If someone told you that wearing certain jeans too often might trigger permanent leg numbness, or overuse of a hot sauce would cause you to lose your ability to taste sweets, you’d pay attention. You’d want to know exactly how long it would take before damage occurred. You’d make sure that you don’t go too far. You might even buy different jeans or hot sauce. Well, here’s a scary truth: What you might be doing right now to your ears could lead to permanent hearing damage. Really. But the good news is that there are some easy things you can do to prevent it.

Most people believe hearing damage is caused by sudden, excessive sound, like loud bangs and explosions. And that’s true; incredibly loud individual sounds can damage your inner ears. But that’s not how most noise-induced hearing loss is caused—it’s caused by exposure to louder-than-recommended noises over a long period of time. This is because our ears’ nerve cells—like your muscles after a workout—need a break every so often to repair themselves and flush out waste. If we don’t give our ears that rest, the nerve cells can die. And once a hearing nerve cell dies it doesn’t grow back, and the sound frequency it corresponded to is gone forever. This is why some people have trouble hearing speech, while others might not hear deep bass notes well.

You may already be experiencing some hearing damage and not know it.

To avoid hearing damage, the OSHA standard that the World Health Organization recommends over the course of an eight-hour day is 85 decibels (the average volume of the NYC subway [PDF]). At 91 dB (a hair dryer), that time decreases to two hours. At 106 dB (a rock concert), you’ve got less than four minutes. In other words, the louder the sound you’re experiencing, the less time you’ve got before bad things can happen. And once you’ve hit your daily threshold, you’ll be putting your ears at risk. This adds up fast. Two hours in traffic, plus four hours drowning out coworkers with your headphones, plus a movie could equal maxing out your day’s noise dosage.

To add to the problem, we don’t always notice when sounds are getting too loud to be safe. Like being unable to smell your own perfume, our bodies gradually adapt to the noises around us. So in order for something to feel louder in an already loud environment, we increasingly need to up the volume. For example: Have you ever turned on your TV in the morning, and it seems astonishingly loud? It didn’t seem that loud the night before, right? This volume-creep effect is why that happens. After a day of traffic, the subway, music, a bar, a sporting event … your brain needs your TV to be blaring for your ears to feel like the volume is up. It’s like the old adage about boiling a frog by slowly increasing the temperature of the water. You don’t notice that everything has been getting turned up until it could be too late. If you want to know more, we talk about this in greater detail in our Best Kids Headphones guide.

So what does this all mean? You may already be experiencing some hearing damage and not know it. A recent study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University estimates that by 2020 more than 44 million American adults ages 20 or older can be expected to suffer from hearing loss—and more than 73 million by 2060 if current trends continue. And studies have shown that often the people who think hearing loss is no big deal have “significantly more deteriorated hearing … than the other subjects.”

The 67 to 86 percent of adults who may benefit from hearing aids do not use them. Plus, unlike the EU (PDF), the US has no laws for how loud your audio devices can be, only unenforceable guidelines (PDF). We often assume that if a product is for sale, it must be safe to use. But that’s not always the case.

How do can you avoid becoming a statistic?

First of all, protect. If you are going to be somewhere that you know is loud, wear earplugs. Not all earplugs are created equal. Some are made to muffle everything significantly, like our recommendation for sleeping. Others, like these from Loop offer less reduction, just taking the edge off the volume, so you can hear more than with foam earplugs. I use this kind for concerts, nightclubs, sporting events, even group exercise classes at the gym! Don’t laugh, I took a measurement in one of my spin classes, and the volume sat around 90 dB the entire hour!

Second, keep an eye on the volume at which you listen to music and movies, as well as the duration. The WHO recommends listening at no more than roughly 60 percent of mobile-device volume for no more than 60 minutes at a time. (This is particularly important to keep in mind in the US, because unlike the EU (PDF), the US has no laws about how loud your audio devices can be, only unenforceable guidelines. Again, we often assume that if a product is for sale, it must be safe to use. But that’s not always the case, so better to err on the side of safety.) This 60/60 recommendation applies to both kids and adults. So every hour or so, take a break. Get up, walk around, give your ears some silence. If you have an Apple Watch running Watch OS6, enable the “Noise” app notifications.

Third, consider new gear. If you ride the subway daily, fly long-haul often, or you work in a noisy environment, you may want to consider noise-cancelling or noise-isolating headphones. By blocking out the noise around you, you won’t need to compete by turning up your music. If you have a child in your life, you’ll absolutely want to invest in some volume limiting headphones for kids.

If you are already experiencing some hearing loss, consider a PSAP, or personal sound amplification product. These devices are becoming more common due to the recently passed law that will allow the sale of over-the-counter hearing aids. However, bear in mind, there isn’t any safety regulation on these devices yet. Depending on the research involved in a given product’s development, there may be varying levels of accuracy and safety. This also applies to headphones that test and adjust to your hearing via an included app, like these from Nura, Beyerdynamic, and MEE Audio.

If this all sounds like a lot to keep track of, there is hope that we could get an assist from phone and audio manufacturers. I spoke with Dr. Brian Fligor, founder and president of Boston Audiology Consultants, Inc., and chair of the WHO’s Make Listening Safe Task Force, and asked him: If we can track things like steps, heart rate, calories consumed, and sleep on our phone’s health apps, could phone or wearables manufacturers develop something so that we could also track our noise diet? Is that possible, and plausible?

Based on our conversation, the answer is yes, it’s totally doable. The tech exists. All a smartphone or device needs to do is:

Track your listening habits like tracking your steps, and suggest safer options. Dr. Fligor recommended that a device, “Monitor a user’s listening level over time (the “dose”), compare the individual’s documented listening behavior to the standards on hearing loss risk from the scientific literature.” Send alerts if you are reaching unsafe volume or duration. (Anyone who has “closed their circles” on an Apple Watch gets how this could work.) Dr. Fligor added, “There should be a max output limit,” and that “a standard to define an upper max output will serve as a cap, but this is not the focus. Maximum output level-limiting is not an appropriate method for reducing hearing loss risk from user personal audio systems (headphones, etc.) because it ignores the fact that hearing is damaged from sound levels over time.”

Adults don’t need our car’s speed limited at 55 miles per hour, we just need a speedometer that lets us know we are going too fast, and assume we understand the consequences of exceeding that limit. Parental controls could help protect little ones. And the phone companies are already involved in this conversation. Dr. Fligor said his taskforce at the WHO is working on developing standards that it will present to the International Telecommunications Union very soon, hopefully later this year.

Companies like Apple, Google, or Samsung could easily develop this kind of feature as part of their health apps. Just as their devices can contribute to the hearing-loss problem, they also could assist as part of the solution. In fact, Apple recently released their noise alert feature for Apple Watch OS6, which is a great first step. It will notify you if you are in a too-loud environment for more than 3 minutes. But as of now, Apple’s Noise app doesn’t seem to take the big picture into account. While you can track your exposure throughout the day via the Health app, there doesn’t seem to be any way to receive an alert when you are reaching your overall daily noise exposure limits. We’re keeping an eye on this and hope that with more Watch users adopting the noise app, Apple will roll out improved features over time.

Until then, think of this process as a “sound diet.” A piece of cake is okay once in a while, but cake for every meal isn’t good for you. Keep track of your listening habits, and make healthy choices, and you’ll be able to hear everything you love for a long time to come.