Riding Dirtbikes — Will I Get a Tinnitus Spike?

Riding dirtbikes has always been a passion of mine and regardless of what happens I’m never going to let it go. However due to having tinnitus this obviously affects my passion for riding dirtbikes (around an exhaust without ear protection can reach 110dB!).

Anyways a few months ago I went riding multiple times with just my helmet as ear protection and everything was fine.

Today I went for a ride and wore earplugs most the time (was really uncomfortable as my moving helmet kept moving them in and out). During my last ride I rode a more quiet quad bike (my dad's one) and noticed the sound was absolutely ROARING in my ears (wind and sound of engine).

This was quite scary and I decided to stop after 10-20 minutes. Was this because I’ve been avoiding sound for a long time and not used to it? Also will I get a spike?

 

Nobody can predict what your ears can handle. It's up to you what you are willing to risk. I get temporary spikes after vacuuming, one of my friends is still going to concerts and hasn't had any worsening in years. The catch is that you will only know after.

If you do get a spike, try not to go into panic mode, temporary spikes can last from hours to months. Some suggests prednisone in the case of a bad noise exposure, but I think it's quite problematic during the pandemia, so if you don't have anything better, take magnesium, NAC and curcumin.

 

Thanks for the response, what’s prednisone?

 

When you start hitting a wall with a hammer, it takes some time before you get to see the objects on the other side of the wall.

No, it was because you got exposed to noise that was too loud for your ears to handle. What you are describing IS a spike. The question now is whether this spike will be permanent. The good news is that most spikes are temporary (but they could take months to fade). The bad news is that there is a chance that if you keep ignoring those warning signals from your body, eventually your spike will become permanent. As long as you are ok with doing the time (living with much louder tinnitus for the rest of your life [assuming no cure is found]), it's ok to do the crime (ride loud motorbikes for several hours).

Its a drug that Might minimize the damage. Note that it can have serious side effects, and this is why doctors are normally reluctant to prescribe it.

 

I ride a 411cc dualsport thumper; it is also around 110 dB at redline, at the exhaust.

I don't redline it much and I always wear foam plugs; if they are fully and correctly inserted, your helmet shouldn't knock them about (if it is, they're not in far enough).

This hasn't seemed to cause me any trouble over the years, but I limit my riding, and take Bill's hammer analogy to heart.

 

I wouldn't push my luck.
Take care of your ears.

 

I would give up the dirtbikes. Unfortunately, it's just not safe for you anymore.

 

When I ride my Vespa the noise of the wind can be quite loud in my helmet. Not even earplugs, I use Mac's silicone, will block all the noise. Ocassionally get a temporary increase in the volume of my T, but it always goes back to normal.

I is very unlikely I would quit riding.

 

If we're told we have to quit live music for at least a year because of tinnitus...

And dirt bikes are as loud as a live concert...

What do you think?

 

"one year" seems arbitrary; also, playing live music amped may well exceed the decibel levels you get from dirtbikes, depending a lot on the band, the bike and the rider.

 

Two thoughts.

First, you should get customized high-quality earplugs. They'll be comfortable, stay in your ear, and your helmet won't mess with them. There's several companies that do this. If you're interested, I can give you a recommendation for one I like.

Second, how bad is your tinnitus? For some, it's mild and no big deal. For others, it's severe and disabling. If you're experiencing or at risk of severe tinnitus, giving up a hobby is a no-brainer, because the alternative is an inability to focus, sleep, relax, function, and live your best life. Is a hobby, even one you're passionate about, worth sacrificing all that?

On the other hand, if your tinnitus is tolerable and the risk reasonable, then it boils down to logistics - figure out what adjustments you need to make, like custom earplugs, limiting exposure, etc.

In either case, good luck!

 

I've decided to wait at least one year before considering returning to live music, based on comments from people like @Bill Bauer and also on the trajectory of my own recovery.

It could be one year, it could be two. Poor old Pete Townshend had to take a 15-year break from The Who.

I'm hoping for the best, but prepared for the worst.

Sadly I may have to avoid certain types of bands and musicians on a permanent basis. Acoustic music may still be an option.

 

Hey Bud. Hope all is good.

I know you said you don’t ride as much lately.

But from your experience - when you were careful to correctly install your ear protection - would you still get headaches etc. after riding a street legal 4 stroke dirt bike with AfterMarket exhaust / no Catatalytic converter - after a couple hours non-stop with some high RPMs thrown in?

Can you even really hear low/moderate RPMs with the protection - is it even bothersome?

Does helmet movement dislodge quality earplugs or just the cheap ones?

Getting the 2022 CRF450RL. It comes OEM with one of the quietest bike exhausts on the road, quieter than the 300 at idle - but it’s 14 pounds that is slung high and back - with a Catalytic converter that is constantly scorching hot.

Going to ride it stock and still use earplugs just for wind - but if I’m going to be wearing max ear protection anyway, I would kind of like to lose the 14 pounds for a 5 pounder - but might never be able to do that because of you know what.

Thanks man. I hope you are hanging in there and everyone is good.

 

If your tinnitus is noise-induced and/or reactive, then you'll be fortunate to get a "spike"; more likely you'll just have permanently worse tinnitus.

I'd quit while I was ahead if I were you.

 

Great advice.

Thanks.

If you’re still liking those earplugs, I would appreciate the referral.

I’ve already struggled thru all the things you have mentioned and all the things you have not.

My ears are destroyed with severe tinnitus - and my life has drastically changed - but I’m over really caring anymore.

My ears were initially compromised from noise over-exposure and then strong medication took advantage of that and the tinnitus began.

By the time I figured out which meds were causing it and then weaning off them all - it was way way too late.

But oddly enough reasonable noise levels have never caused me any spikes permanent or otherwise.

I realize that sounds bold - but I was suffering thru two serious permanent spikes a week for over 2 years from meds.

No exaggeration.

Noise never caused a one.

I’m so happy to have finally slowed the progression that I’m playing reasonable electric guitar again at TV volume and going to try riding a bike again but with a very tame 76 dB exhaust at idle and only 82 dB at moderate RPM - while using maximum ear protection.

I don’t want to hear about any bone conduction nonsense. That does not scare me in the least after what I’ve already suffered thru and came out the other side. Bone conduction could never ravage my ears like a single dose of Lidocaine does.

Anyway.

I am 100% extremely vigilant with ear protection now at work and leisure - so I’m ready to get off the porch and back on a bike and see how it goes.

I can’t tolerate being in cars with the windows up anymore even with the AC and radio on because of the screeching.

That’s one situation I have oddly not been able to deal with yet because I cannot distract myself enough while driving to get much relief.

So I’m going to ride a motorbike in the summer - solves that LOL.

This shit has seriously pushed me somewhere over the rainbow/off the rails/lunatics on the grass/bars on the windows.

I only got maybe 5 to 10 good years left if I’m lucky though.

Thanks again in advance for the top earplugs recommendation.

Have a great one.

 

http://www.quietridehelmets.com/

Standard helmets are designed to protect against head trauma, and not noise protection. I would recommend to combine earplugs, with a helmet designed to reduce noise as well, if/when you decide to ride again.

 

Oh you know, small children screaming outside my head at 6 am a lot of the time, aphids and powder mildew constantly trying to mess up my cannabis crops, the worst maple syrup season of the decade in the middle of a global pandemic, plus constant noise in my head -- yeah, actually, life is pretty good, despite all that

I've ridden like 600 miles in the last year which is pathetic but a big part of that has been COVID-19 keeping me at home. I am generally someone who likes to ride to and from places - go to a buddy's, play cards, come home "the long way" over the mountain, that sort of thing. If I don't have anywhere to go, randomly zipping around on a bike feels like a time consuming way to risk serious injury and I've been too busy

If you manage your exhaust well, yeah, exhaust and rumble really shouldn't be an issue. Wind noise will be. I can get away with longer rides here then when I lived near DC, because that was basically nothing but 50-75 mph open pavement, lots of wind scream and other cars, etc. Now I mostly do 35-50 mph stuff in the woods around no other cars, this cuts the noise and some of the risks dramatically. The rare times I need to jump into a 55 mph blacktop zone for a while, I really don't "enjoy" it, it seems insanely dangerous. It's sort of amazing to me how that switch flipped because in DC I was routinely doing 60-70 mph with assholes in BMWs trying to cut me off like it was nothing.

Low frequency noise is actually a lot harder to block than higher frequencies, so more of it will creep in around the edges of what the earplugs can attenuate. It doesn't tend to bother me, in the sense of, I like the smell of gasoline, I like the sound and feel of a gas engine bopping under me, but yea over a long enough period of time it causes ear fatigue. I'll ride my bike 90-120 minutes now, but my limit on my stupid powerful 16 hp walk behind mower is like half that.

I use disposable foam 33 dB Howard Leight plugs and no, they don't dislodge. I think it's mostly finding something that fits your ear well. If it's properly inserted, before you put your helmet on you should be able to rub your fingers together next to the plugged ear and not hear it at all.

Heh, 14 pounds. That bike is 39 cc more than my bike, yet packs 30% more horsepower and also weighs 100 pounds less That sounds like a lot of fun to me, and if I don't stay stockholmed to enfields, my next bike will be a CRF or, more likely, DRZ400. Honestly I would not be worried about a 10 pound difference; that's 3% the dry weight of the bike, having it quieter would be a lot more important to me.

I've measured my bike at 113 dB at redline right near the exhaust, and more like 90 dB at redline at the rider's ear level. I don't redline much, obviously.

Also, I melted the black fuzzy foam on one of my dB meters trying to profile my bike, turns out exhaust air is hot, who knew!

Good luck, enjoy, and of course remember that as obnoxiously loud as these things are -- your risks, mostly, are of them graduallly destroying your ears, whereas the rest of your body they can destroy or mutilate in an instant.

If you are doing real dirt riding make sure you put knobbies on, I am sure you know this, but I boned myself last year trusting the stock Pirelli "30/70" tires on actual dirt/rocks and hurt myself and the bike moderately as a result. I have 50/50s on there now and they bite a lot harder into gravel, without feeling too horrible on blacktop.

Er, can I ask what you're basing this on? Like, "more likely", specifically.

I'm not encouraging anyone to do loud stuff in general, and 2 wheel motorvehicles have a ton of other risks associated with them. Flipside, like a third of the motorcyclists I know have tinnitus of some kind (shocking, right?) and generally people who wear earplugs every ride without fail tell me it doesn't seem to get worse from riding, even people on much louder rockets than I ride.

So, I guess -- why do you think someone riding a motorcycle who has tinnitus is "likely" to get permanently worse tinnitus as a result? Do you think the same thing about lawnmowers (which are, in many cases, louder than bikes, because of muffler size). Do you imagine that the 10-15% of Americans who have tinnitus, all either completely give up lawnmowing/etc or just get permanently worse tinnitus year after year?

If so, that's kind of an extraordinary claim, and I am curious what you're basing it on.

 

No you're right, it's based completely off of anecdotal evidence and personal experience.

Over the last 12 years, what I've noted from other sufferers who I've spoken with IRL and whose posts I've read on Tinnitus Talk and other tinnitus forums, is that those of us who acquired our tinnitus through acoustic trauma in the first incidence become far more susceptible to secondary acoustic trauma and an increase in their baseline than those who acquired it through drugs, head injuries and vascular problems etc.

For me, even with foam earplugs in, standing around an exposed engine for a couple of minutes (like that on a motorcycle) would undoubtedly spike my reactive tinnitus, so anything longer I'm confident would make it permanently worse.

On the subject of lawnmowers... well I'm a city dweller and live in an apartment, so lawnmowers are kind of alien to me , but no, on a serious note we do have lots of leaf blowers in my area, and I would never touch one. If I had to though, I'd wear foam earplugs and ear defenders combined, which I don't believe is possible with a motorcycle or a dirtbike... (I could be wrong).

Those 10-15% of Americans? well, it's their life and their tinnitus I suppose, we all only get one life, it's one's own choice whether they want to live it (to the fullest) or risk it.

@Tommo5 posed the question to the entirety of the Tinnitus Talk forums and so that's exactly what he's going to get: a range of different answers influenced by our personal take on tinnitus and what level of cautious approach we think it requires.

Personally, I see myself as falling more inside of the @Bill Bauer camp, as I've experienced and seen the depths to which this illness can plummet and simply don't think it's something to be f*cked around with.

 

Thanks very much.

Greatly appreciate every word of your response.

Take care and sorry to hear about the pests and mildew and your crash - not cool.

 

I spend half of my time riding in Southern New Hampshire where I work and there is no helmet law - so ear defenders over earplugs is totally do-able there on the dirt fire-roads as well as the street if one is not overly concerned about potential traumatic brain injuries.

 

There's a company that makes basically ear defenders you can mount inside a helmet.

How necessary this is depends a lot; my bike is quieter than a leaf blower and I don't ride at highway speeds.

I, personally, wouldn't ever go without a helmet for purposes of wearing ear defenders. I know a dude who went off a bike face first into a pylon, he does not look good and I would never ride with anything short of a full face helmet with jaw protection etc.

 

Thanks.

I am always pointing out workers with a gas blower strapped to their backs and no ear protection.

Savages.

Ear defenders under the helmet sounds like something interesting to research -
see where that goes and I really appreciate you taking a minute to share some knowledge.

Thanks for your helmet preference and recommendation.
How do you feel about a dirt bike helmet with goggles, sunglasses under a clear visor?
Does Rainex work for you in light rain?

Any strategies for night riding, cold weather, etc.?
How would you feel about a Rekluse Clutch these days? Or the full auto clutch on the Africa Twin ES?

Thanks for the heads up on the tires - never hurts to mention how crucial they are.
I had already heard someone mention that there’s a stock Pirelli that is notoriously dangerously flawed on rocks - guess that’s the one.

I have never ridden a bike on the Interstates and hopefully never will.
That’s one of the primary reasons I’m dual sporting it.

I did some riding over the weekend at a buddy and was trying different ear protection. I could still hear the exhaust more than expected - but it was totally fine for me.

My worst fear is having a Harley with straight pipes, Corvette with glass-packs, fire trucks, ambulances, etc pulling up next to or behind me and holding my ears hostage while I’m totally blocked in traffic. I always try to leave some space for an escape route for that eventuality.

My own exhaust will eventually be modified to point down and away from me and it will be extremely quiet anyways for myself and others. My vacuum absolutely seems louder than a bike even outside and it’s actually still out there with the trash right now - I’m so pissed at how loud I realized it is. But I’ll probably relent in case I cannot find one much quieter right away.

Ok - I get it.
The Enfield IS quiet, but you took a measurement right at the mouth of the hand warmer and at redline to satisfy your own curiosity.

Interesting what those other riders also said about their experiences - I hope they are right too.

That was funny about “sharing” the road in DC traffic. I honestly have no clue how I am going deal with other drivers these days. Trying not to think about it just yet and rain on my own parade. It’s clearly worse than ever and seems like everyone has completely forgotten how to drive safely and courteously while they were in lockdown.

I don’t know man - my new bike won’t be here for a while - so I’ll hopefully have it mostly figured out by then. Thanks again for your help in the meantime. You ended up being right about some opinions and suggestions you had for me in the past - so I value your insight.

Take it easy.

 

@Bill Arsenault, I've never been one for riding in rain, so I don't mess with rainx. One helmet I have has a built in sun visor; my newer helmet doesn't and I usually wear sunglasses under it. "Hand warmer" is pretty good, I've melted bits of kevlar against my exhaust as well. When I did ride in DC I thought of not the muffler exhaust, but the engine block as the "hand warmer" because in cold 40s weather I would wrap my gloved but freezing hands around it at stop lights to try to warm them up a little bit.

I don't know anything about the clutches you mentioned, sorry I did look at electric bikes a fair amount, and I'd like to mess with the more dirt-appropriate of the models Zero makes, but those things cost 3x what my bike did, and the current Enfield only has like 700 miles on it so I think I've got it for a while.

I think I hate vacuums more than bikes because at least bikes are exciting? I keep earmuffs hanging up in my office for when I run the vacuum or dust buster. I do think the exhaust from our larger walk-behind mower is louder than my bike; granted, it's a 17 hp monster that shakes my shoulder sockets if it gets hung up on something, but I try to keep the throttle at around 60% because pegged up it's too much for me even with earplugs under earmuffs.

 

I love your bike - as you do I assume.

I ended up there but passed it over quicker than I should have for whatever reason.
I’m going back for a lot longer look though now.
700 miles. Awesome.

Anyway - I’m here right now because about an hour ago I had lightning hit within about a few hundred yards. Possibly closer but I don’t want to exaggerate. It hit in a dirt lot with old disabled vehicles behind my work in Southern New Hampshire. I was outside in an adjacent lot.

I thought I was dead - I hit the ground. All the hair on my body was standing on end and I swear I was shell shocked.

I only realized a half hour later or so than my ears took a really good hit. About twice as bad as what Adderall does. My ears are fucked.

They are ringing from the bolt and sizzling with fresh damage - on top of my normal level of my usual ridiculously loud ringing.

Then it will get high pitched for a couple day s- kinda turn to static and Viola - significantly louder tinnitus.

Whatever, I figured out why I don’t care - it’s because I only have so much choice and because of shit like this.

Anyway - I’m drinking the nerves numb so I better cut it short. I think this is like my first or second real acoustic trauma since watching out for them.

But yeah - this lightning thing has not happened to me since I was 9.

WTF.
MY EARS ARE KILLING ME.

Going to go check out the Enfield now on this iPad Ultra or whatever - and crank some music.

Thanks for the response.

 

I would not take the chance. The damage can become cumulative over time. The worse the tinnitus gets and hearing loss the easier it is for these types of sounds to kill off the damaged cells in the ears. The result will be louder tinnitus and further damage to your hearing. Wear plugs all the time.

 

Thx man.

Yeah, I’m gonna take it real slow and see how it goes.

I ride in trucks with the windows down for half of the day anyway usually with ear protection. Depends on how much I like the passenger really.

Anyway, I am prepared for the consequences of a possible gradual increase from riding to go with the permanent gradual increase I already have from god only knows whatever else.

I already have literally thick, oppressive screaming loud tinnitus that obscures my hearing. And my life has been much better since it got so loud that it doesn’t really even matter anymore.

If your tinnitus unfortunately ever gets to the “you blew it sucker” stage, and needless to say I sincerely hope from the very bottom of my heart that it never does,
then I suspect suspect most of you should get there if you have not already been there and back countless times.

Habituation or whatever the technically correct term is not urban legend, it is beyond reproach. Unlike everything else.

Not saying that I will never again be logged in here in tears at 3 AM on a weekday. But over 4 years in now I think and I was petrified a couple years ago about how the inevitable was gonna ruthlessly put me down like a dog. I know it’s not over, and it even got noticeably louder today after a rough week.

But I’m also bat shit crazy now AND over 50 years old with minimal responsibility and hopeful of dying in my recliner with a half lit joint in one hand and a glass of cold IPA in the other. While watching a live waterfall, high tide, rainy night in Maine, etc… in high definition widescreen and surrounded by at least 3 running “Sound Enrichment Devices” and 3 more on chargers.

So there’s that.

Hang in there and best wishes.