The following list is not complete because our knowledge of what the ears do is incomplete.
Under each heading, the examples are not comprehensive but help us to think about what
kinds of events can have a negative impact on our hearing and, therefore, on the brain and
on other parts of the body influenced by the ears. Focused Listening™ offers a therapeutic
response to these various kinds of assault on the ear mechanism.
Physical
Assaults
Exposure to Harmful Sounds, such as loud, low-frequency, or sudden high-frequency sounds, Some people are hypersensitive to certain high-frequency sounds to the point of feeling intense pain. Infants and unborn children have extremely delicate ears and should never be exposed to loud sounds. For adults, dangerously loud sounds include jet engines, some professional singers’ voices, a boom box, fireworks, firearms, bombs, and various kinds of machinery.
Head Trauma. Any kind of blow to the head, whether from a sporting accident, auto crash, fall, impact from a fist or bat or other imple- ment that moves the bone plates of the head, may over-extend the stapedius muscle, which is attached at one end to the bony cavity of the middle ear and at the other end to the third bone of hearing (stapes). The stapedius muscle is about an eighth of an inch long, so
it does not take a great deal of movement of the head plates or of the jaw to stretch the stapedius muscle. Like other muscle sprains, it may be brought back to tonic health with gentle, persistent exercise such as Focused Listening™.
Foreign Objects in the Ear, pushed into the ear canal, such as cotton-tipped swabs,
toy parts, food, or other small things.
Surgical Trauma. Surgery to the ear, such as inserting tiny tubes through the eardrum
to facilitate drainage through the Eustachian tubes, can open the middle ear to further
sources of infection. Surgeries for tumors in the area of the ear may permanently damage the middle ear muscle. Some surgeries remove the middle ear mechanism. An industrial accident that was neglected medically and ultimately destroyed the victim’s middle ear also destroyed his sanity and led to his suicide. “Cochlear implant,” which does not actually implant a cochlea into the ear but a mechanized substitute for audio-processing, also can harm the middle ear.
Chemical
Assaults
Toxic Airborne Chemicals, inhaled through the nose or mouth, can pass through the Eustachian tubes into the middle ear where they affect the tiny stapedius muscle.
Toxic fumes include tobacco and cannabis smoke, burning petroleum products such
as gasoline fumes or burning rubber tires, or burning oil wells.
Alcoholic beverages may directly affect the middle ear muscles through the Eustachian tubes before they further affect them through the blood stream.
Other substances that can harm ears include ototoxic antibiotics , many or most psychiatric drugs, hallucinogens, steroids (such as prednisone), muscle relaxants, anesthetics, opioids, and “recreational” drugs such as ecstasy, LSD, ketamine, amphetamines, benzodiazapine, fentanyl, and others.
Toxic Substances, eaten (ingested) or injected, that affect muscle and reach the middle ear through the blood stream. it is important to remember that some people have inherited weaker middle ear muscles than other people, which make them more vulnerable to such chemicals. Even twins can have genetic differences. Thus, a twin boy who was vaccinated at the same time as his brother had no reaction to the vaccine(s) but the brother had a severe reaction that required an emergency room visit and left him with symptoms of ear damage in the autism range. [Personal Communication] While most children tolerate vaccinations, some small and under-reported percentage have adverse reactions.
Hormonal
Changes
Whether brought on by surgery, by a tumor (such as a pituitary tumor), by aging, or by hormone treatments, hormonal changes can affect hearing. The role of the ear,
especially of the right ear, in regulating neurological systems that reach the para-
sympathetic nerves, has not been noticed but not fully studied. Clinical experience suggests, however, that the regulatory role of the ears can be enhanced with music therapies.
In one case of a child with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, the mother noticed a change in her young daughter’s psychosis symptoms within a week of using Focused Listening™. The treatment was interrupted due to social circumstances, but the brief experiment suggests further studies could be worthwhile.
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Oxygen
Deprivation
The loss of the Oxygen supply, which can affect an infant during a difficult birth, can cause hearing loss. Ironically, too much oxygen in a neonatal incubator also can affect hearing as well as sight.
Insufficient oxygen in polluted air can harm people who exercise outside in it. On the other hand, failing to get enough exercise also can deprive the ear of the oxygen it needs to function fully.
people exercising
out of doors in polluted air, carbon monoxide poisoning, near drowning, near suffocation,
people who do not get enough exercise,
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Infections
Certain foods and beverages that carry yeasts or bacteria can coat the back of
the throat and migrate into the Eustachian tubes to the middle ear, such as yogurt and
other fermented foods.
Infected tonsils easily infect the middle ear through the Eustachian tubes and have created ear damage in the range from chronic fatigue to epilepsy.
Infections may be viral, bacterial, or yeast. They may be water-borne and enter the ears, nose, or mouth while immersed in polluted water; airborne and picked up while breathing through the nose or mouth; or may enter
the ear, nose, or mouth from the hands, from eating utensils, and so on.
Sound
Deprivation
Environmental Sound Deprivation can occur when people are isolated, even in a city, such as when students study in the library stacks day in and day out. More obviously, people living in remote or wilderness or even rural areas usually do not have enough high-frequency sound in their surroundings. People who work alone at home, including home- makers, religious in cloistered monastic communities, hermits, people who isolate themselves for whatever reason, seniors in nursing homes, inmates in jails or other penal institutions especially those in solitary confinement, usually are sound-deprived.
Sound deprivation can very quickly cause psychosis because the left-brain has lost the
energy stream it needs to maintain dominance. That phenomenon is produced in
sound-proof rooms and isolation chambers, sometimes for experiments but also in hyperbaric chambers and during certain medical tests.
Aging. The gradual weakening of muscle as part of the aging process, as well as
from the cumulative effects of any of the previous forms of assault over the person’s
lifetime, can affect the tonic condition of the middle ear muscles, causing behavioral symptoms. Focused Listening™ has reversed the symptoms of dementia or has delayed the onset of dementia in certain cases of lifelong ear muscle weakness and is likely more effective for dementia than the binaural treatments currently in use.