Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

I came across an alarming statistic recently—37 million children in America have hearing loss. (1) That’s a lot of our kids that can’t hear well.

The 2000 census counted 72.3 million children in the USA under the age of 18 (2) and no doubt that figure is even larger now. 37 million out of 72.3 million works out to 51.2% of our children with a hearing loss. In other words, on the average, conservatively every second child you meet has some degree of hearing loss. Shocking, isn’t it! And scary too—especially when you realize that hearing doesn’t come back, but typically continues to get worse over the years. This means we are raising a whole generation that can’t hear properly now, and in a few more years will be adults that can’t hear well either.

Add to this the 55 million adults and 16 million seniors that already have a hearing loss (2) and you have a whopping 33% of the population hearing less than normally. That’s one in every three people you meet!

What this means is that everyone needs to start practicing good hearing conservation now before it is too late!

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(1) Think Tank Improves Deaf Education. The Hearing Journal. Volume 64, Number 12, December 2011. p. 39.

(2) Hearing Loss Much More Common Than Previously Thought.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady asked,

How do you explain to people that you can only hear certain frequencies of sounds—that your hearing is very selective?

My friend, Michele, replied, “My favorite analogy is to use a music box—the kind that has the metal drum with the raised dots and tines that strike the drum as it rotates. (Most people have seen these clear music boxes that show the inner workings.) I explain that my hearing loss is much like a music box with broken tines. Imagine what it would sound like with all of the higher notes broken off and only 25% of the tines remaining. As the drum rotates I only hear every fourth note. This makes the music undistinguishable.

That’s how I hear—a bit here and a bit there. My hearing is hit and miss, but mostly ‘miss’. That’s why trying to hear with a hearing loss so tiring. My brain is constantly scrambling to make sense of the jumbled information that it’s receiving.

Most hearing people have no clue what hearing loss is really like. They think it’s a volume issue, which is partly true, but it’s more like your hearing has been pelted with buckshot that creates holes and gaps. The person with hearing loss has to learn how to make their brain fill in those holes and gaps. Many of us do that with lip/speech reading and other skills we’ve learned over the years.

One of the biggest things that got my family’s attention was listening to a hearing loss simulator as it clearly demonstrated to my husband how little I actually hear. He cried the first time I had him listen to what it sounds like to have a severe/profound loss.

Here are three hearing loss simulators I’ve used:

1. If you scroll to the very bottom of this site the ‘Profound Hearing Loss with Residual Low Frequency Hearing’ most closely matches my audiogram http://facstaff.uww.edu/bradleys/radio/hlsimulation/
2. This site only deals with mild and moderate losses, but has a great visual to demonstrate clarity: http://www.betterhearing.org/hearing_loss/hearing_loss_simulator/index.cfm
3. This site only demonstrates the difference in volume, not the additional distortions with sound quality that come with increasing hearing loss: http://www.starkey.com/hearing-loss-and-treatment/identify-hearing-loss/Hearing-Loss-Simulator“

To use these simulators effectively, set the volume to a comfortable level while listening to the recording of “normal” hearing. Then don’t touch the volume again as you listen to the various degrees and kinds of hearing loss. I think you’ll get an eye-opener (or should that be an ear-opener in this case)?

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A recent study, published in the Journal of Nutrition, showed that low levels of folate (one of the B vitamins found in spinach, black-eyed peas, beans and other leafy greens) are associated with a higher risk of hearing loss in people over the age of 50. (1)

“Those with the lowest levels of folate were 39% more likely to suffer hearing loss. People with the most homocysteine—an amino acid, also linked to heart disease and dementia, that’s countered by B vitamins—were at 64% greater risk.” (2)

Bamini Gopinath, Ph.D., of the University of Sidney in Australia found that a folate deficiency causes homocysteine levels to increase, which in turn, could restrict blood flow to the cochlea, resulting in hearing loss.

In another study looking at the same participants, Gopinath “found that those who ate two or more servings of fish a week were less likely to develop age-related hearing loss compared to people who had less than a serving a week. Plus, among participants who already had some hearing loss, those who ate more fish saw its progression slow.” (1) Gopinath thinks that the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish help to lower a person’s high blood pressure—which, in turn, could help to protect against hearing loss. (1)

This research makes sense IF your hearing loss is related to vascular issues. (To be sure, large numbers of people fit into this category.) At the same time, there are other reasons why you might lose hearing as you age. A prime example is hearing loss from side effects of all the ototoxic drugs many older people take. Another cause is from a lifetime of exposure to loud noise—and this noise exposure continues the longer you live.

Thus, to my way of thinking, there are three things you need to do in order to protect your hearing as you age: limit your exposure to loud sounds, be careful with ototoxic drugs and eat properly. When you do this, you’ll reduce your chances of getting presbycusis—the fancy word for hearing loss due to aging.

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(1) Mantica, Ana. 2011. Life Line Screening.

(2) Folate and Fish Might Protect Your Hearing. October, 2010. Tufts University Health and Nutrition Newsletter.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Smoking is bad for your health. Numerous studies have proven this. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that breathing secondhand smoke is also bad for your health. Again, studies have proven this.

Now, a recent study by Dr. Anil Lalwani has shown that in addition to causing health problems and ear infections, breathing secondhand smoke can also cause sensorineural hearing loss in those that breathe secondhand smoke.

Dr. Lalwani of the New York University Langone Medical Center studied 1,533 12 to 19-year-old youths that did not smoke. He collected information on whether or not smokers lived in their homes. Each of these teens were given extensive hearing tests. They were also given a blood test to measure the level of cotinine (a substance related to nicotine) that can objectively tell how much secondhand smoke a person has been exposed to.

The results were striking. The higher the teens’ level of cotinine, the higher their chances for having resulting sensorineural hearing loss. In fact, the cotinine acted as a remarkably accurate barometer of hearing damage according to Dr. Lalwani. (1)

Sensorineural hearing loss was defined as an average pure tone level greater than 15 dB. Secondhand smoke exposure, as assessed by cotinine levels, was associated with elevated pure tone hearing thresholds at 2, 3 and 4 kHz (critical frequencies required for clearly, understanding speech) and an 183% increase in risk of unilateral low-frequency sensorineural hearing loss. (2)

Interestingly enough, 82% of the teens did not realize that they had a hearing loss. (2)

Why does breathing secondhand smoke cause increased hearing loss? According to Dr. Lalwani, “We know smoking leads to reduced oxygen in the blood, so that may be an issue. We also know that smoking causes vascular issues, so a variety of factors could be contributing.” (1)

Now comes the important question. What can you do about it? If you are a parent that smokes, the obvious answer is “Stop smoking!” Not only will stopping smoking improve your own health, but you will also improve the health of your children, and help preserve their precious hearing. That alone should make it worth the effort.

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(1) Teen Hearing Problems—It’s Not Just About the Loud Music! October 20, 2011. In: Bottom Line’s Daily Health News.

(2) Lalwani, Anil. 2011. Secondhand Smoke and Sensorineural Hearing Loss in Adolescents. Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2011 Jul; 137(7): 655-62.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

If you’re like me and can’t hear much, I’m sure you’ll agree that it would be nice to have “eyes in the backs of our heads” to help compensate for our lack of hearing. God didn’t choose to give us this extra pair of eyes, but guess what? The latest research reveals that we (people who are born deaf or with severe hearing losses) have better peripheral vision than our hearing counterparts.

According to researchers from the University of Sheffield in the UK, people who are born deaf or have an onset of deafness (hearing loss) within the first years of life develop the ability to capture more peripheral visual information than the retinas of hearing adults. In fact, researchers were surprised to learn that the retinal neurons in people born with major hearing losses appear to be distributed differently around the retina to enable them to capture more peripheral visual information.

Furthermore, they also found an enlarged neuroretinal rim area in the optic nerve, which shows that deaf/hard of hearing people have more neurons transmitting visual information than do hearing people. (1)

It was previously known that deaf and hard of hearing people had better peripheral vision, but the researchers thought this was because the visual areas of our brains developed more (one sense compensating for the lack in another sense), rather than because of actual physical changes in our eyes. (No doubt, there are changes in our brains too, because we do rely on our vision so much.)

I’ve known most of my life that I had better peripheral vision than those around me. I have used this peripheral vision time after time to notice the first hints of movement that would indicate that someone or something was close behind me. This made it difficult for people to sneak up behind me without me knowing it.

So, although we don’t have eyes in the backs of our heads, current research has proved that we can indeed see further around the sides of our heads than can hearing people. Dr Ralph Holme, Head of Biomedical Research at RNID—Action on Hearing loss, explained: “The better peripheral vision experienced by people who are deaf, in comparison to those who hear, has significant benefits for their everyday lives—including the ability to quickly spot hazards at the boundaries of their view.” (2)

If you are interested, you can read the complete research article here.

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(1) Retina in Deaf Allows for Better Vision than in Those Without Hearing Loss. 2011. Hearing Review.

(2) Retina Holds the Key to Better Vision in Deaf People. 2011.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A recent study on the effects of hearing loss and dementia is scaring a lot of hard of hearing people.

For example one recent article opened with, “Older people with hearing loss are at a much greater risk for developing dementia over time than those who can hear well, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the National Institute on Aging.” (1)

Is this really true? Are we hard of hearing people soon going to be assigned to the Alzheimer’s ward just because we can’t hear well? I don’t think so. I think we need to look a bit closer at this study and its results.

This study took place in Baltimore at the National Institute on Aging. Johns Hopkins assistant professor of otology Frank R. Lin, MD, PhD, and his colleagues followed 639 people between the ages of 36 and 90 in this 12-year study. At the start of this study, 125 people had mild hearing losses, 53 had moderate losses and only 6 had severe losses. By the end of this study, 58 people had been diagnosed with dementia. (2) That’s the background.

Now the findings. “By cross-referencing their data, the researchers found that mild hearing loss was linked to a slight increase in dementia risk, but the risk increased noticeably among those with moderate and severe hearing loss.

For participants 60 and older, more than 36 percent of dementia risk was linked to hearing loss, the study said.

The worse the hearing loss, the worse the risk for Alzheimer’s as well. For every additional loss of 10 decibels of hearing capacity, Alzheimer’s risk appeared to go up by 20 percent, the researchers said.” (2)

If these research results are true, it does indeed sound bad for all of us with hearing loss. However, I think the researchers need to answer the following questions before they accept these study results as gospel. For example:

1. How long did the people with hearing loss have their hearing losses? Were they born with a severe loss like I was, or did they lose their hearing from taking ototoxic drugs (which could have damaged the workings of their brains at the same time) or did their hearing loss show up gradually as a result of aging?
2. Were the people with hearing loss aging faster than normal? For example, some people look like they’re 90 when they’re only 60. For such people you could expect dementia and early-onset hearing loss to show up earlier too. Conversely, some people that are really 90 only look 60 years old. Is their hearing also commensurate with their apparent age (60) rather than their real age (90)?
3. How well were the hard of hearing people who developed dementia coping with their hearing losses before they developed dementia? Were they the ones noted for denying their hearing losses and thus doing nothing about correcting their losses? In contrast, was there a difference in the rate of dementia among those who wore hearing aids, used assistive listening devices and otherwise practiced good hearing loss coping strategies?
4. Did dementia occur more often in those with hearing loss that basically withdrew from social intercourse than in those that retained an active social life in spite of their hearing losses?

These are the kinds of questions that researchers need to answer before you worry that dementia is in your future because you already have a hearing loss.

In any case, if you want to be proactive and try to stave off dementia, consider the following:

1. Your lifestyle: Are you doing what you can to maintain good health—physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually? If not, that’s the place to start.
2. Your hearing health: Have you done all that you can to successfully live with your hearing loss? This includes:
   • Getting and wearing properly-fitted hearing aids.
   • Supplementing your hearing aids with assistive listening devices (ALDs) in situations where hearing aids are not very effective. (Noise and distance are the two main enemies of hearing aids.)
   • Learning and practicing good hearing loss coping strategies including speechreading and assertively advocating for your hearing needs.
3. Use it or lose it: Keep socially, mentally and physically active.
4. Your drug usage: Take only the drugs that are truly necessary. Many seniors take numerous drugs unnecessarily according to Drs. Wolfe and Abramson. Did you know that many of the drugs you take can negatively affect your mental status as well as your hearing?

There are no guarantees, but if you are effectively addressing the above points, I think you’ll discover that you have greatly reduced your risk of developing dementia no matter how bad your hearing loss is, or becomes.

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(1) Pedersen, Traci. 2011. Hearing Loss Linked to Dementia. Psych Central News.

(2) Mozes, Alan. 2011. Study Suggests Hearing Loss-Dementia Link. Bloomberg Businessweek.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Research into regenerating human hair cells in the inner ear, with the aim of restoring hearing, has been ongoing for a number of years. Researchers have been trying, with varying degrees of success, to get hair cells to regenerate in animals—but there are still many hurdles to overcome. Consequently, human trials appear to still be a number of years away.

However, one method has just leapfrogged the competition and has already begun a Phase I clinical trial. (Note: a Phase I clinical trial is done on a very small group of people [in this case 10] to see if the proposed treatment will be safe and identify any resulting side effects. It’s not till Phase II trials that researchers primarily determine just how effective the treatment will be, although preliminary results hopefully will come out of the Phase I trials.)

This Phase I clinical trial is very limited in scope—just for children between the ages of 6 weeks and 18 months who have an acquired (but not genetic) moderate to profound sensorineural hearing loss since birth, and who have had their umbilical cord blood saved by the Cord Blood Registry.

The idea behind this trial is that there are progenitor stem cells floating around in the umbilical cord blood that researchers want to use in this trial. You see, when some babies are born, doctors extract and save the blood left in a baby’s umbilical cord for use later in the same baby if the baby ever needs it. The fancy name for this is “autologous human umbilical cord blood”. Using the baby’s own blood guarantees that the baby’s immune system won’t reject the blood when it is intravenously injected back into the child at some time in the future.

In this trial, researchers will intravenously inject the stored blood back into the same young child that originally “donated” it. What they expect to happen is that the hemopoietic [hee-moe-poy-ET-ik] stem cells [stem cells that make blood cells] still floating around in this umbilical cord blood will make their way to the inner ear where they will become involved in replacing and repairing any damaged hair cells. The hope is that this will ultimately restore some degree of hearing.

As the clinical trial prospectus states: “Pre-clinical data suggest progenitor cell infusions may enhance intrinsic repair mechanisms in the Organ of Corti which may restore hair cells. This treatment could ultimately lead to hearing improvement. Human umbilical cord blood is an available, autologous, stored progenitor cell population available for potential therapeutic use.” (1)

This clinical trial began earlier this year at the Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, TX, and is estimated to be completed by April of 2015.

Results from previous studies using mice showed that cochlear regeneration occurred. “Our findings show dramatic repair of damage with surprisingly few human-derived cells having migrated to the cochlea,” said Roberto P. Revoltella, MD, PhD, lead author of one such study. “A fraction of circulating hemopoietic stem cells fused with resident cells, generating hybrids, yet the administration of hematopoietic stem cells appeared to be correlated with tissue regeneration and repair as the cochlea in non-transplanted mice remained seriously damaged.” (2)

The mice in these studies had had their hearing damaged by either loud noise or by ototoxic drugs. Interestingly enough, cochlear regeneration was less successful in the group deafened by noise than in the group deafened by ototoxic drugs, implying that damage was more severe when induced by noise. Furthermore, regenerative effects were greater in mice injected with a higher number of hematopoietic stem cells. Researchers also found that regeneration of cochlear tissues improved as time passed. (2)

In another year or two, we should know whether this method of restoring hearing (to some degree or other since it obviously wasn’t 100% in the animal studies) will work on young children.

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(1) Safety of Autologous Human Umbilical Cord Blood Mononuclear Fraction to Treat Acquired Hearing loss in Children. 2011.

(2) Cochlear Repair after Transplant of Human Cord Blood Cells May Make Hearing Restoration Possible. 2008.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

From time to time scientists have raised the question of cell (mobile) phone safety and how it may affect our brains since the antennas of cell phones are transmitting electromagnetic energy into our heads.

In the past there have been concerns that cell phone usage may cause various kinds of brain cancers. Now new concerns are being raised concerning whether the electromagnetic radiation from cell phones might also affect our hearing. In fact, just such a paper was presented at the 2010 American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF) annual meeting and Oto Expo September 26-29 in Boston, MA. (1)

Researchers studied 125 people who were long-term (more than one year) cell phone users and 58 controls who had never used cell phones. The purpose of this study was to assess and compare potential changes in hearing function both in the inner ear, and in the central auditory pathways in the brain due to chronic exposure to electromagnetic waves from using cell phones.

Everyone in the study underwent a battery of audiological tests including “pure tone audiometry (250-12 kHz), tympanometry, distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE), auditory brain responses (ABR), and middle latency responses (MLRs).”

The results of this study showed that people that had regularly used cell (mobile) phones for more than 3 years were at “a significantly higher risk of having DPOAEs absent as compared with controls. They were found to have higher speech frequency thresholds and lower MLR wave and Na and Pa amplitudes.” (1) In plain English, this means that cell phone users had more hearing loss than non-cell phone users. Interestingly enough, the hearing loss was the same in both ears, not just the ear to which the phone was normally held.

They concluded that long-term and intensive mobile phone use may “damage the cochlea and the auditory cortex”.

What does this mean to you? Just this—land-line (corded) phones are obviously safer—both to your health and to your hearing than cell phones.

If you are going to use a cell phone, keeping it as far away from your head as is reasonably possible would be a wise move. In other words, as much as possible, rather than holding the cell phone up to your ear, do texting, use the speaker-phone function, use a bluetooth headset or use an amplified neckloop or T-links. Using any of these methods/devices will keep your phone at some distance from your head. As a result, your phone will not be unnecessarily zapping your brain with excessive electromagnetic radiation and thus possibly causing you even more hearing loss.

If you have to hold your cell phone up to your head, keep your calls short. However, to be as safe as possible, whenever you are around a corded landline phone, use it in preference to your cell phone. (Although this study didn’t look at cordless landline phones, since they also produce electromagnetic radiation right at your head level, you might be wise to limit your use of these phones too—until long-term studies prove whether they are safe or not.)

(1) Panda, Naresh, et al. 2010. Auditory Changes in Mobile Users Is Evidence Forthcoming? Article presented at the 2010 AAO-HNSF Annual Meeting; September 26-29, 2010; Boston, Massachusetts.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Smoking causes hearing loss in many smokers. That is nothing new. I have written about this for several years now. So maybe it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise that researchers have now discovered that breathing secondhand smoke also harms hearing in non-smokers.

Researchers divided 3,307 people between the ages of 20 and 69 into two groups—people who had never smoked, and former smokers. Here’s what they discovered.

For former smokers, breathing secondhand smoke caused low-frequency (2,000 Hz and below) hearing loss (hearing loss greater than 25 dB) in 14% of the former smokers studied. The risk of hearing loss in the high frequencies (3,000 – 8,000 Hz) was much higher at 46%.

For people who had never smoked, but were exposed to secondhand smoke, the figures were lower, but still affected significant numbers of people. The risk incidence of hearing loss was 8.6% in the low frequencies and 26.6% in the high frequencies. (1)

Thus, if you have never smoked, but live or work around those that do, you have roughly a 1 in 10 chance of developing a low-frequency hearing loss and a 1 in 4 chance of having high-frequency hearing loss as a result.

This study also indicates that if you are a former smoker and are still around smokers, the hearing loss that you developed while you were still a smoker will continue to progress.

When asked how much exposure to secondhand smoke was too much, Dr. David Fabry, the lead researcher explained, “We don’t know exactly, but the threshold for damage is very low. No exposure is the only safe level.” (2)

If you value your hearing, besides protecting your ears from loud sounds and from the ravages of ototoxic drugs, you also need to keep away from smokers and secondhand smoke.
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(1) Fabry, David, Ph.D., et. al. “Secondhand smoke exposure
and the risk of hearing loss”. In; Tobacco Control , November,
2010.

(2) The Hearing Journal, December 2010. Vol. 63, No. 12.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A recent study in elderly people revealed that blood serum folate levels significantly correlate with high-frequency hearing loss in people over 60 years old. (1)

Lack of adequate folate levels seems to affect high-frequency hearing. (Incidentally, folate is the natural form, while folic acid is the synthetic form of Vitamin B9, one of the vitamin B complex.)

Those with normal high-frequency hearing had folate levels that were approximately one and a half times higher (148%) than those that had high-frequency hearing loss.

Unfortunately, as we age, our bodies do not absorb nutrients as well as they once did. This can leave us with deficiencies in various micro-nutrients.

Therefore, if you have high-frequency hearing loss, it would seem wise to have your folate levels checked, and if they are low, to supplement your diet to raise your folate levels. Foods high in folate include the deep green leafy vegetables (e.g. broccoli, asparagus, lima beans, spinach and kale), nuts and brewer’s yeast. (Brewer’s yeast is a great source of ALL the B vitamins—except vitamin B12—and more importantly, they are all in the right proportions to each other too!)

Note: Folate and Vitamin B12 work together, so supplementing one without the other is not a good idea. Furthermore, too much folic acid can mask the symptoms of vitamin B12 deficiency. This can lead to permanent nerve damage if the B12 deficiency is not corrected. (2)

“We need folate, but taking supplements made of the synthetic form (folic acid), even in doses as low as 400 micrograms (mcg), has been linked to several types of cancer. Also, certain common drugs—including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and some medications for inflammatory bowel disease—can interfere with the body’s ability to convert folic acid to folate.” (2)

Therefore, according to Dr. Galland, it is far better is to take 500 mcg a day of L-methyl folate, a form of folate that circulates in the blood and is therefore more physiologically accessible than taking folic acid. This is most particularly important for adults over the age of 50.
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(1) Lasisi, Akeem. December, 2010. Age-related hearing loss, vitamin B12, and folate in the elderly. Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery. Volume 143, Issue 6, pp. 826-830.

(2) Vitamins, Who Needs Them? In: Bottom Line’s Daily Health News. December 27, 2010.