A Little Bit Louder, Please

Kathy Peck has some great memories of her days playing bass and singing with The Contractions, an all-female punk band. The San Francisco group developed a loyal following as it played hundreds of shows, and released two singles and an album between 1979 and 1985. Their music was fun, fast and loud. Too loud, as it turned out. After The Contractions opened for Duran Duran in front of thousands of screaming teeny-boppers at the Oakland Coliseum in 1984, Peck's ears were ringing for days. Then her hearing gradually deteriorated. "It got to the point where I couldn't hear conversations," says Peck, now in her 50s. "People's lips would move and there was no sound. I was totally freaked out."

Peck the punk rocker lived out one of her generation's musical fantasies two decades ago; Peck the hearing-impaired has been living out one of its fears ever since.

Over the years she has battled her problem, a combination of noise-induced hearing loss and a congenital condition (diagnosed after the traumatic concert), with a variety of strategies and interventions, including sign language, lip reading, double hearing aids and, eventually, surgery on the tiny bones in her middle ears. Today Peck, who used to cry with frustration at movies because she couldn't hear the dialogue, still has ringing in her ears (tinnitus) and mild hearing loss, but gets by without help.

Aging rockers aren't the only ones struggling with diminished hearing these days. More than 28 million Americans currently have some degree of hearing loss, from mild to severe, and the number is expected to soar in the coming years--reaching an astounding 78 million by 2030. While that looming surge is mostly a baby-boomer phenomenon, the threat of hearing loss--and the need for prevention--isn't limited to a single age group. We are all caught in the constant roar of the 21st century. It's the rare kid today who doesn't have wires snaking out of her ears as she rocks through the day to her own personal soundtrack. Televisions are bigger and louder than ever, and so are movie theaters. One study estimates that as many as 5.2 million children in the United States between 6 and 19 have some hearing damage from amplified music and other sources. If they don't take steps to protect their hearing, the iPod Generation faces the same fate as the Woodstock Generation. Or worse.

Thanks to their years of living loudly, many boomers are ahead of schedule when it comes to hearing loss, showing symptoms in their late 40s and 50s. (In the past, patients usually weren't diagnosed until their 60s or later.) "We're seeing hearing loss from noise develop at an earlier age than we used to," says Dr. Jennifer Derebery, immediate past president of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. "It's a huge problem." The good news: though hearing loss can't be reversed, reducing exposure to excessive noise, like quitting cigarettes, can improve your health and quality of life, no matter your age.

Of course, noise isn't the only culprit. "Even if you spent your life in the library, you wouldn't hear as well when you're 70 as you do when you're 20," says Dr. Robert Dobie, professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat) at the University of California, Davis. But who spent their lives in the library? Not Kathy Peck and her fans; not the folks riding jackhammers on road crews, and not the firefighters and cops dashing to the rescue with their sirens screaming. Even pediatricians have been known to develop hearing problems after years spent around crying babies. When you combine the excessive noise they have experienced at work, home and play with the natural effects of aging, boomers end up on the receiving end of what Dr. Peter Rabinowitz at the Yale School of Medicine calls a "double whammy that makes people much more symptomatic."