Fundamentals of Hearing

Krunal Vakharia
2025-12-09T12:53:12+01:00

Ever wondered how your ears work? Here’s a quick guide to all you need to know.

Mere

Introduction

Your ears remember

Remember the first time you went to a hopping nightclub? What about the best rock concert you ever saw? Those great memories live on – sometimes in unexpected ways. It’s possible your ears “remember” those thumping experiences to this day, because over time loud noises can contribute to hearing loss. There are other causes, for sure, but prolonged or repeated exposure to loud sounds is a key contributor to hearing loss.

“Most of us will come to experience some form of hearing loss — a completely normal condition, and one of the fastest growing and most common in our society.”

Why should we pay attention to that? Because hearing loss has also been proven to contribute to cognitive decline, depression, falls and even dementia. Throw in social isolation, frustration and employment problems and that’s a complex bundle of outcomes.

While this sounds bleak, it needn’t be, because there are things you can do to protect your hearing and to improve it if you’re starting to experience hearing loss. The important thing is not to put your head in the sand about it! (Hey, even rock stars and DJs experience hearing loss and many address it with pretty slick hearing technology.)

Hearing, simplified

Let’s back this up with a brief look at how hearing works, how it changes over time and what you can do about it. Hearing involves three main parts of the ear. Here’s a simplified explanation:

Outer ear

⁠⁠Collects sound waves and sends them via the ear canal to the ear drum. The ear drum separates the outer ear from the middle ear. The eardrum vibrates incoming sound waves and sends them to the three smallest bones in your body, which reside in the middle ear.

Middle ear

⁠⁠Three tiny bones amplify the sound vibrations and send them to the cochlea in the inner ear. The cochlea contains thousands of tiny hair cells.

Inner ear

The hair cells bend and transform the vibrations into electrical sounds that the brain can make sense of.

Take good care

For most people, hearing loss is a natural part of aging and happens gradually. Age-related hearing loss isn’t the same as trying to hear something or someone with the volume turned down: it’s more a case of certain spoken sounds — like s, t, sh and th — becoming harder to decipher. (Did you know? Consonants are spoken at a higher frequency than vowels, and that’s what makes then harder to tell apart.) The result is that speech can become “muddied.”

Hearing loss can also be caused by ear infections, genetic conditions, injury and (cue the music) prolonged exposure to noise. Continued exposure to sounds 90 decibels (dB) and above damages hearing by essentially flattening those tiny hair cells in the inner ear. For comparison’s sake, a rock concert clocks in at about 110 dB, a night club at 120 dB and, in case you’re contemplating it, a rocket launch pad at 180 dB.

Avoiding exposure to these kinds of loud noises is the number-one thing you can do to protect your hearing. If you can’t, then wear good hearing protection. Whether you’re at a concert or mowing the lawn, all the cool kids unabashedly have something in or on their ears these days. You’ll fit right in!

Other proactive steps you can take to minimize hearing loss are to keep volume levels down when you’re wearing headphones or ear buds to a level that allows you to still hear conversations around you. Limit the time you use headphones and ear buds and take regular breaks in places where there are loud noises. It’s not a bad idea to keep a set of inexpensive foam ear plugs handy so if you can’t avoid noise you can pop these in for some protection and relief.

Ear love

Ears are pretty awesome works of anatomical design. They perform complex and demanding tasks for us, and we can repay the favor by taking simple steps to protect them. Show your ears a little love and you’ll reap the benefits of the healthiest hearing possible down the road.

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