Diabetes Can Make You Deaf

Getting older and living in a noisy city can impair your hearing. You can also add diabetes to the causes of making it hard to understand what other people are saying.

Diabetes may double your chances of developing hearing difficulties.

“The association of hearing impairment with diabetes is controversial, but it is believed that over time, high blood glucose levels can damage vessels in the stria vascularis and nerves diminishing the ability to hear,” says researcher Chika Horikawa, of Niigata University in Japan. “In our study we found that persons with diabetes had more than two times higher prevalence of hearing impairment than those without diabetes.”

This study was a meta-analysis of 13 previous studies involving more than 20,000 people.

“Our results propose that diabetic patients be screened for hearing impairment from earlier age compared with non-diabetics, from the viewpoint of prevention of several health problems such as depression and dementia caused by hearing impairment,” notes Horikawa.