Taking Good Care of Our Ears

Many of us pay no attention at all to our ears and to our hearing. We take it for granted that we will hear well at all times and that our ears require no special care. This is certainly not true. Since the middle ear is connected to the nose and throat through a channel called the eustachian canal, it is simple for an infection to travel from the nose and throat to the ear. And when an ear becomes infected, there may be loss of hearing. Quite a few things can be done to protect our ears and our hearing. Here are some of the important ones:

1. Tell your parents if you don’t think you are hearing as well as your playmates or schoolmates. Many conditions that cause loss of hearing can be corrected if they are treated quickly.

2. Tell your parents whenever you have an earache. It may be a simple thing to overcome, or it may mean the beginning of an ear infection. The sooner an ear infection is treated, the greater are the chances that you will avoid damage to your hearing.

3. Don’t blow your nose too hard when you have a cold. This can spread the infection from the nose to the ears.

4. Don’t keep sniffling up mucus when you have a cold, as this, too, may cause the spread of an infection from the nose to the ears. Blow your nose gently instead of sniffling.

5. Tell your parents if you are collecting a lot of wax in your ears. It may be necessary to visit a doctor who will remove it for you.

6. Don’t stick anything into your ears; you may damage the eardrum. The smallest thing a child should put in his ears is his elbow. See if you can do that!

7. Protect your ears whenever you can from extremely loud sounds. It has been found that damage to hearing can result from continued loud sounds. Did you know that musicians in bands that always play loudly can lose some of their hearing, and people who work in factories where the machinery constantly makes loud noises sometimes suffer loss of hearing?

Sound waves received by the external ear are transmitted through the ear canal and the middle ear to nerves in the inner ear, which send impulses to the brain. When the brain receives these impulses it translates them into words or sounds that we understand.

Some children lose a great deal of their ability to hear because of an infection that damages the bones in the middle ear. Others lose hearing because their nerve of hearing (the acoustic nerve) is damaged by disease. Such children should be taught lip reading. By watching other people’s lips as they speak, many unhearing people—children as well as adults— learn to “hear” with their eyes!

Classes in lip reading are given in special schools in almost every city in our country. The results of study in lip reading can be so remarkable that many people “hear through their eyes” almost as well as if their ears were perfectly healthy.

Unfortunately, children who are born without hearing cannot benefit from training in lip reading. Since they have never heard the sounds of talk in the first place, they cannot be taught what the lips are saying when they make their movements during speech.

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