Diabetes Does Cause Hearing Loss

This is another diabetes complication that often is ignored. It is ignored because people do not consider hearing loss as being a complication. Consider how many of our organs may are affected by diabetes. If you have diabetes, you may figure that you are at twice the risk of having hearing loss.

One way to avoid this and most diabetes complication is to manage your diabetes by maintaining careful management of your blood glucose levels. Keeping these as close to normal or at normal is good for keeping complications away. This applies to all complications. Let your blood glucose levels take off for the stratosphere and your odds of developing the complications go up with them.

With hearing, it is the small blood vessels and nerves in your inner ear that become damaged by high blood glucose over a period of time. Autopsy studies of diabetes patients have shown the evidence of this damage.

The study researchers discovered the high rate of hearing loss with diabetes after analyzing the results of a nationally representative sample of U.S. Adults. The hearing tests measured the participants' ability to hear low, middle, and high frequency sounds in both ears. The researchers discovered the link between diabetes and hearing problems and that it was evident across all hearing frequencies, but was more pronounced in the high frequency range.

Comparisons between those without diabetes and those with diabetes were this. At the low to mid-frequency sounds for people without diabetes at nine percent to people with diabetes of 21 percent. The high frequency hearing loss was 32 percent (without diabetes) to 54 percent (with diabetes).

The alarming fact for me was for people with prediabetes. Just because they do not have diabetes, does not exempt them from hearing loss. They exhibited a 30 percent higher rate of hearing loss than those with normal blood glucose.

This is just another reason for preventive action for people with prediabetes and strict blood glucose management for all people with diabetes. If you think you are immune to hearing loss, you are in for a shock if you let your blood glucose management have an extended holiday.