Don’t wait until you can’t hear clearly to regret it

Habit 1: Wearing earphones to sleep

Many young people have the habit of wearing earphones before bed to listen to music or podcasts to help them sleep, and often they fall asleep while listening, leaving the earphones playing all night.

。

When earphones are inserted into the ear canal, the sound energy becomes highly concentrated and acts directly on the eardrum. After falling asleep, your auditory system does not rest; it continues to be passively and continuously exposed to sound waves. Prolonged excessive stimulation can lead to metabolic disturbances in the inner ear hair cells and ischemia-hypoxia, resulting in irreversible noise-induced hearing damage.

Recommendation:

Quit the habit of sleeping with earphones on. If you need white noise to sleep, use a small speaker placed by the pillow and set a timer to turn it off (for example, 30 minutes).

️

Follow the "60-60" rule: keep earphone volume at no more than 60% of the maximum and limit continuous use to no more than 60 minutes.

Habit 2: Picking your ears carelessly

Ear picking is probably one of many people's "pleasure points," especially the brief sense of relief after using a cotton swab for deep cleaning—it can be addictive.

Earwax (cerumen) lubricates the ear canal, has antibacterial properties, and protects the eardrum. Additionally, using cotton swabs to pick the ear will likely push surface earwax deeper, and over time this can form a hard cerumen plug, which instead leads to hearing loss, tinnitus, and infection.

More dangerously, even a slight mistake can injure the skin of the ear canal, or even perforate the eardrum, causing severe pain, bleeding, and permanent hearing damage.

The ear has a self-cleaning function; normally after bathing you only need to wipe the external ear canal opening with a towel.

If you truly feel you have a lot of earwax or itchy ears, please go to the hospital and have a doctor help clean them—this is the safe method.

Habit 3: Increasing the volume in noisy environments

In noisy environments such as subways, buses, and busy urban areas, we unconsciously raise the volume to hear the content in our earphones or to make phone calls.

For every 5 dB increase in background noise, you will instinctively raise your device volume by about 3 dB to mask it. In the subway (noise approximately 80–90 dB), you may need to set your earphone volume above 100 dB to hear clearly—this volume is equivalent to a chainsaw operating next to your ear! Long-term exposure to such high-intensity sound causes inner ear hair cells to die in large numbers, permanently.

Do not wear earphones in noisy environments. If you must use them, choose noise-cancelling headphones, which can effectively block ambient noise and allow you to hear clearly at lower volumes.

When answering calls, try to use the handset mode, or cover your ear and the microphone with your hand to reduce environmental interference.

Once hearing damage occurs, it is mostly permanent and irreversible. It is not like myopia, which can be corrected with glasses. Protecting hearing actually starts with changing these small habits we are used to.

I hope that after reading this article you will take immediate action and share it with family and friends so that together we can protect this important window to the world.

Note: This article is intended to provide popular science information. If you have specific symptoms, please seek medical attention promptly.