Livin' in a pill-poppin', push-button age
Oct. 11th, 2003 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsychePill May Reduce Hearing Loss From Noise
[...] Scientists have pursued a variety of approaches toward an ear-fortifying pill. In 1994, for example, Israeli researchers reported that magnesium supplements helped military recruits avoid hearing loss over two months of noisy basic training. These days, much of the work focuses on antioxidants, the chemical class that most famously includes vitamins C and E.
That's because loud noise doesn't always damage the delicate inner ear immediately just by brute force. Rather, in most cases it provokes the inner ear into making harmful oxygen molecules called free radicals. Antioxidants neutralize free radicals, and the ear naturally has such defenses. But with enough noise, the ear's antioxidants are overwhelmed.
In that case, damage from the free radicals leads to death of the ear's sound receptors — hair cells, which convert the mechanical energy of incoming sound waves into nerve messages to the brain. As hair cells die off, hearing erodes permanently. So it makes sense to try to build up the ear's antioxidant defenses as a preventive step, and as a fast treatment after noise exposure.
Animal experiments in prevention look promising, and "people are getting very excited about applying this to protection against noise exposure in humans," [Sharon] Kujawa [director of audiology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary] said.
[...] Scientists have pursued a variety of approaches toward an ear-fortifying pill. In 1994, for example, Israeli researchers reported that magnesium supplements helped military recruits avoid hearing loss over two months of noisy basic training. These days, much of the work focuses on antioxidants, the chemical class that most famously includes vitamins C and E.
That's because loud noise doesn't always damage the delicate inner ear immediately just by brute force. Rather, in most cases it provokes the inner ear into making harmful oxygen molecules called free radicals. Antioxidants neutralize free radicals, and the ear naturally has such defenses. But with enough noise, the ear's antioxidants are overwhelmed.
In that case, damage from the free radicals leads to death of the ear's sound receptors — hair cells, which convert the mechanical energy of incoming sound waves into nerve messages to the brain. As hair cells die off, hearing erodes permanently. So it makes sense to try to build up the ear's antioxidant defenses as a preventive step, and as a fast treatment after noise exposure.
Animal experiments in prevention look promising, and "people are getting very excited about applying this to protection against noise exposure in humans," [Sharon] Kujawa [director of audiology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary] said.