Do you spend much time considering your nervous system? For most people, the answer would most likely be not that frequently. Normally, you wouldn’t have to worry about how your neurons are sending messages to the nerves in your body. But when those nerves start to misfire – that is when something fails – you begin to pay much more attention to your nervous system.
One particular disease known as Charot-Marie-Tooth Disease that generally affects the extremities can also have a pretty wide-scale impact on the whole nervous system. And there’s some evidence to suggest that CMT can also lead to high-frequency hearing loss.
What Is Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease?
Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease is a set of inherited disorders. Effectively, these genetic conditions cause something to go wrong with your nerves or with the protective sheathing around your nerves.
There is an issue with how impulses travel between your brain and your nerves. A loss of motor function and sensation can be the outcome.
A mix of genetic factors typically leads to the expression of symptoms, so CMT can be present in a number of variations. For most people with CMT, symptoms start in the feet and go up into their arms. And, high-frequency hearing loss, oddly, has a high rate of occurrence in those who have CMT.
The Cochlear Nerve: A Link Between CMT and Hearing Loss
The connection between CMT and loss of hearing has always been colloquially established (that is, everybody knows somebody who has a tells about it – at least inside of the CMT community). And it seemed to mystify people who had CMT – the ear didn’t seem very related to the loss of feeling in the legs, for example.
The connection was firmly established by a scientific study just recently when a group of scientists evaluated 79 people with CMT at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.
The results were quite conclusive. Low to moderate frequencies were heard nearly perfectly by those with CMT. But high-frequency sounds (in the moderate region in particular) were effortlessly heard by all of the participants. high-frequency hearing loss, according to this study, is likely to be linked to CMT.
The Cause of Hearing Loss and How to Treat It
The link between high-frequency hearing loss and CMT may, at first, seem puzzling. But all of your body, from your toes to your eyebrows, relies on the correct functioning of nerves. Your ears are no different.
What most researchers hypothesize occurs is that the cochlear nerve is affected by the CMT – disrupting your ear’s ability to translate and transmit sounds in a high-frequency range. Certain sounds, including some voices, will be hard to hear. In particular, understand voices in crowded or noisy rooms can be a real obstacle.
Hearing aids are usually used to deal with this type of hearing loss. CMT has no renowned cure. Modern hearing aids can isolate the precise frequencies to boost which can offer significant assistance in fighting high-frequency hearing loss. The majority of modern hearing aids can also do well in loud environments.
There Can be Many Causes For Hearing Loss
Experts still aren’t entirely certain why CMT and hearing loss seem to co-exist quite so frequently (beyond their untested theory). But this kind of hearing loss can be efficiently managed using hearing aids. So scheduling an appointment to get fitted for hearing aids will be a good decision for individuals who suffer from CMT.
Hearing loss symptoms can arise for numerous reasons. Commonly, it’s an issue of loud sound leading to damage to the ears. Obstructions can be another cause. It appears that CMT can be still another cause of loss of hearing.