gofer articles

Within today’s boisterous world of frequent distraction, very few people stop to consider the means through which they translate all of this audible stimuli: the ears; and fewer still take the proper steps to protect their ears when they ought to, even using so simple as ear protection plugs. Of course ear plugs sound like a silly, not entirely needed precaution in most conditions – and in a lot of cases, they aren’t necessary – but understanding the importance of your ears is key to protecting them.

Ears are obviously used for hearing and interpreting sound. Sound – which are waves of pressure traveling through a medium, whether it be air, water, or something else – is first “heard” when it is trapped by the external ear (which is the obvious part on either side of our head, and what we first think when we think of “ears”). These pressure waves, or sound, are then filtered through the outer parts of the ear until they interact with the ear drum and interior ear (those parts of the organ found inside of your skull), where they stimulate hair cells, delivering nervous signals to the brain. These signals are then construed as sound. Yes protecting supplies come in numerous forms.

Due to the physically miniscule and delicate nature of the ear, it is very susceptible to physically trauma, which can even be inflicted by the aggressive vibrations caused by excessive noise levels. Imagine a speaker system or a subwoofer: the way the speaker cones vibrate as they emit sound is very similar to the way the small bones and tissues of the inner ear vibrate as they are stimulated by sound. And same as a subwoofer or speaker can break under the stress of these vibrations at high volume, so too can the parts of the human ear. Sounds experienced at places like construction zones or rock concerts are very easily able to damage the ear over long intervals of exposure. By simply blocking such sounds from entering the ear, ear plugs can prevent this.

Other than protecting your actual capacity to hear, the protection provided by ear plugs also preserves another vital function of the ears that is much less clear: one’s sense of balance. In fact, balance is one of the two main reasons that mammals generally have two ears (the other is that two ears permit us to locate the source of sounds by localizing them, related to the way two working eyeballs permit depth perception). Deep inside the inner ear are the organs responsible for determining one’s orientation to gravity, and a sense of steadiness.

Tiny fluid filled sacks send nerve signals to the brain that interprets these signals to build a sense of physical orientation against the background environment. Since the fluid inside these sacks is subject to the identical laws of gravity as the rest of the body, the brain can interpret their orientation the same way you may if you observed a soda bottle half filled. Regardless of the angle you look at it, you can decide a sense of up and down by seeing in which direction gravity pulls the leftover fluid inside the bottle.