Alarmingly, nearly half of all baby boomers today suffer from some degree of hearing loss. While its onset can be almost imperceptible ...

Alarmingly, nearly half of all baby boomers today suffer from some degree of hearing loss. While its onset can be almost imperceptible, the end result is an impaired ability to interact with the world that significantly detracts from quality of life.

For more than 20 years, leading otolaryngologist Dr. Michael Seidman has been searching for the underlying causes of age-related hearing loss and for natural strategies to prevent and even reverse this debilitating condition. His remarkable research and clinical experience shows that it is now possible to slow the progression-and sometimes even reverse hearing loss-using an integrative approach that includes optimal nutritional and lifestyle choices.

In the following excerpt from Save Your Hearing Now (Warner Wellness, 2006), Dr. Seidman reveals the intimate link between aging and hearing loss, and how you can implement a program today to protect your hearing against the ravages of aging.

After treating hundreds of patients suffering from hearing loss- and seeing the devastating effects it had on their lives-I decided to look for a natural solution. Knowing that antioxidants counteract the damage caused by free radicals, I thought there might be a way to use those same safe, natural substances to protect and/or restore hearing.

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But first, the fact that there was a link between free-radical damage and hearing loss had to be established.

So the first study my colleagues and I conducted was designed to find out if there was a connection between damaged hearing in humans and the common hearing loss seen with aging. To measure free-radical damage, scientists can look for certain "markers," chemical or cellular signposts that indicate change within a cell. In humans, one of these markers is known as the common aging deletion.

It is a sign of both advancing years and free-radical damage to the DNA of tiny organelles within each cell known as mitochondria.

From previous research in our lab and by others, we knew four things:

1. Common aging deletions accumulate as we grow older.
2. Blood flow to the cochlea, home to the nerve endings that make hearing possible, decreases as we age.
3. At the same time, our hearing apparatus becomes less sensitive.
4. As we age, our bodies produce more free radicals and fewer of the antioxidants that protect our hearing from free-radical damage.

To test the theory that aging damages hearing and common aging deletions are a sign of that damage, we examined the temporal bones (those found at the sides and base of the skull) of thirty-four individuals, seventeen with normal hearing and seventeen who had age-related hearing loss. Temporal bones house the cochlea, the snail-shell-shaped organ responsible for hearing, and this is why we focused on that particular area. We found the common aging deletion in fourteen of the seventeen individuals with hearing loss and in eight of those with normal hearing.

Why didn't the deletion appear in all seventeen of those with hearing loss? And why did it appear in bones of people whose hearing was fine? At least two reasons: The common aging deletion is only one type of hearing loss. It could be that other deletions contribute to hearing loss, too. In addition, there are four different types of age-related hearing loss.

The common aging deletion may not be responsible for all four. At any rate, this study provided us with enough evidence to conclude that the common aging deletion is associated with aging and hearing loss

Read full report here: http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2007/nov2007_report_hearingloss_01.html