. An electric guitar is in about the same midrange register as the human voice so most of loss is right where you don't want it. I can hear okay in a quiet room, but if there's any background noise, like loud machinery, everybody hears what was said except me. My wife, thankfully, is very patient, because she has to repeat herself quite a bit.

Shooting hasn't helped my ears, but I've always tried to wear protection whenever possible. Even outdoors, a centerfire rifle or worse, a pistol will destroy your hearing over time without plugs or a headset. At present, there is no easy way to get it back. Self defense is one thing, but never practice with uncovered ears.

 

[Brad Johnson]

I've put my two cents in on this before (several times) but let's examine it from a purely tactical point of view:

1) Finding and inserting/putting on hearing protection takes time .. time you could be using for better things like calling 911, exiting an exterior window/door, making sure your loved ones are out of danger, or making your way to a safe room. The difference between life and death is measure in exactly the time it takes for a bullet to traverse the distance between the bad guy's gun and your body. Take advantage of every moment.

2) Inserting/putting on hearing protection usually takes both hands to be relatively quick. If you have both hands on your plugs/muffs, you don't have them to used with your gun or your phone. If you use one hand you will probably be fumbling around trying to get your protection in/on in the dark, diverting your concentration away from the immediate threat to your well-being. You're going to look great laying there with one earplug in, your gun laying on the counter, and a knife in your chest.

3) Having hearing protection on has just rendered your primary low-light sense (your hearing) useless. In your home (the most likely point of encounter) you are intimately familiar with your surroundings. Most people can tell in an instant where a sound came from and what it was that generated it. It allows you that much more advantage. How good is it to save your hearing if you can't hear the bad guy sneaking up on you from the other room?

Now the advantage of having your hearing protection on in case you are forced to fire in order to save a life:

1) You keep from having potential hearing damage. That is, presuming you didn't die because the bad guy caught you before you got out of the house, caught you without your weapon in your hands, or caught you because you flat couldn't hear them.

The choice is clear - it is better to be a little deaf than a little dead. But for those too dense to dense to understand, I will state it more plainly.

"When your life is in danger, hearing protection is the least of your worries."

Or even more directly...

"Don't f*** around sticking sh*t in your ears when your life is on the line!!"

Brad

 

[Geronimo45]

Not worth the time putting on hearing protection. I've shot off about 500 rounds of .45 without ear protection, and I'm not deaf... I did it outdoors, though. Your ears will most assuredly ring for a few hours after, but you'll probably live to whine about it. No experience with magnum pistols, though.
IMO, you've got better chances of blowing your eardrums with pistols than a rifle or shotgun... may not be much decibel difference, but one's a lot closer to you than the other.
If you put on big, fuzzy, pink muffs, you might scare the BG off, though.

 

[Brad Johnson]

Hearing protection

As an addition, and for clarification of the above post...

When shooting, not taking the time to wear hearing protection any time OTHER than a life threatening situation is just plain dumb.

Brad