Age-related hearing loss (presbyacusis) is a huge problem. It almost certainly will affect you whether you develop it yourself, or must adapt to a loved ones hearing loss. It tends to occur in families, but noise and trauma are also factors. It affects 25% of those between the ages of 65 and 75. And it affects 70-80% of those over 75.
Until now, there was little hope for treatment. Hearing aids are a wonderful band-aid approach, but they do not solve the problem.
But a just-published study suggests there is hope for at least partial reversal.
A pilot study took 23 patients with presbyacusis and treated them with, of all things, two free-radical scavengers. One, you are already very familiar with — vitamin C. The other one was even new to me, since it is a pharmaceutical. Its called rebamipide. The doses were 600 mg and 300 mg per day respectively.
The study resulted in significant improvement in the lower frequencies, 125, 250, 500, and 800 Hz. That is well in the range of voice. However, there were not changes noted at higher frequencies of 1,000, 2,000, and 4,000 Hz. That is where the finer musical sounds lie.
The most important thing to hear is the voice of your friends and family. So I am ecstatic about this report. Yes, it does involve a patented chemical. But I’ve always said there is a place for pharmaceuticals when used judiciously and there is no known natural alternative. Rebamipide might fit those parameters.
Because I had never heard of rebamipide, I did some checking into it. Remarkably, it has a similar chemical structure to a class of natural antioxidant compounds called quinolones. These are well known to physicians who have studied oxidative medicine and free-radical chemistry. Additionally, this substance is used in conventional medicine to protect gastric cells from the free radicals generated by the H. pylori infection, which causes ulcers. There also are studies on it is use for age-related dry-eye syndromes. It definitely has it is place in medicine.
Its highly likely that combining rebamipide with naturally occurring free-radical scavengers (commonly miscalled antioxidants) could help your presbyacusis. However, since there is no profit to be made, it is unlikely that well ever see the needed research done to discover which ones will work best. However, this report is real and I would not hesitate to try this combination.
Unfortunately, rebamipide is not marketed in the United States. However, your integrative physician can write you a prescription. Its available as the trade name Mucosta (Otsuka Korea Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.) and Rebamide (Kyung Dong Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.). You can find sources online. If you have presbyacusis, I think it would be well worth it to seek out rebamipide and pop a few of your health food store vitamin C tablets along with it. (Or consider intravenous vitamin C, which might work even better.) The hearing you restore might be your own.