Live data from Hacker News

Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

news.mit.edu

31–40 of 215 posts

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#32
post #28

For anybody suffering with tinnitus I highly recommend the protocol William Shatner went through. You can train your brain so it’s not noticeable any more. Like wearing pants, it fades into the background.

Thanks, now I feel my pants

In this work from home world, who wears pants anymore? Perhaps you are experiencing the “phantom pants“ phenomenon.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#33
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had two bouts of SSNL, both in the right ear. The first only took my high end frequencies, so a hearing aid did work, but the second just about flatlined my hearing in that ear, so the hearing aid only gives the results you're referencing. I have a date for surgery to implant a bone-conducting hearing aid next month, it should hopefully restore hearing from that side. Definitely talk to your ENT about that optio…

Thanks, I thought bone conducting still depended on the damaged hairs in ear for transferring to nerves though?

It does, but as long as you have a functioning inner ear on one side, the bone conduction will transmit sound to that side.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#35
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of hearing aids is not that it makes sounds louder across the entire spectrum, but only selective frequencies? An audiologist should be able to tune your hearing aids to amplify only those frequencies that need amplification. (Although my understanding is that this is fairly new, and may not be available around the world)

Yes hearing aids tuning is a thing, often must be done repeatedly because of discomfort. But the serious problem with hearing loss is the "bandwidth", meaning the damaged cells send less information to the brain even if attenuation is compensated by hearing aid, leading to bad recognition of sounds and speech.

With most new hearing aids users, multiple tunings are required as they cannot handle the new volume and intensity of sounds that hey haven't heard for years.

An audiologist will typically test someone, see that they need amplications across the range but send them away with a much lower amplification for a weeks to get used to things. Then bring the volume up as time goes by.

People amy also need to get used to the aid's noise reduction algorithms as they can seem unatural at first and is a nightmare for anyone who used to wear an old analog hearing aid with no noise reduction.

So, yeah, hearing aids are rarely plug-and-play from day one - the user needs time to adjust.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#36
post #6

Does anyone know if this can finally be a treatment for tinnitus? I would love to hear silence again.

I've got pretty bad - although not constant - tinnitus in my left ear after a particularly loud NYE too late in life. What I find interesting though, is that I distinctly remember as a young kid living in the countryside that I found it impossible to hear absolute silence. I distinctly remember sitting on a bale of hay on a bright summer's day with not even a breeze and the quieter I perceived things, the louder a 'T…

O that's interesting. I was able to do the same (tv, refrigerator, etc). I also lived country side and I have hearing loss (35db) and tinnitus (sometimes? moderate?) in my left ear, but seemingly due to a virus infection.

I have never encountered someone else that was able to hear whether a tv was on or not. At what distance could you do that?

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#38
post #3

I have sensoneural hearing loss, mostly in one ear, and the annoying thing about it is hearing aids don't really help much because of the distorted frequencies and non linear loss. Before I had this I assumed wrongly that hearing loss could always be fixed by making sound louder. (It doesn't, just sounds like a voice disguiser or someone on Helium talking through a bad speaker.) This looks promising.

My understanding of hearing aids is not that it makes sounds louder across the entire spectrum, but only selective frequencies? An audiologist should be able to tune your hearing aids to amplify only those frequencies that need amplification. (Although my understanding is that this is fairly new, and may not be available around the world)

My hearing loss got to a point where tuning the hearing aid to the point where it sufficiently amplified sound for me to distinguish speech made it so loud that it sounded to my brain like a normal speaking volume, but it caused physical pain in my ear.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#39
The article says the treatment focuses on increased speech intelligibility. Speech, depending on how you define it, can occupy a fairly narrow range of the audio spectrum that humans can perceive.

My hearing loss is mostly on the high end (10-12K and above) and impedes my ability to hear speech in noisy environments. More troubling has been the inability to enjoy music/sound in those upper ranges, resulting in the music lacking a certain sparkle and brilliance.

I hope this therapy regenerates hair cells across the entire spectrum.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#40
I wonder if this will treat hidden hearing loss at all.

I check all the boxes for tinnitus behavior (loud blasting music hours a day for years) but only have mild tinnitus at worst. I do however have hidden hearing loss, where I absolutely cannot understand what people are saying if there is too much ambient noise. Bars are hopeless situations for conversation, even a fan on in a room can make conversing difficult. It would be nice to revert this (and secretly go back to occasionally blasting music so loud your organs feel it).

Post reply on HN