It’s true, hearing loss can catch you by surprise. But sometimes, hearing problems bypass the sneaking completely, in favor of a sudden (and often alarming), cat-like pounce. Here’s a hypothetical: You get up one morning and jump in the shower and when you get out you notice your hearing seems off or different. Muffled, maybe.
Initially, you think that you have water in your ears, but when your hearing doesn’t improve as the day progresses, you get a bit more worried.
At times like these, when you have a sudden severe change to your hearing, you should seek out medical attention. That’s because sudden hearing loss can often be a symptom of a bigger issue. It might be a simple matter of a blockage in your ear. It could be just a bit of earwax.
And sometimes that sudden hearing loss can be caused by diabetes.
What is Diabetes?
You’d be forgiven for not instantly seeing the links between hearing loss and diabetes. Your pancreas and your ears seem very far apart, distance-wise.
Type 2 diabetes is an ailment in which your body has difficulty processing sugars into energy. This occurs because your body either isn’t producing enough insulin or it’s not reacting to the insulin that you do make. That’s why treatments for diabetes usually entail injections or infusions of insulin.
What Does Diabetes Have to do With Your Hearing?
Diabetes is a common complicated condition which can sometimes be degenerative. It needs to be handled cautiously, normally with the help of your physician. But what does that have to do with your hearing?
Well, it turns out that sudden hearing loss can often be a sign that you’re experiencing type 2 diabetes. The link lies in the ability of diabetes to cause collateral damage, most often to nerves and blood vessels around the extremities. These precise changes have a strong impact on the delicate hairs in your ears responsible for your hearing (called stereocilia). So even before other more common diabetes symptoms appear (such as numb toes), you might experience sudden hearing loss.
What Should I do?
You’ii want to get medical attention if your hearing has suddenly started giving you trouble. Diabetes, for instance, will frequently be entirely symptomless initially, so you might not even realize you have it until you start to observe some of these red flags.
Seeking out help as soon as possible will give you the largest number of options, as is the situation for most forms of hearing loss. But it’s not only diabetes you need to be watchful for. Here are a few other possible triggers of sudden hearing loss:
- Blood pressure issues.
- Some kinds of infections.
- Autoimmune diseases.
- Blood circulation issues (these are sometimes a result of other issues, such as diabetes).
- Tissue growth in the ear.
- Earwax buildup or other obstructions.
It can be tough to know what’s causing your sudden hearing loss or what to do about it without a medical diagnosis.
Treatment Solutions For Sudden Hearing Loss
The good news here is, whether your sudden hearing loss is brought on by diabetes or infection (or any of these other issues), successful management of the underlying cause will usually return your hearing back to normal levels if you catch it early. Once the obstruction is removed or, in the case of diabetes, once blood circulation issues have been addressed, your hearing will most likely return to normal if you dealt with it quickly.
But that truly does depend on prompt and effective treatment. If they are not treated in time, some conditions, like diabetes, will result in permanent damage to your hearing. So if you’re coping with any type or amount of hearing loss, have it treated now.
Keep an Eye on Your Ears
Sudden hearing loss catch you by surprise, but it may be easier to detect, and you could catch it sooner if you undergo regular hearing screenings. These screenings can typically uncover specific hearing issues before they become noticeable to you.
There’s one more thing that diabetes and hearing loss have in common, managing them sooner will bring better results. Untreated hearing loss can lead to other health concerns such as loss of cognitive function. Call us to schedule a hearing test.