Email from Bill Subject: More uses for anti-oxidants
Text:
I've been reading a book on neurons, and this makes a lot of sense....
BL
A report published online in the journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine described the discovery of researchers at the University of Michigan that including a combination of antioxidant vitamins and magnesium in one’s nutritional regimen may help prevent noise-induced hearing loss.
Josef M. Miller MD, who is a professor in the Department of Otolaryngology at the University’s Medical School, along with Colleen G. Le Prell, PhD and Larry F. Hughes treated guinea pigs with one of the following: vitamins A, C and E; magnesium; A, C and E plus magnesium, or a placebo one hour before and five days after a five hour exposure to 120 decibel sound pressure level noise (comparable to a jet engine at take-off). Although neither antioxidants nor magnesium alone appeared to be protective, animals that received both had significantly less hearing loss and sensory cell death than the other groups. The finding may be useful in developing a protective nutritional therapy for men and women whose employment involves significant exposure to noise, such as military occupations.
The protective mechanisms produced by pretreatment with the nutrients are a reduction in free radicals that form in the cochlea of the inner ear during and after noise exposure, and decreased constriction of blood flow to the inner ear. The nutrients may also have minimized damage to the auditory neurons caused by overstimulation. Treatment administered after noise exposure scavenged the free radicals that continue to from. "Free radical formation bursts initially, then peaks again during the days after exposure," Dr Le Prell explained.
"These agents have been used for many years, but not for hearing loss. We know they’re safe, so that opens the door to push ahead with clinical trials with confidence we’re not going to do any harm," Dr Miller stated. "Ultimately, we envision soldiers would have a nutritional bar with meals and it would give them adequate daily protection."
"Other people would likely benefit by consuming a pill or nutritional bar before going to work in noisy environments, or attending noisy events like NASCAR races or rock concerts, or even using an iPod or other music player," Dr Le Prell added. "Based on an earlier study with other antioxidant agents, we think this micronutrient combination will work even post-noise."
"Similar combinations have been very effective in preventing macular degeneration, and many of these agents have been used with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, stroke-like ischemia, and other conditions that involve neural degeneration," she noted. "You’re always hoping as a basic scientist to find a commonality like that, across other disease processes.”
There's this guy I did a bit of growing up with. He lives in the Eastern United States, so I don't see him often. I'm happy to report, however, that we still swap email. He's got a lot of interesting things to say. I've asked him to blog about it, instead of email, but he ignores my pleas.
I also asked him if he minds if I publish his emails and he ignored that as well. I'll take that as a yes. So, here's the first one:
Subject: Quotable quote
Text of the message:
"When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong, these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history."
Chruchill, at the start of WWII