Questioning wearing Ear Plugs while riding

[mecsw500]

One thing I forgot to mention, hearing is only a Once in a Life-time thing. Yes, hearing aids help, but go into a noisy environment, shops, or a restaurant while wearing them & you hear everything; with natural hearing you are able to turn off to the external noises, with hearing aids in you can't - you just hear noise! I will vote yes for ear protection; one protect what you have or in my case what you have left, I can sit here and wish I wore hearing protection earlier for riding, but being in Infantry when I started, all we had was a cotton wool like stuff for our ears, not like the noise cancelling stuff you have today; but then you cannot wear it in other environments which destroy more hearing than a quick blat around on a bike.

So, protect what you have or have not lost as they cannot repair Tinnitus or induced hearing loss - Yet! So live life as much as you can, and Ryde as much as you can, and protect what you have! Hearing protection, yes.

That's my 20 cents worth, take it or leave it.

PS: when my Wife can't hear me, she turns the volume up to a deafening roar and I still say "What did you say? It's too noisy!" and then even the dog runs out... (sick OZZIE humour)

The current digital hearing aids have got a lot better at noise discrimination in places like restaurants and shops.

I can program mine with different modes to isolate specific frequencies to better resolve speech from the background noise. I just select the different modes with the button on the back of them.

Also, I can adjust things from the APP on my phone.

Hearing aids have come a long way - they seem to get better with each subsequent model - and they integrate better with iPhones certainly in recent years.

I've been using the Philips brand and have good luck with their performance in a wide range of scenarios.

The only thing is they don't Low Power Bluetooth connect with my helmet comms, so I have to take them out when my helmet is on, or they cause feedback with the comms system's microphone and speakers. Fortunately, the comms works well enough to hear my wife without having to have it too loud. I think the comms link does a good job of filtering outside of speech ranges to make it clearer.

I think I have moderate hearing loss. My wife (and everyone else) thinks I'm as deaf as a post.