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Originally Posted by Caturtle
I used to wear molded earplugs, but I kept losing them and got sick of paying for them again. (They never save the mold). I also used to wear earplugs everytime I rode the train.
I still wear them during practice if we are playing particularly loud, but I don't wear them that much anymore. I don't wear them on the train. I don't wear them at really good shows. I generally don't wear them unless I feel like my ear drums are rupturing.
People naturally go deaf as they get older. I don't know what everyone is saving their hearing for? I understand there is no reason to be reckless, but there is definitely no reason to be neurotic about it. You are going to lose your hearing whether you protect it or not.
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In american urban environments this is true, another huge factor is geneology. Our hearing mechanism has not evolved to keep up with our rapidly changing environment, especially urban life. Our ears have a protection mechanism designed to protect us from loud sounds, but this is only effective/functional based on our environment centuries ago. Say, from a tree falling, people yelling, etc (if we were nomadic, tribal, etc).
The reaction time of this mechanism is too slow for urban sounds (there are little muscles that stiffen up). By the time your ears react to a gun blast, the squeal of a train, a snare drum, any transient sound such as that, the damage has already been done. You feel like you've got cotton in your ears cuz your body is trying to protect your hearing, but by the time it reacts, those little cilia in your cochlea have been demolished already.
There are remote european farmers, etc who, at 80 years old, have hearing equivalent to an american teenager, because they are simply not exposed to the baroge of loud sounds we are, particularly in a large urban environment like Chicago. The ambient noise floor in the city is significantly higher than we are designed to tolerate; AND we experience moments of extreme SPL during rush hour, riding the train, etc. The point being, your comment that "It's going to happen anyway..." is based on American averages which combine not only age-related, but exposure-related factors.
End of rant
