As luck would have it, a bolt of lightning struck a tree under which he had stopped for shelter, and a side flash hit him, trailing the course of the ear phones, up his chest and neck to his face, burning all the skin in its path.

According to the report written by his doctors, Eric Heffernan, Peter Munk and Luck Louis in the New England Journal of Medicine, the ear phones directed the millions of electric volts along its course, causing an intense contraction of his jaw muscles, thus rupturing his ear drums, breaking his jawbone in as many as four places and dislocating both jaw joints.

A trail of burns revealed how the lightening exited his body burning his left leg, foot and sneakers as it traversed them.

Normally, such flashes usually pass over the skin, not causing too much harm but in this case the iPod and the headphone wires turned out to be dangerous conductors of electricity.

On Wednesday, radiologist Hefferman explained, “Most people hit by lightning get away with minor burns. It's because skin is highly resistant and stops electricity from entering the body. It's called the flash-over effect, although it can stop your heart and kill you, as between five to 10 per cent of people struck by lightning die each year…But in this case, the patient had earphones on and had been sweating from jogging so this was a case of disrupted flash-over. The earphones transmitted the electrical current into his head.”

The injured jogger was taken to the emergency department and it was during a scan at radiology that the full extent of his many injuries were revealed following which he underwent surgery for them.

But two years later the man has still only 50% of his hearing and even hearing aids cannot help him hear high frequency sounds.

“It's the first time we've had a recorded case of such an incident involving a person wearing headphones and we think the public should be warned," Hefferman said.

According to Heffernan it isn't just iPods that could be a risk but any similar appliance with headphones, such as cell phones, could be equally dangerous.

“I think the message should be that, in the event that you're jogging and get caught in a thunderstorm, make sure your iPod is not in contact with your skin and remove the earphones from your ear,” the doctor concluded.