Hearing loss can catch you by surprise, it’s true. But sometimes, hearing issues bypass the sneaking altogether, in favor of a sudden (and often startling), cat-like pounce. It could happen like this: you wake up, pull yourself out of bed, and perhaps you don’t notice until you get out of the shower but your hearing feels…off, or different Muffled, maybe.
Initially, you think that you have water in your ears, but when your hearing doesn’t get any better as the day advances, you get a little more anxious.
It’s times like this when hearing loss seems to attack suddenly, as if out of nowhere, that it’s a good decision to get some medical attention. That’s because sudden hearing loss can frequently be a symptom of a larger issue. It might be a simple matter of a blockage in your ear. Maybe some earwax.
But sudden hearing loss can also be a symptom of diabetes.
What is Diabetes?
You’d be forgiven for not quickly seeing the connections between hearing loss and diabetes. Your pancreas seems a long way from your ears.
Type 2 diabetes is a condition in which your body has difficulty processing sugars into energy. This occurs because your body either isn’t making enough insulin or it’s not responding to the insulin that you do make. This is why insulin injections are the most common type of diabetes treatments.
What Does Diabetes Have to do With Your Hearing?
Diabetes is a common, sometimes degenerative (and complicated), condition. With the help of your doctor, it needs to be managed carefully. So how is that associated with your hearing?
Believe it or not, a pretty common sign of type 2 diabetes is sudden hearing loss. The link lies in the ability of diabetes to cause collateral damage, most often to nerves and blood vessels around the extremities. Tiny tiny hairs in your ears (called stereocilia and in control of your ability to hear) are especially sensitive to those exact changes. So you could suffer sudden hearing loss even before other, more traditional symptoms of diabetes appear (numb toes, for example).
What Should I do?
If you’re in this scenario, and your hearing has suddenly begun giving you trouble, you’ll certainly want to get checked by a medical professional. You might not even know that you have diabetes at first, but these red flags will start to clue you in.
Getting help as soon as possible will give you the greatest number of possibilities, as is the situation for most types of hearing loss. But you should watch out for more than just diabetes. Sudden hearing loss can also be caused by:
- Tissue growth in the ear.
- Blood circulation issues (these are sometimes a result of other issues, such as diabetes).
- Infections of various types.
- Autoimmune disorders.
- Problems with your blood pressure.
- Earwax buildup or other obstructions.
It can be tough to know what’s causing your sudden hearing loss or what you should do about it without a medical diagnosis.
Sudden Hearing Loss Treatment Options
Regardless of which of these your sudden hearing loss is triggered by, if you catch it early enough, your hearing will typically go back to normal with correct treatment. Once the obstruction is removed or, with diabetes, once blood circulation issues have been addressed, your hearing will very likely get back to normal if you addressed it promptly.
But quick and effective management is the key here. If they are not treated in time, some conditions, like diabetes, will result in irreversible damage to your hearing. So if you’re dealing with any type or amount of hearing loss, get it treated now.
Keep an Eye on Your Ears
If you get routine hearing screenings, sudden hearing loss may be easier to detect and you may stop it from sneaking up on you by detecting it sooner. Specific hearing issues can be identified in these screenings before you notice them.
Hearing loss and diabetes have one other thing in common: the sooner you get treatment, the better. Other problems, like degeneration of cognitive function, can result from neglected hearing loss. Call us to schedule a hearing test.