I read it as if research showed that scientists regenerate their hair cells, and everyone else does not.

If you can regenerate hairs that stopped growing in one place, that sounds like a step toward regenerating other hairs that have stopped growing in other places.

And the market for baldness cures has got to be at least as big as the market for hearing recovery, despite the gulf in fundamental importance.

> I thought scientists had a cure for male pattern baldness

They have:

https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/scientists-reverse-hai...

Serious question from the article though…why do Americans account for an outsized percentage of hearing loss sufferers?

Big country, "louder is better", teens blasting their hearing with in-ears, concerts that leave your ears ringing for days, inadequate safety in the workplace, heavy use of drugs like Viagra (yes, hearing loss and tinnitus are a side effect in some users with high blood pressure). Diet-related hearing loss too as a lot of people eat crap. Probably other reasons too.

Also, stupidly loud cars and motorcycles on city streets, and ineffective vehicle noise laws / enforcement thereof.

> heavy use of drugs like Viagra (yes, hearing loss and tinnitus are a side effect in some users with high blood pressure)

Oh wow. The Manga/Anime trope of male characters spontaneously bleeding from the nose when they get er... excited might actually have some real world examples.

Pretty sure "bleeding from the nose and ears" would kill the mood completely though. For most of the population anyway. ;)

Anecdote: Sudafed used to actually make my dad's nose bleed, but not just internally, from the external pores of the nose, and from the backs of his hands in terms of pores.

> Diet-related hearing loss too as a lot of people eat crap

Cases like this where it's caused by another issue are theoretically reversible though, right?

To a point—potentially, to some extent, maybe.

Depending on what you've lacked, for how long, your age—these are all variables. The younger you are, the lower the chances of reversing it as kids need a decent diet, period. How long you've been subsisting of off crap is the important one.

There was one highly publicized case about a kid who had gone deaf and blind from bad diet: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/03/health/poor-diet-blindnes...

With all the above said, one of my born-blind friends has started going deaf due to bad diet, and whilst changing his diet hasn't improved his hearing, it has massively improved his overall health and importantly halted the hearing loss at the rate it was going, so it's not been a pointless exercise to make a lifestyle change that'll benefit him in the years to come.

Wishing anyone reading this good health for them and theirs.

military cases are huge

Selection bias, more access to hearing tests, solutions, awareness. In developing countries like mine, we simply have to speak louder.

It's wrong, they are comparing American hearing loss with the world wide disabling hearing loss.

1.5 billion people (nearly 20% of the global population) live with hearing loss; 430 million of them have disabling hearing loss - https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/deafness-an...