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Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

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Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#121

Post by biggieshellz »

maroonblazer wrote: post #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 mu…

Check out Crescendo (http://refined-audiometrics.com/wordpress1/) -- an engineer/musician with a hearing loss similar to yours has developed a piece of software that's like a "super" hearing aid (non-linear compression per Bark band) that helps to bring the sparkle back for music.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#122

Post by biggieshellz »

hunter2_ wrote: post #75
maroonblazer wrote: post #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 mu…

Have you played around with an equalizer (hardware or software, doesn't matter) that offers rather extreme adjustments like +15dB or more, to see if you can approximate a flat source+ear system? Or is your loss more like a brickwall filter than a 12dB/octave slope for example? I'm an audio engineer, not an audiologist, so I'm just shooting from the hip here as it's something I've been curious about in case I develop…

Please don't do this. This would work for a conductive hearing loss (ear drum or bones in your ear messed up, etc.) but not for a sensorineural hearing loss (like what you get from aging or from noise exposure). You need non-linear compression to compensate for loudness recruitment. At a basic level, when you have sensorineural hearing loss, soft sounds will sound way softer than they should (or be below the threshold of audibility), but loud sounds will sound about the same as they should. If you crank up the volume for the affected frequency bands to make it sound right for soft sounds, then with loud transients, it will sound way too loud, and potentially do more damage to your hearing.

Look at https://positive-feedback.com/Issue66/hearing.htm if you want to hack something together that will work better and not damage your hearing.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#123

Post by biggieshellz »

ddingus wrote: post #113
skybrian wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to listen to instrumental music. In part that's because I play an instrument, and in part it's likely due to hearing loss making words not that easy to understand. I also find I prefer vocals in foreign languages since there's no point in trying to understand them. There's still plenty of good music out there. I also find that my hearing aids aren't great for music due to how much they change timbre from boost…

As my own normal, age related roll off advances, I find all the good stuff is under 10 to 12Khz. I mentioned different eq curves down thread. I don't have a lot of technical data at hand, but older radios from the vacuum tube era where they had response over 10 khz. A good one, play that a respectable volume in a room, sounds pretty great! What I'm kind of hinting at here is there maybe Equalization curves that can s…

That's not surprising, as what we think of as "presence" is usually in the ~4 KHz range, where our ears are the most sensitive. What's over 10 KHz may provide a sense of "air" but doesn't convey as much information.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#124

Post by Klonoar »

zackmorris wrote: post #72
DantesKite wrote: post #16

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.

I had tinnitus in my left ear, but it turned out to be related to TMJ, and it resolved after I wore an advanced lightwire functional (ALF) appliance for maybe 3-6 months to move my jaw back into a forward position. I had braces and wore headgear as a kid at the height of some 1980s hysteria about overbites that left millions of people like me with class II malocclusion (baby face) and sleep apnea. I'm having trouble…

I’m doing something similar (for sleep apnea originally, but the crossover due to jaw needing to be forward is a thing). Highly recommend.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#125

Post by intpete »

dghughes wrote: post #89

There's a crazy amount of problems that are due to hearing loss. There's an increased risk of dementia. Even for balance from hearing audio cues when walking. My mother has poor hearing and she refuses to get a hearing aid mainly due to cost. They are ~$4K per ear she doesn't have the money but to her an elderly person she imagines it as $40K/ear. I also fear dementia has already begun for her. For me I have tinnitus…

My hearing aids from Costco set me back only $1,700. I highly recommend them.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#126

Post by biggieshellz »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #34

I really hope this could also help revert tinnitus. This is a life wrecking condition that currently has no cure (suicide attempts 9% for women with severe tinnitus and 5.5% for men).

But you can certainly learn to ignore it. After one particularly loud concert, my ears started to ring, and they have never really stopped. I was depressed, disappointed, and angry with myself for not having taken better care of my ears. But you know what? After 6 months to a year, I habituated to it. I notice the ringing on a super quiet morning in the countryside when there aren't any other sounds, but other than that, it doesn't bother me. I can still listen to music; in fact, that helps mask out the ringing.

If you have severe tinnitus, look at getting hearing aids -- they fill back the affected frequencies so your brain doesn't crank up the gain and fill them with the phantom sound. Or look at Tinnitus Retraining Therapy. But most people do habituate to it. What you read online on the tinnitus forums and so forth has selection bias. People post on the forums how terrible things are right after they develop tinnitus, but after they habituate to it, they don't post as much about that.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#127

Post by egberts1 »

As one who is undergoing mapping of Cochlear Implant, I feel the need to put it out there some things about regrowing cilia hairs in cochlear.

If you had been subjected to a life-threatening high body temperature (106.5+ F, spinal meningitis), your cochlears would make for a poor candidate in benefitting from most form of treatment of cilia hair regrowth.

The problem is the fibrocyte nerve pathways (the ones embedded in the wall of the cochlear spiral) are basically heated to death through bursting/disintegration of its Mylar sheathings of its nerve cells in the cochlear pathway.

Although, not much research is done with regard to the temperature level in various part of the body notably inside the skull region during such an infection, it is arguable that cochlear is located in the hottest zone of the body given the locality of eustachian tube, inner ear and throat region being a harbor of Infectionous activity.

Not an expert here but a pretty serious consumer-based researcher of CI.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#128

Post by ternaryoperator »

adriand wrote: post #73
dazc wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had odd bouts of tinitus as a teenager, like you, no obvious causes. It went away and came back with a vengence about 15 years ago. That lasted a year or so but over time it's become more of a minor irritation than a major handicap. I guess, my brain has trained itself to deal with it? The only tip I can give you is to always have some kind of background sound that you can focus on rather than the buzzing in your o…

The best advice I ever got about my tinnitus was from my mom, who has worse tinnitus than I do: "just forget about it". I know that might sound difficult, but honestly, just try. When you notice it, reassure yourself that it's not really a big problem, and then turn your attention to other things. If you are successful with this, eventually you will only notice it when you remember that you have it and listen for it.…

One tip that was indeed helpful in learning to ignore it, especially when I was new to tinnitus was: don't keep checking your tinnitus level. Once I stopped checking "Do I hear it now? Is it as loud?" I started minding/noticing it less.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#129

Post by armedpacifist »

sn00tz00t wrote: post #31

I've heard anecdotal evidence that psilocybin can help those hard of hearing

You might be referring to a quote from Paul Stamets. I am not an expert, so here's my anecdotal take on it: when I drink alcohol, my mild tinitus completely fades away. I'm highly suspecting it has something to do with lowering blood pressure. Psylocybine is also known to affect blood pressure, (both rising and lowering). Then again, so is trying to relax. Being a micro doser myself, I have become very sceptical about the psylocybine craze lately. It's being advocated as a panacea, which it's obviously not. I know you are referring to an anecdote, but it's not far off from what I've seen being pushed by these so called 'institutions' without any substantial evidence. The quackery going on is pretty worrysome and will end up damaging the image of psylocybine yet again, imho.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#130

Post by egberts1 »

pacomerh wrote: post #86

I've seen news related to this FX-322 drug, but it's never clear to me if this works or not, or if it will be available to the public somehow. I lost my hi-freq in one ear due to inflammation if the cochlea (vestibular neuritis). Would love to know if this could help grow those hair cells back. That also gave me tinitus, but I don't really care about tinitus, I just want to get those frequencies back. Also found ther…

Since it’s a trial, I would not recommend deaf/hard-of-hearing who had spinal meningitis of this trial … yet.
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