Do Chickens Hold the Key to a Cure for Hearing Loss?

Chickens have the amazing ability to restore their own hearing, and this trait is inspiring a nonprofit organization in their search for a cure for hearing loss in humans.

The Hearing Health Foundation’s “Chirp the News” video features the group’s new mascot: a baby chick. Locked within the ears of this chick is the potential to restore hearing and cure tinnitus, or ringing in the ears. According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, about 36 million adults in the U.S. have some form of hearing loss, and 25 million are affected by tinnitus.

“As someone who lives with hearing loss every day, I am personally thrilled with the prospects for a cure,” said Shari Eberts, chairman of the Hearing Health Foundation’s Board of Directors, in an email to Healthline. “Life with hearing loss can be frustrating. Sometimes you miss the joke when everyone else is laughing, and sometimes you miss important information because you don't hear it. Supportive family and friends can make living with hearing loss easier, but a genuine cure would be life changing.” 

The Chicken’s Magic Ears

The secret to the chicken’s auditory magic is that supporting cells in its inner ear can replace hair cells that have been damaged by loud noises or other causes.

And chickens aren’t the only animals that can restore their own damaged hearing. All vertebrates other than mammals can do the same. And preliminary research has shown that mice can regain some of their hearing using supporting cells that turn into hair cells—in the lab, at least. 

Researchers supported by the Hearing Health Foundation hope to find a way to coax the supporting cells in the inner ears of people to transform into functional hair cells. Their goal is to have a cure within a decade.

The 10-Year Road to a Cure

For people with hearing loss, waiting a decade for a cure can seem like a lifetime. But in the world of research, this is a very short time to travel from initial scientific discoveries all the way to successful clinical trials in humans.

To speed the research along, the Hearing Health Foundation is supporting a collaboration known as the Hearing Restoration Project (HRP) that involves researchers from more than ten institutions, including Harvard Medical School.

To find a successful cure for hearing loss, researchers have plenty o work ahead of them—including identifying how supporting cells in the chicken's ear turn into hair cells, as well as finding potential compounds or drugs that can make this happen in people.

Eberts is optimistic that the project will hit its mark, and so is Ed Rubel, a professor of hearing science at the University of Washington and a member of the project team.

“With sufficient funding,” he says, “the consortium can discover effective pathways and hopefully some lead compounds to promote hair cell regeneration in the mammalian inner ear in the 10-year time frame.”

Many Eggs in Many Baskets

In his lab at the University of Washington, Rubel is working on one piece of the puzzle that may one day lead to hair cell regeneration in people. 

“The project on my own has to do with developing a new mouse model to test the pathways and, eventually, the drugs that come out of the HRP,” he said.

The mice developed in his laboratory will be shared among members of the consortium, so they can avoid having to develop their own mice. This kind of sharing is an important aspect of the collaboration, something that Eberts expects will save time and money.

For Rubel, working with the HRP has other benefits.

“The wonderful thing about the consortium,” he says, “is that it includes only people who really want to play in that kind of sandbox—that want to share information, share early-stage information, share the other things that they’re doing in their laboratories, and work together.”

As a person with hearing loss, Eberts supports the push to highlight the project's potential.

“Even though we are in the early stages of the research, we think it is very important that the public learn about our efforts,” she said. “We want them to know that there is hope for a cure and that there are researchers who consider curing hearing loss and tinnitus to be their life’s most important work.”

This article was repurposed with permission from Healthline.

Are You Wireless Enabled? Part Two

By Paul Harrison, Guest Author

This is the second in a two part series on wireless technology and hearing aids. Check out part one for more.

Wireless technology in hearing aids means that they are able to connect both with each other and with a number of different devices using a signal that is similar to the Bluetooth in mobile phones. When the hearing aids work together it is known as binaural technology. With this feature, they can communicate with each other and work together to improve your hearing. There are some binaural features that will analyze your environment, detect which hearing aid is receiving the clearer signal and then transmit this superior signal to the other side. This ensures that you are always getting the best sound available, whatever your environment may be. Binaural microphone applications work in the same way to ensure you hear sounds from all directions clearly but can give priority to speech over background noises.

Each manufacturer has their own range of accessories which can only be used with their own hearing aids. Some require a device called a streamer to be used in addition to the other accessories. This streamer is used to relay the signal from each device into the hearing aids and is often the point of control as well. Some manufacturers use a different or more powerful signal which can send the sounds directly without the need for this additional device.

Music Player

Obviously, you cannot wear hearing aids and headphones at the same time. With personal music players, unless you are listening at home through speakers, headphones are absolutely necessary. Some people are still unable to hear clearly with just headphones and still require the extra help from their hearing aids. There are now devices that essentially turn your hearing aids into the headphones for your music player. The signal is sent in the same way as the other devices and allows you to listen in comfort and you can easily adjust the volume to suit your needs.

Voices

Yes, technically you don’t connect to someone’s voice, but there are accessories available that help you to hear them more clearly. Remote Microphone devices have been designed to pick up the sound of another person’s voice and send it directly to your hearing aids. In crowded environments, people who wear hearing aids often find having a conversation difficult due to the level of background noise. The microphone accessories actively suppress this unwanted noise and send clear and audible speech straight to you. These devices are worn by the other speaker in a one to one conversation and allow you to hear everything they say clearly without having to be uncomfortably close to them. In a group situation such as a meeting, these devices can be placed on the table and they will pick up the individual voices so you don’t miss out on any of the discussion.

Remote Controls

Most hearing aid manufacturers offer some form of remote control for their hearing aids nowadays. Some are basic devices that simply allow you to adjust volume or programs, others are more advanced and give you control over things like clarity and comfort settings. Some of these devices are simple push button control and others have display screens with more in depth menu options. There are even some that have been designed to be as discreet as possible by looking exactly like other objects such as pens or being small enough to fit on a set of keys. These accessories are especially useful for people who may find that the small buttons on the hearing aids themselves are too fiddly to use.

According to YourHearing Wireless, technology is advancing all the time, making it easier for hearing aid users to enjoy things that they previously found difficult or frustrating. Each manufacturer has a different range of accessories so you would need to check to see what is available for your particular hearing aids. There are so many options available today it is possible for everyone to get themselves and their hearing aids wireless enabled.

Author Bio:  Paul Harrison has been in the Hearing aid industry for 20 years and in that time has worked at both manufacturer and retailer level before managing his own online hearing aid business www.yourhearing.co.uk which is a national network of local hearing aid audiologists who offer the main hearing aid brands at less than the high street but with the same quality aftercare and warranty.

You Can Hear, Thanks to the Darwin Fish

By Tara Guastella

Photo by lapradei/Flickr

I never thought that fish would be an evolutionary ancestor to humans. Monkeys and chimpanzees, yes—but fish?

It turns out that a certain fish, known as Polypterus and related species, have tiny holes in the top of their head called spiracles. A team of researchers in California recently showed how a small valve opens a bony lid over these spiracles that allows air to be sucked in and pumped out when the fish surface.

Strangely enough those same holes allowing the fish to breathe have modified themselves over time to become Eustachian tubes. Enabling us to hear, these tubes are small passageways on either side of the head that connect the upper part of the throat to the middle ear. They supply fresh air, drain fluid, and keep air pressure between the nose and the ear at a steady level.

Hearing in early amphibians developed from the spiracles adapting to become the tympanic membrane (also known as the eardrum), a thin cone-shaped membrane that separates the external ear from the middle ear. The tympanic membrane is similar to skin and transmits sound to the brain through the stapes, the tiniest bone in the body.

Interestingly, the stapes evolved from a long bone, known as the hyomandibular bone, that braced the lower jaws of sharks and other early jawed fish. This bone eventually shrank in size to form the stapes.

The other two inner ear bones alongside the stapes—the malleus and the incus—also formed from bones that braced the articulation of the upper and lower jaws. These bones decreased in size and became restricted to the inner ear. So, these three little bones that enable us to hear derived from the larger jaw bones of ancient fish.

If not for the evolutionary experiments of these prehistoric fish breathing air through the top of their heads, humans may never have evolved a keen sense of hearing.

Now that you know how our hearing evolved, learn more about how hearing works and how the human ear processes sound. Watch our captioned How Hearing Works video.

How Can a Chicken Cure Hearing Loss & Tinnitus? Find out in our new PSA!

By Tara Guastella

I’m so excited to share that we have recently launched a new Public Service Announcement (PSA): Chirp the News! The PSA introduces HHF’s new mascot, a baby chicken.

Why a baby chicken?

The key to restoring hearing in humans is to regenerate cells deep within the inner ear. In fact, most types of hearing loss in humans results from damage to these cells, called hair cells. While humans cannot regenerate hair cells in the inner ear after they are damaged, chickens can. In fact, most animals other than mammals can regenerate these delicate cells, restoring their hearing spontaneously after damage.

This knowledge is the basis for our Hearing Restoration Project (HRP). The HRP is a consortium of over a dozen top scientists from across the world working collaboratively to take what we know happens in chickens and translate that to people. Our HRP scientists estimate clinical trials testing a genuine, biologic cure for hearing loss can occur within the next decade. Since over 90 percent of tinnitus cases occur with an underlying hearing loss, a cure for hearing loss is also likely the key to a cure for tinnitus.

Most scientific research is conducted in isolation: one researcher or one lab trying to solve a major health issue. Our unique HRP consortium model is breaking the mold by encouraging our scientists to work as a team sharing data, tools, resources, and ideas. By working collaboratively, the timeline to a cure is expedited: five times as fast with the power of collaboration.

We won’t be able to get to a cure for hearing loss and tinnitus without your help—please donate today and be a part of the cure.

Congratulations to the First Deaf NFL Player to Play in the Super Bowl: Derrick Coleman!

By Tara Guastella

Hearing loss is sometimes considered an invisible disability. You usually can’t see hearing loss but the impact it has can be life-altering. Many even try to hide their hearing loss for fear of embarrassment. Others embrace it and do everything in their power to not let it hamper them. Seattle Seahawks fullback Derrick Coleman—who played in the Super Bowl Sunday—embraces it.

I was so moved when I first watched the Duracell commercial (below) that featured Coleman. Over the years at HHF we’ve been in touch with so many actors, sports stars, politicians, and other celebrities that are afraid of “coming out” about their hearing loss. But Coleman freely and openly talks about his hearing loss in a positive way.

Coleman, at the age of 23, broke the mold and has had an enormous impact on each and every person that experiences or knows someone who experiences hearing loss. He has become a role model for those young and old alike. He told the New York Times, “If you really want something, you find a way to make it happen.”

Coleman made it happen during last night’s game. And over the past few weeks he has made it happen for some of his biggest fans: children and young adults with hearing loss. He personally responded to an inspirational letter sent to him via Twitter from Riley Kovalcik, a 9-year-old girl who wears two hearing aids. A couple of days later Coleman surprised Riley and her twin sister with tickets to last night’s big game. Adham Talaat of Bridgewater, N.J., who is training for May’s NFL draft, believes that Coleman will pave the way for other players who are deaf. The senior at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., says he never had a deaf role model until he learned of Coleman.

I am so proud of Coleman and the Seahawks for their victory against the Denver Broncos last night (and this is coming from a diehard NY Giants fan!).

Do Your Super Bowl Sunday Plans Include Ear Plugs?

By Yishane Lee

Professional football games this season have put the spotlight on a disturbing trend: the purposely loud stadium, as a strategy to flummox the opposing team.

Leading the charge are the Seattle Seahawks, who made it to the Super Bowl XLVIII. Regardless of whether or not they beat the Denver Broncos this weekend, the Seahawks fans will already be remembered—for better or worse—as the noisiest in history. They broke the Guinness record twice this season, most recently with a rating of 137.6 decibels (dB) in December.

Seattle’s own Derrick Coleman, who doesn’t experience the din of the crowds, confronts his hearing loss head on in this Duracell commercial. Coleman has become an inspiration for all those with hearing loss.

At 130 dB, the human ear is subject to immediate and permanent hearing loss. By comparison, a jackhammer is 110 dB, an ambulance siren is 120 dB, and a jet taking off is 140 dB.

My ears hurt just thinking about this insanity. People routinely bring their children to games, subjecting them to lasting hearing damage. All of this is in the name of not only team spirit but, perhaps more importantly, messing up communication for the opposing team and causing them to make mistakes. According to a January 17 article in the Wall Street Journal, “Seahawk opponents committed 174 false start penalties since [Seattle’s CenturyLink Field] opened in 2002, the most in the National Football League.” During the NFC Championship game on January 19, San Francisco 49ers players were even fitted with custom earplugs to drown out the noise and protect their ears.

Some of the organizers of these extremely loud crowd roars—the fan association leaders—seem completely unperturbed by the risk of permanent hearing loss. Earlier this season, the Seattle Seahawks were in a noise-off with the Kansas City Chiefs, whose fans are led by Ty Rowton. (Alarmingly, he says he brings his kids to games, and they do not use ear plugs.) “If we can help our team win, that's what matters most to us. We don't think about hearing loss,” Rowton told Soundcheck, a public radio program, in December.

The author of a front-page New York Times article last November about the phenomenon, Joyce Cohen (who has hyperacusis), was also interviewed for the show, and said, “I think truly, ignorance rules the day. People have no idea, there's been no education about this.” While a Seattle hearing healthcare center donated 30,000 earplugs to fans, they were too big to fit children. A sixth-grader told Cohen that he endured a steady roar “so loud that the insides of you rattle.”

The noise from Seahawks fans is loud enough to trigger a seismograph, used to measure earthquakes. In 2011 the fans’ jumping, stomping, and screaming created enough sound energy equal to a magnitude 1 or 2 earthquake, according to the Seattle Times.

If you’re lucky enough to score tickets to this Sunday’s big game, please don’t forget a pair of earplugs. I’m all for rooting for your team, but not at the expense of your hearing. Frankly, this makes the painted, shirtless fans braving subzero temps seem like geniuses by comparison.

One Woman's Grand Passion for Music

By Yishane Lee

Nancy M. Williams joined the HHF board in March of 2012 and has been an active member since. She coped with the loss as a child, accepted it as an adult, and now has become an advocate for hearing research—all experiences she writes about in the Winter issue of Hearing Health magazine.

Williams has had an interesting career, going from two decades of marketing and management consulting (after earning degrees from Stanford and Harvard Business School), to growing an online music community through her online magazine Grand Piano Passion. She won the 2009 Lamar York Nonfiction Prize for a heart-wrenching essay she wrote about returning to piano playing after a 25-year hiatus, and which has spurred her writing as well as playing.

In her article for Hearing Health, titled “A Grand Passion,” Williams writes:

In kindergarten, after I sang “Three Blind Mice” too loudly on the big rag rug in our classroom, I was diagnosed with a high-frequency hearing loss. My parents, worried about the social stigma, refused the recommended hearing aid, a decision that boomeranged when I reached middle school. “You can’t hear secrets,” complained a girl with green eyeliner at lunchtime. “Don’t sit with us anymore.”  

I was devastated. My parents broke down and had me fitted with an aid, a behind-the-ear model, bulky by today’s standards.

My parents had acted with the best of intentions in a society that tolerated hearing loss even less than ours does today. Yet the incident in the lunchroom stayed with me for a long time. To compensate, I rarely admitted to anyone that I had a hearing loss.

Playing the piano again, and writing about it, and joining HHF led Williams to finally be fully open about her hearing loss. To do it required overcoming decades of shame, which she writes about openly both in our piece and in her magazine.

Williams has also been very involved with helping other musicians with hearing loss. She’s a huge asset to our organization, offering strategic advice and tips both as a businessperson and a consumer who uses hearing aids. We hope that you enjoy her story in the Winter issue, part of a special package about music, musicians, and hearing loss and tinnitus.

This Is Your Workplace on Noise

By Kathi Mestayer

Imagine that this is the view from your office window. Not bad—residential neighborhood, skyscrapers in the distance, and the train nearby means you can get to work without driving.

This view is from the Post Office Distribution Center in Oakland, Calif. It’s only 100 feet from the tracks where Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) trains line up to cross San Francisco Bay.  

The office has windows, too, which is nice. When the trains go by (every three to four minutes), accelerating and decelerating (think screeching brakes), those single-paned windows with metal frames not only let the view in, they let the sound in. And if you open them for a little fresh air, well… you can almost feel your teeth rattling.

Ethan Salter is an acoustician at the San Francisco-based Charles M. Salter Associates and was called to help reduce the noise pollution. “It was definitely difficult to communicate by phone, or even face to face, and the noise interfered with the work people were trying to do,” Salter says.   

This presents an entirely different noise problem than an office setting where the printer or a conversation in the next cubicle is the culprit. But the principles acousticians use are the same.

The rule of thumb they use is that a signal-to-noise ratio of at least 10 decibels (dBA) is required in order to be able to hear speech over noise. That means the “signal,” or what you’re trying to hear, has to be 10 dBA louder than the background noise, in order for the speech to be intelligible. (The unit dBA measures how humans perceive sound.)

With frequent BART trains and single-paned glass or open windows, that’s a tall order.

Salter worked with the Post Office staff to evaluate the alternatives in terms of cost, aesthetics, and constructability. “One type of window was too expensive, and the owner and contractor wanted to use another, more common window system that would get them a good price,” he says. “So we retrofitted one room at the facility with a double-paned window that had a layer of plastic in between the two panes of glass.” The improvement was about 10 to 15 dBA compared with the existing windows.

Now when postal employees look out their office windows, they can at least have a conversation while getting the job done. And still enjoy that expansive view.

For more:

• If you have a hearing loss, learn how you can hear better in the workplace in Hearing Health magazine's “Office Space.”

• Learn what rights you have as an employee working in a noisy space in Hearing Health magazine's “Caution: Noise at Work” and the dangers of loud gyms in “No Pain, No Gain?”

• See what steps one busy Northern California restaurant is taking so its patrons can hear one another while dining.

Hearing Health magazine staff writer Kathi Mestayer serves on advisory boards for the Virginia Department for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and the Greater Richmond, Va., chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America.

Innovative Science Meets Innovative Technology

By Yishane Lee

This month our own Tara Guastella was interviewed for a piece on the blog for Exponent Partners. Exponent Partners is HHF’s technology partner who implemented our new online grants management system called Foundation Connect in mid- to late 2012. Foundation Connect has greatly increased HHF’s efficiency, transparency, and accountability, allowing us to match our innovative hearing research with innovative grants management.

In the interview, Tara speaks about HHF’s mission and research efforts, highlighting why hearing research affects everyone and how the new system has benefitted HHF:

HHF’s mission is to prevent and cure hearing loss and tinnitus through groundbreaking research. Our HRP researchers are specifically studying regrowth of the tiny sensory cells inside everyone’s ears, called hair cells, which allow us to hear. Every time we damage them with exposure to loud noise, or the cells are otherwise destroyed—such as by certain drugs or simply aging—we are at risk for hearing loss.

Normally, in humans, these cells do not grow back. However, researchers funded by HHF have found promising leads in the hair cells of chickens, which naturally regrow. The research suggests that regeneration of these cells could be induced in mammals. This would combat one of the most widespread forms of acquired hearing loss. It is estimated that 10 percent of Americans between the ages of 20 and 69 may have suffered hearing loss from noise exposure.

This type of loss is also highly associated with tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, found in 90 percent of tinnitus cases. Researchers are hopeful that once hearing is restored, tinnitus will similarly be alleviated. This would bring great benefit to the nearly 50 million Americans who experience hearing loss or tinnitus, including one in five teens and 60 percent of recently returning veterans.

HHF funds not only this research toward a cure but also many other hearing topic areas, including auditory processing disorders, genetic hearing loss, and the vestibular (balance) system, to name a few.

“Fifty years ago, restoring hearing to a person with hearing loss seemed like a dream,” Guastella said. “Since then, HHF has contributed to many of today’s current treatment options such as cochlear implants, new therapies for ear infections, and therapy for otosclerosis [an abnormal bone growth in the ear].”

Guastella noted, “When we first launched the HRP, one of our goals was to make the application and review process as easy and efficient as we could. We wanted our consortium scientists to dedicate as much time as possible to advancing the research in their labs rather than spending time applying for grants.”

The system has increased the capacity of the foundation. “We were able to process double the amount of letters of inquiry the year after we implemented the solution. We can quickly respond to inquiries about our past grantees as well,” Guastella said. “And everything is more user-friendly.” Now HHF’s internal grants administration matches the cutting-edge research they support.

Read the rest of the Exponent Partners blog post here.

All About Assistive Listening DevicesAll About Assistive Listening Devices

By Yishane Lee

Assistive listening devices, or ALDs, are an especially handy type of device for people with hearing loss. While you don’t need hearing test results or a doctor’s visit to use them, the category is so broad and diverse—alarms, amplifiers, FM systems, loops, and phones, among others—that it helps to have someone who knows them well to help you figure out which ones can help you the most.

To this end we are introducing a new column in Hearing Health magazine. In the Winter 2014 issue, writer George Khal presents the first “Assistive Advice” column. Khal is the founder and former president of Sound Clarity, an international retail company specializing in ALDs. He has had a severe bilateral hearing loss since early adulthood. We spoke with him about the inspiration for the column and company, as well as his go-to ALDs.

What is your inspiration for “Assistive Advice”?

There is a need to provide unbiased information to consumers by helping them understand how ALDs can help them in their personal and professional lives, and I hope to help other consumers through sharing my knowledge from personal and professional experiences.

I had noticed consumers were aware of hearing aids but often unaware of ALDs, and that hearing healthcare professionals often did not promote ALDs. I feel that many consumers want to learn more about these devices but that it is not readily available in a format they could understand. I hope to be able to remedy that situation.

In addition, I feel that many consumers are unaware of the implications of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and of State Telecommunications Access programs.

How did Sound Clarity come to be created?

In 1999 I was contemplating a career change from information technology. I was also advising the University of Iowa on how to make its facilities hearing accessible, in order to comply with the ADA. My ALD experience at that time was leading the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) support groups throughout Iowa and working with audiologists from the Speech and Hearing Center in Iowa City to connect people with hearing loss to our local group.  

Over years of leading our local HLAA chapter, I came into contact with people who were hungry for information that can help their daily lives, since hearing aids were not enough for many of them. Using parts from local electronics stores I also had built some of my own ALDs—an FM system, personal amplifiers, and neck loops—and was aware of how many of the devices worked.

After attending HLAA conventions as a consumer, it made me realize that my knowledge of the technology combined with my IT background gave me skills to start Sound Clarity. After founding the company, I was the president for a decade, till 2010.

What are the ALDs you are never without or that you use daily?

The T-coil (telecoil) is the ALD I use the most. I use it when I talk on the telephone or watch television. I also use an audio loop mostly when I watch television. When driving I use a wireless Bluetooth neck loop with my cell phone. I rely on a vibrating alarm clock to wake up in the morning—it’s especially necessary when I am home alone. Just as important is the visual smoke alarm, with a strobe light, that gives me peace of mind. And although not an ALD, a hearing aid dryer is a device I use daily to keep my hearing aids clean and free of moisture.

We hope you enjoy the debut “Assistive Advice” column!