The Temporary Threshold Shift or Ahhh, the good ol’ days…
Ahhh……. the good ol’ days. Going out with your buds to a summer rock concert, hanging out all day with some good, although loud, tunes. Maybe standing in front of those monolithic dental filling loosening speakers to get that extra rush. Maybe dancing the night away at that hip new club. Has anybody experienced the temporary decrease in hearing or the tinnitus (head noise) that occurs after that night? Well welcome to the “temporary threshold shift.” Here’s why it occurs (or so we think).
For a primer on this section please see how we hear on our web site
Noise induced hearing loss that is permanent is thought to occur because delicate hair cells within our inner ear have been stressed to breakage.
This is a picture of a pigeon cochlea showing the well ordered rows of hair cells. The white structures are “hair cell fibers”, actually stereocilia which are the pressure receptors that transducer the physical vibrations of sound into an electrical signal that goes to our brains. This particular “pigge” was listening to Mozart at a reasonable level.
This little “pigge” to the right went to see Aerosmith and sat right in front of the speakers for days on end (mixed in with some NASCAR). See the difference?
This type of physical damage is usually permanent and occurs only after many years of abuse.
So how does this temporary stuff happen? The running theory is based on the fact that the inner ear hair cells are very active metabolically. That means that they burn a lot of energy and as a result have a lot of byproducts. Some major byproducts of cellular respiration that have gotten a lot of attention are called free radicals and superoxides. One example of a free radical isozone. An example of a superoxide is hydrogen peroxide. While ozone may be great for keeping you from getting a sunburn and peroxide is great for cleaning boo boo’s (actually not so great) they are not very healthy to ingest. Our bodies constantly make these free radicals and oxides and our bodies are constantly trying to get rid of them.
The idea is that you make the hair cell work so hard that it creates these superoxides and free radicals. If the cell cannot get rid of them the cell can be damaged.
Recently some researchers have been looking at using antioxidants to help these cells, and other body cells, out. Others don’t care about real research and have just tried to get rich off of the teaming millions that believe everything they hear. Some examples of antioxidant rich foods are: red wine, pomagranite juice, broccoli, red wine, vegetable juices, fruits, berries, and oh…. did I mention red wine. Pomagranite juice has twice the antioxidant value of red wine. I’ll have two glasses of Merlot then.