Live data from Hacker News

Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

news.mit.edu

151–160 of 215 posts

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#151
post #138

I have been seeing a lot of news articles from university websites on HN recently. Do people realize that they essentially function as hype-generation outlets and are not intended to provide an objective and unbiased assessment of the research?

It's a press release, most people with some amount of media literacy understand what they are.

And really, the original press releases tend to be quite a bit better than the 'science blog' articles that regurgitate them, coming from a university url isn't a bad thing.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Another thing they could try would be a different eq curve overall. I always find The Sound of Music as reproduced on older narrow band with am radios and phonographs interesting. A lot of that gear doesn't really produce anything over 10 khz. But, where they emphasized frequencies in the spectrum is different from Modern equipment, which basically is shooting for flat response. My grandfather's old radio, when playe…

I think one of the reasons for vinyl’s reputation is that it’s often played on old sound systems. Ones with real bass and treble controls!

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow, I thought I was the only one with the TV thing! I remember it as young as 4-5, but no one knew what I was talking about. I’ve had constant minor tinnitus since then, so I can’t help but feeling like there’s a CRT near my head that has been running since the early nineties.

I also could hear CRT when on (probably high voltage PSU) as a kid. Recently, I thought my tinnitus got worse until I found that one of my smart power supplies started making high pitch sound (ceramic capacitors in power supplies cause it).

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#154
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Although exciting, we also need to remember that translatability rates from animal models to humans is notoriously low, usually in the single digits for most therapeutic areas. This is true of humans as well -- there are plenty of programs that get interesting and clear results in Phase 2 (the dose ranging phase: essentially "what dosage is most efficacious") that die in Phase 3 (roughly: "OK, how does that dose re…

It's also hard to figure out just how the animal's hearing is improving (you can't simply ask) This seems relatively easy, right? Play a sound at a given frequency, associate it with a food reward. Like Pavlov's dog, but vary the frequency of the bell. Oversimplification obviously, and "easy" is extreme relative to all the other hard parts involved but that part seems very doable

You may enjoy: https://youtu.be/tONF9OSUOSw

“How Loud Can Sound Physically Get?” - amazing breakdown of the subjective nature of loudness.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#155
A search of the comments shows 79 hits for tinnitus and zero for magnesium. If you suffer tinnitus, look into magnesium supplementation. Studies show people with tinnitus have low magnesium and anecdotal evidence suggests magnesium helps reduce symptoms.

https://www.tinnitus.org.uk/tinnitus-and-magnesium

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#156

This would be amazing for me. I have had unilateral hearing loss due to mumps since childhood.

Same here though mine was probably due to an undiagnosed ear infection as an infant.

One weird instance happened about 25 years ago. I suffered a severe blow to the back of my head. My hearing in my bad ear actually came back for a while but it was like listening to a poorly tuned radio. Proper volume but full of static. After a week or so, my hearing returned back to its normal deficient state. No idea what exactly happened or why.

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much! I am very interested in CI. Currently we're waiting for our appointments with the ENT but I hear so much good about it, I'm hoping we can move this forward as soon as possible. I will definitely be in touch.

I lost my hearing in one ear 9 years ago when I was 15 as the result of an illness. I could get a CI but choose not to. Honestly, being deaf in one ear has barely affected me. There are some situations (if it is a loud environment and the person is on my left) where I struggle to hear people and I cannot tell the direction sound is coming from but I do not find this has a major impact on my life. Personally I am conc…

I'm also essentially deaf (90% loss) in my right ear. It really doesn't affect my life in a negative way except in situations like you mentioned. Also, wearing a one-eared headset offers no advantages over a two-eared set in an office environment. I won't be hearing what the person in my cubicle says either way until I remove it.

If you ever encounter a person who instead of making eye contact seems to be looking just over your shoulder, it could be you are about to be attacked or it could be someone like me who needs to turn their one good ear towards you slightly in order to hear our conversation. :)

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal albeit anecdotal evidence is that certain foods, or possibly too much sodium, can cause tinnitus. When I have tinnitus I drink a lot of water and reduce my sodium intake - I think that acesulfame postassium (NutraSweet) can cause it for me as well. You might want to experiment with changing your diet, drinking more water, etc.

I'm pretty sure you are spot on with Sodium: I do eat a lot of sodium, but here is an interesting anecdote: A friend's husband had Lyme Disease - and had very bad veritgo from it which was exacerbated by a high sodium intake (I assume the ear works on the sodium potassium pump in some manner?) but she used to have to make a very careful diet for him so as to remove sodium as much as possible, which would prevent his…

The vertigo could be due to Ménière‘s disease. I had it for a year or so in my 20s - reducing salty snacks sorted it out.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ménière%27s_disease

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#159
post #97
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be other causes besides noise exposure, like TMJ/teeth grinding which can affect the nerves.

For me ibuprofen (at recommend doses, reasons for use etc.) makes it worse/noticeable. Acetaminophen doesn't have the same problem for me so I'm assuming it's not just that I'm clenching my jaw without noticing.

Ibuprofen increases blood pressure, which is associated with higher levels of tinnitus. You might check in with your GP - maybe some intervention to lower blood pressure could reduce your overall tinnitus?

Re: Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 threshol…

Quite right! I’m quite “deaf” in the sense that I can’t understand what people are saying - they sound muffled (and I can’t separate two people talking at once anymore). But, I’m actually quite sensitive to loud noises! What I need is equalization and compression, so I can hear the soft noises. I don’t need much, if any, overall gain. Why can’t Apple provide that, they have all the necessary technology at hand?

Do hearing aids offer this sort of multiband compression? I've heard about hearing aids that act as Bluetooth headphones, so presumably your Apple device could send its unaltered audio over Bluetooth and then the hearing aid's custom programming could handle things from there?
Post reply on HN