Definition: "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance "
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18.06.2009 |
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Lecithin supplement keeps hearing sharp
Are you fond of listening to free radical noise on your iPod? Or do you drive around in one of those boom-box cars, with the music so loud that the cobblestones shake loose? If the answer is yes, then you might be interested in the article published by American researchers in Otolaryngology | Head and Neck Surgery. According to the authors, lecithin supplements protect the hearing.
Decline in hearin
Millions of years ago mitochondria were probably separate cells, which at some point started to live symbiotically with other cells. Mitochondria still have their own DNA.
Study
At the end of the six months the rats had reached the age of two, and were old in rat terms. At this point the researchers tested the rats' hearing. By measuring the activity of the auditory nerve they determined how loud a noise needed to be before the brain registered it.
Results
The researchers then looked at the way the lecithin supplement worked. When they extracted mitochondria membranes from tissues in the rats' hearing organs, they noticed that the membranes of the lecithin rats functioned better.
To see whether this also protected the genetic material, the researchers also looked at how many deletions there were in the DNA of the mitochondria. The more deletions there are in mitochondrial DNA, the older it is.
In the figure below the grey bars represent the genetic material of the control group and the black bars the genetic material of the lecithin group. The longer the bars, the more deletions in the DNA in the brain, the auditory nerve and the stria vascularis, part of the hearing organ.
Conclusion
More studies
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