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Are You
Feeling Queasy using Bose Headset?
:Q: I was
recently given a pair of the Bose QC3 headphones with active noise
canceling, and have felt queasy every time I put them on. I had to
take them off and lie down at one point, and ended up throwing up
later that night and was unable to eat more than apple sauce the
next day. As crazy as it sounds, did the headphones cause my
discomfort?
A: It's possible. Bose's "Acoustic Noise Cancelling"
headphones work by electronically determining the difference between
wanted and unwanted sounds, and creating a correction signal that
acts to negate the unwanted noise, according to its Web site. (The
company didn't respond to requests to comment.) Sarah Stackpole, a
New York ear, nose and throat doctor, speculates that the sound
waves that cancel each other out may still transmit enough very low
frequency vibrations to stimulate the balance receptors that are
connected to the hearing hair cells in the inner ear. These
vibrations are akin to those caused by blast explosions or
barotrauma in scuba diving, but much less forceful, she says. The
disequilibrium that some people may feel from this is made worse
because the vibrations falsely signal that the head is moving, but
the eyes report that the head is stationary. Those mixed signals
make the headphone wearer feel dizzy.
Some people are more sensitive to this sensation than others. Many
users love their headsets. If the vertigo doesn't improve, you may
need to decrease the input by using earphones without a tight seal.
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