Reversing hearing loss with regenerative therapy

The trials preceding the Phase IIa results were all extremely promising, and even the Phase IIa one showed statistically significant effect on a sound discrimination, which many long time hearing sufferers can tell you is even more frustrating a problem than the inability to perceive sound.

Biomedical research stocks are inherently risky. I could be deluding myself, but my lay reading of the research, and as someone who has suffered from tinnitus for a long time brought on my noise overexposure, I think there is a very promising shot at this drug. Maybe FREQ will not be the ones to realize it and some other company will take the patent into real life clinical medicine, and FREQ is certainly not the ONLY company pursuing this angle. But their successes so far have kept me holding the stock, and I keep buying more.

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 really work on a statistically significant population that also represents the demographics of the country"). These studies are so expensive that nobody goes into Phase 3 unless they believe Phase 2 pretty certainly demonstrated that the drug works, and well.

It's also hard to figure out just how the animal's hearing is improving (you can't simply ask). I'm sure they have some experiments, but growing the hairs back may be necessary but not sufficient. Look at all those Alzheimers programs aimed at removing the plaque that haven't demonstrated any value in the clinic. The plaque might not even be alzheimers itself -- it could merely be the body's response to some different underlying effect of the disease.

The choice of animal is very important, and the FDA cares a lot. Mice are popular because they are cheap. I worked on a program years ago that used guinea pigs because mice couldn't get the disease. We didn't use rats as the compound caused cancer in rats, and someone else had had their program derailed because the FDA required a separate analysis and study to demonstrate that the cancer was specific to rats and not other species (rats get lots of cancers). For our program the FDA required some studies in (non-guinea) pigs before they were willing to allow any human trials.

The only tip I can give you is to always have some kind of background sound that you can focus on rather than the buzzing in your own head.

Also, avoid earplugs and headphones, they just create a wierd feedback loop.

In the spirit of "there's a forum for everything," you can get help programming them yourself here:

https://forum.hearingtracker.com/

You might want to experiment with changing your diet, drinking more water, etc.

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 played in a room have a comfortable volume, sounds really good. It's present. And even when I use the little transmitter to send it an idealized signal, it had a roll off starting around 8khz, the absolute high-end was maybe 12khz.

I never took the time to analyze it in detail, and kind of wish I had. The usual 62-100 hurts emphasis, like what you'll find on your typical loudness button on a 70's or 80's stereo was there. But it also shaped the sound in 3 to 8khz range.

The end result was a very natural sound the didn't overpower, felt like it should be there in the room with all the other sounds.

Wish I could say more but I'm not where I have any detail information. I can say the enjoyment of the music is different, and fulfilling. It's not bright, like those higher frequencies bring to the overall feel of the program being produced.

Robust, full, seem descriptive... clear is another one. Often, when I hear high bandwidth audio, through limited devices, it seems muddy, unclear, not precise. Those older radios are not like that. Well, the better ones anyway.

In any case, the eq is different, and that impacts our perception related to the overall feel of the sound.

Sorry for the typos. I'm doing this with the voice dictation. I may actually go back and revisit this myself. As I age up I'm getting be expected, natural roll off most all of us get in our later years.

Look at https://positive-feedback.com/Issue66/hearing.htm if you want to hack something together that will work better and not damage your hearing.

I mentioned different eq curves down thread. I don't have a lot of technical data at hand, but older radios from the vacuum tube era where they had response over 10 khz.

A good one, play that a respectable volume in a room, sounds pretty great!

What I'm kind of hinting at here is there maybe Equalization curves that can satisfy our need for that bright open sense that is missing when the higher frequencies are also missing.

Ah, me too, but no sound at all. A specialist told me it was caused by a virus, but I never looked into which one, or asked for more info.. There was no treatment, except cochlear implant, which didn't sound too great. Hopefully it doesn't happen in the other ear also!

What I probably need is a DAC for my sound system. The music streaming services like Apple don’t provide an adequate way to equalize the audio and balance to compensate for my hearing loss.

Edit: I keep hoping that Apple will do a better job here with their next release of AirPods Pro. One of the problems with Apple Music is they set the max volume too low. I can sort of understand the desire to help people protect their hearing, but their max level is less than IRL, and there is no way to bypass that setting.

Tidal is better. And there are plenty of YouTube channels I listen to at half volume, so it’s not the Apple hardware causing the problem.

I also know my Mom and how to her $10 is like $100 so hearing aids even $1,000 to her would seem astronomical in price. She'd retort, "I'm fine without them".

It's been a decades long battle someday she may give in.

But the serious problem with hearing loss is the "bandwidth", meaning the damaged cells send less information to the brain even if attenuation is compensated by hearing aid, leading to bad recognition of sounds and speech.

I have never encountered someone else that was able to hear whether a tv was on or not. At what distance could you do that?

Never really considered the high-frequency experience a problem; it's just always been part of my sensory experience.

I've always asked myself - how could I get this if I always had good hearing? Is this even anyone's fault? How could a child have tinnitus when it had no real chance to get it? This entire post+comments has me almost in tears - my tinnitus gets unbearable e.g. when I'm stressed, panicking or overstimulated. It helps to know someone shares my pain, even if this treatment won't become available in my lifetime. I'm used to having stuff playing in the background anyway, it's just the times when I can't drown it out when it's the worst.

PS: BTW, something interesting happened to me recently: I recently visited a retro game museum while on vacation. Being obviously filled with old TVs, the noise was nigh-insufferable for me, but I pushed through because retro games is my thing. We spent ~1hr there and after we left, I felt like my own TV noise was somehow better for the day. Weird.

I grant you, some people who use "trigger warnings" would have added one before talking about suicide rates. I however do not use them outside mental health forums and such.

Having a lawnmower in my head at all time is not the end of the world. But it's certainly exhausting and sometimes disabilitating.

It's meaningless to compare health conditions. What's the worst between something that kills you, something that paralyzes you, something that gives you constant pain and something that triggers constant fear in you?

All of them. All of them are the worst to people who suffers from them.

Tinnitus is brought up in the article, this is why people are talking about it. Not because it's a condition that is worst than others.

Reading about a possible cure is one of the are form of hope someone with tinnitus will ever have.

I recently caught the covid virus. The symptoms were bad but far from what annoyed me the most from it. The worst is how since I have had it, my tinnitus is back to the forefront of my life and louder than ever. Many people who have managed to ignore their tinnitus will have it come back when they are exhausted, tired, sick, stressed, etc.

Being dismissive and saying you can learn to ignore it is not really helpful, this is true of most conditions. This article however offers a tangible cure.

Not to be dismissive either but the ringing from hearing music that is too loud is the mildest case most commone case of tinnitus that exists and will often simply reduce by a large margin on its own. Chronic tinnitus is defined as a tinnitus that lasts more than six months.

In my case, it's at the level of a lawnmower behind a thin wall when at it's worst and mosquito near the ear when at it's mildest. In some other cases, it's car engine and even jet engine level. To me your message (while probably not on purpose) comes across like someone with an amputated finger talking to someone with two amputated legs about how you can learn to live with it (especially with the talk about selection bias, which is useful when looking at trends but not when talking to individuals). Yes you can control it and yes it's the same medical condition. But it's not the same beast.