Following years of laboratory testing there is now evidence that the damage that loud noise causes to our hearing can be reduced by taking a pill.
Human trials of the pill have now begun. It is predicted that a person will show an improvement in hearing test results after taking a drink with the substance dissolved in it.
This is just the latest research in an ongoing attempt to create a pill that can actually treat damage to a person’s hearing from loud noise and protect people from this kind of damage in the future. There has been a considerable increase in these efforts in recent years.
The new pill is not intended to replace ear protection. The pill is intended to be extra protection and work alongside existing ear protection to tackle the problem of hearing loss which is still widespread with the protection that is currently available.
Federal government statistics show that hearing loss is a very common occupational hazard and the second highest reported form of occupational disease or injury. Approximately 10 million Americans live with permanent hearing loss caused by long-term exposure or a sudden burst of loud noise.
30 million people are at risk of hearing damage due to their exposure to dangerous noise levels in their occupations in industries such as the construction, agriculture, mining and manufacturing industries. For professional musicians there is also a great risk of hearing damage.
Hearing loss does not always occur at work. Many hobbies including recreational riffle shooting, race car driving and snowmobiles also have a high risk of causing hearing loss. More protection is needed than the amount provided by earplugs and the specialist sound deadening headphones that are currently available.
Unfortunately the current protection is not always effective against all types of sound. It is also not worn as regularly as it should be especially by those who are more prone to hearing loss. Certain levels of noise can also cause damage by penetrating different areas of the head where the protection is not worn.
The idea of creating a pill in order to strengthen resistance to hearing damage has been approached in different ways. Research from 1994 showed that in Israel military recruits managed to avoid hearing damage during their military training due to magnesium supplements in their diet. A lot of the research these days is centered around antioxidants the chemicals that are present in vitamins C and E.
The reason for this is that the force of loud sound is not always directly responsible for the damage to the hearing. Damage can be caused by free radicals that the inner ear produces after having been exposed to high volumes.
Free radicals can be neutralized by antioxidants naturally present in the ear. There can be too many free radicals produced from excessive loud noise for the antioxidants to be able to neutralize. The damage from the free radicals causes the ear’s sound receptors, hair shaped cells that produce nerve messages, to die. The damage caused by the cells dieing is permanent.
By increasing the level of antioxidants, hearing loss could be prevented or even treated straight after it occurs. From the animal experiments that have taken place this method shows promising results in preventing lasting hearing loss. Some experts remain cautious when it comes to the effectiveness of this method on humans. Although the antioxidant method looks promising, more tests on animals are required to see the effect different noise levels and the size of antioxidant doses to discover whether the method will be effective on humans.
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