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This article originally appeared in The Hearing Professional May—June 2005
After years of entertaining the baby boomer generation, rock musician Mick Fleetwood is now drumming out an important message for his fans’ hearing health—how to keep rockin’ responsibly.
Fleetwood has joined the hearing aid battery manufacturer, Energizer, to kick off the “It’s Hip to Hear” program. The program educates baby boomers and music fans about the importance of hearing loss prevention and treatment, offering practical, everyday solutions to preserving hearing health.
“Having spent my career behind a drum set, I know how hazardous noise, including music, can be to your hearing. Musicians aren’t the only ones affected by hearing loss; there are millions of baby boomers who have experienced some form of damage. That is why I’m encouraging people to listen to loud music responsibly, so they can hear it for years to come,” said Fleetwood.
To turn up the volume on responsible listening and reach out to an even broader audience, Energizer produced the “World’s Quietest Concert,” hosted by Fleetwood at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. The event featured a performance by a new rock band and the audience heard live vocals and music simulcast through portable FM radio headsets, rather than speakers or amplifiers.
“Instead of rocking out to the standard 110–130 decibel levels, this concert was so quiet that the applause was the loudest part,” Fleetwood said.
Despite the fact that more than 16 million boomers have some degree of hearing damage, only 1% of this group cites hearing loss as a health concern, according to a survey conducted by Energizer. There are more baby boomers aged 46–64 with hearing loss than there are people over the age of 65 with this condition, and there is 26% more hearing loss among baby boomers than in previous generations.
Energizer Press Release
For the first time, scientists have used gene therapy to regenerate hair cells in the inner ear and restore hearing in a deaf mammal.
Dr. Yehoash Raphael and researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School used a virus to introduce a corrective gene called Atoh1 into guinea pigs that had acquired hearing loss. The gene induced the regeneration of hair cells that reside in the inner ear and are necessary to trigger the electrical impulses that carry sound waves to the brain.
After coaxing the hair cells to regenerate in the organ of Corti, the researchers tested the deafened animals to see how well they could hear.
“In response to sound the guinea pigs were able to generate neural responses indicative of hearing,” said Dr. Raphael.
The evidence suggests at least some hearing was recovered, but it is not yet clear how well the animals hear following the treatment. However, the results, which appear in the journal Nature of Medicine, suggest it may someday be possible to use a similar approach to treat deafness in humans.
www.npr.org
After being deaf for nearly a decade, 113-year-old Rebecca Lanier can hear again after being fitted with high-tech hearing aids by William Austin at Starkey Laboratories.
“I was delighted to see the smile on her face when she heard the world again,” Austin said.
Lanier was flown from her home in Cleveland, Ohio to Starkey headquarters in Minneapolis, and Austin personally supervised several tests to ensure the success of her procedure. After a few hours, the custom-made hearing aids were ready.
Austin’s mission is to fix “the broken ears” of the world, with his Starkey Hearing Foundation giving away 20,000 hearing aids to those in need every year.
Starkey Press Release
President Bush recently signed the Assistive Technology Act, which primarily funds state programs that provide assistive technology (AT) devices and services to individuals with disabilities. The bill includes the following: making AT legislation a regular authorization by waiving the current sunset provision; ensuring that funding would be made available for AT programs; establishing universal design principles that are usable by people with a wide range of functional capabilities; increasing teacher training on AT devices and services for children with disabilities; and continuing state protection and advocacy programs including a minimum state grant of $410,000. The final version of H.R. 4278 can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov. THP
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