When hearing is worsened due to illness, does listening to loud music that doesn’t sound loud at the time still cause damage?
In: 34
Yes. The loud music is doing damage to the structures in your ears that facilitate hearing.
One of the likely causes of the hearing loss from the illness is inflammation causing problems to the parts of the ear that pick up the sound. Basically the little components that shake and send the signals to the brain can’t move as easily, so the sound is reduced.
When you blast loud music or any sound into your ear you are doing damage to these same structures. The powerful sounds hit the little bones, and the little hairs in your ear. The strong sound shakes the bones strongly and can cause wear on the delicate bones, reducing the sensitivity. The structures that line the little hairs in your ear canal get shaken, and can open up little gaps in the structures, causing them to not work so well in the future.
In your example things can be doubly bad. The inflammation is holding the bones and hairs still, and the loud music is hammering away at those same structures. The inflammation is reducing some of the built-in protections you have.
I was a guy that used to work at concerts with loud music and then went to a lot of ear doctors after that.
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