[@hubermanlab] Protect & Improve Your Hearing & Brain Health | Dr. Konstantina Stankovic

Link: https://youtu.be/xGmGBFpmdhQ

Short Summary

Hearing loss, affecting a large and growing population, is strongly linked to cognitive decline and dementia, yet often goes unaddressed. This Huberman Lab podcast featuring Dr. Constantina Stankovich explores the auditory system, factors that damage hearing (noise, environment, drugs), and actionable strategies (earplugs, magnesium, awareness) to protect hearing and overall brain health, highlighting the need for improved diagnostics and personalized treatments. Early protection and conscious habits are critical for preserving not only hearing but also emotional well-being, social connections, and long-term cognitive function.

Key Quotes

Here are 4 direct quotes from the transcript that represent valuable insights or interesting data points:

1. "Hearing loss is a huge problem. It currently affects one and a half billion people and disables half a billion of them. And the World Health Organization estimates that another billion will be affected by 2050." This highlights the massive scale and growing prevalence of hearing loss.
2. "The human organ of hearing which is called the cookia in cross-section is the size of Lincoln's upper face on a penny." This is a surprising and effective visual for conveying just how small and delicate the inner ear is.
3. "Roughly speaking, 80 decibel is fine for eight hours. But for any three decibel increase, you have to half it." This offers a simple, actionable rule of thumb for safe sound exposure.
4. "We now know that some forms of temporary threshold shift are in fact permanent...the wheel has been set in motion where synapses that connect these sensory cells to neurons that contact them have been damaged or destroyed by loud sound." This challenges the common assumption that temporary hearing problems are always harmless.

Detailed Summary

Here is a detailed summary of the YouTube video transcript provided, organized into bullet points:

Key Topics:

• Hearing Loss & Dementia Link: Mounting evidence suggests a strong link between hearing loss and dementia, although not everyone with hearing loss develops dementia. Focus is on identifying those at risk.
• Hearing Loss Prevalence: A significant global issue, affecting 1.5 billion people currently (disabling half a billion) and projected to affect another billion by 2050 (WHO estimate).
• Auditory System Function: Explanation of how hearing works from sound waves entering the ear canal, vibration of the eardrum and bones, to the stimulation of hair cells in the inner ear and transmission of signals to the brain.
• Types of Hearing Loss: Distinguishes between conductive hearing loss (sound not effectively transmitted to inner ear) and sensorineural hearing loss (originating in the inner ear/tiny organ called the cochlea, inside densest bone, base of the skull). The size of the cochlea is roughly the size of Lincoln's upper face on a penny. Fills with about 3 raindrops of fluid.
• Protecting Your Hearing: Emphasizes the importance of protecting hearing, even subtle deficits, as they can affect focus, cognition, and brain health more broadly. Discusses various methods for protection.
• Tinnitus: Addresses the common condition of ringing in the ears, its causes, and potential remedies.
• Importance of Hearing: Underscores the crucial role of hearing in communication, emotional well-being, social interaction, and cognitive function.

Arguments & Information:

• Hearing loss is underappreciated and stigmatized. Unlike vision problems, there is a lack of fashion statements with hearing aids. Hearing aids don't typically restore hearing to normal.
• Subtle hearing loss is occurring earlier in life due to loud environments, headphones, etc., sometimes starting in childhood.
• Hearing loss has societal and economic costs. Trillion-dollar annual cost of unaddressed hearing loss due to reduced employment opportunities and required arrangements to make people functional.
• Cochlea Mechanics: High frequencies encoded at the base, low frequencies at the apex. High-frequency end is more vulnerable.
• Sound intensity is key to reach an audience in the wilderness. Create a horn with your hands to project your voice, it really helps.
• The brain is evolved to perceive and manage sensory inputs like sound. Strong links between auditory pathways and emotional pathways in the limbic system.
• Importance of proper examination and testing and potential remediation. The brain produces sound typically in response to reduced input to the brain. There is a spectrum. Some find it reassuring, others find it severely disabling and are suicidal.
• Temporary threshold shift is permanent (in some cases). Damage to synapses occurs, leading to "hidden hearing loss" even with normal audiometric testing.
• Safe decibel levels: 80 decibel is safe for eight hours. For every three decibel increase in sound intensity, you have to half the time exposure that's safe.
• Ways to protect hearing during concerts. Wearing ear plugs is important, 30 decibels for 120 decibels concert. Measure sound intensity (download decibel app on your phone) and put them in correctly.
• Magnesium 30onate protects against noise induced hearing loss. Animal and clinical data points to this fact. Levels of magnesium change the most in the cookia and studies in countries with mandatory military service show taking magnesium beforehand resulted in less hearing loss.
• Eat fish and green leafy veggies or Magnesium supplementation for tinnitis.
• Genetics plays a role in genetic predisposition to hearing loss, genetic testing can help. More than 200 genes identified to cause hearing loss. In other words, there is a genetic component that combines with environmental elements of hearing loss (noise, aging, infection).
• Tinnitus and sensory neural hearing loss are umbrella terms. Frustrating lack of ability to establish precise diagnosis to guide therapy.
• AI can establish diagnosis of hearing loss in 80% of people.
• Cognitive behavioral therapy and amplification helps improve tinnitus.
• Ringing after a concert, the two hit model, high threshold damage means you need to be careful about another loud noise level. This is like getting another concussion. Synergistic impact.
• What may be comfortable for an adult may be too loud for children. Children are especially vulnerable to noise levels.
• Fetus begins to hear in the second trimester. Fully formed organ of hearing.
• Light pollution is disrupting songbirds, sound pollution is disrupting whales navigation. Animals in the ocean also experience a sound pollution problem. We must be more thoughtful about the hearing of cats, dogs and all animals.
• Western Europe does not allow amplified music on the streets, the US does but there is not tight regulation. Some people say, well, this is a free country, people should be allowed to do whatever they want.
• Speech in noise test can help identify who is at risk of dementia. You need to face the person and it needs to be quiet, you have to slow down for people with hearing loss.
• Direct and indirect link between hearing loss and cognitive decline. Hearing loss to social isolation to depression and cognitive decline.
• Non-hearing impaired people lipread. Some people are better at it.
• AI can make hearing aids smarter and pick up signal from the noise. The ideal sleeping environment: quiet, dark and cold (like bears who hibernate for months).
• Superior semicircular canal dehiscence means you can hear your eyeballs moving.
• Von Beckashi won nobel prize for studying frequency maps.
• Auditory system in general didn't get as much attention as the visual system until more recently. The most active neurons are the auditory neurons because they have spontaneous firing rates that are really high. Hundreds of spikes per second.
• Estrogen contributes to hearing. At pmenopause menopause women's thresholds go up which means their hearing gets worse. There are tribes in Africa where they're not exposed to modern loud environments and they have normal hearing even in the into their 80s.
• Regular intake of ibuprofen causes hearing loss. Lead and mercury are toxic to neurons in the ear as well as other neurons. Plastics get taken up by hair cells.
• There isn't a primary cancer of the inner ear. Birds regenerate their hair cells within days. Humans don't, but by understanding how birds do it, we can reawaken these pathways in humans.
• Auditory training is very helpful. Especially musicians training and music perception, the more you train your brain the better it responds when challenged.