Do you spend much time thinking about your nervous system? For the majority of people, the answer would most likely be not very often. Ordinarily, you wouldn’t have to be concerned about how your neurons are communicating messages to the nerves in your body. But when those nerves start to misfire – that is when something fails – you tend to pay much more attention to your nervous system.
One particular disease called Charot-Marie-Tooth Disease which generally affects the extremities can also have a pretty wide-scale impact on the whole nervous system. high-frequency hearing loss can also be the result of CMT according to some evidence.
Charot-Marie-Tooth Disease, What is it?
Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease is a set of inherited conditions. In essence, these genetic conditions cause something to go wrong with your nerves or with the protective sheathing surrounding your nerves.
There is a problem with how signals move between your brain and your nerves. Functionally, this can lead to both a loss in motor function and a loss of sensation.
A blend of genetic elements commonly results in the manifestation of symptoms, so CMT can be found in a number of varieties. For many people who have CMT, symptoms begin in the feet and go up into their arms. And, curiously, among those who have CMT, there is a higher rate of occurrence of high-frequency hearing loss.
A Connection Between Hearing Loss And CMT: The Cochlear Nerve
There has always been an anecdotal connection between loss of hearing and CMT (which means that within the CMT culture everybody has heard other people talk about it). And it was hard to grasp the connection between loss of sensation in the legs and problems with the ears.
The connection was firmly established by a scientific study just recently when a group of researchers examined 79 people with CMT at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.
The findings were rather conclusive. Nearly everyone with CMT passed their low and moderate frequency hearing assessments with flying colors. But all of the individuals showed hearing loss when it came to the high-frequency sounds (usually around the moderate levels). high-frequency hearing loss, according to this study, is likely to be linked to CMT.
What is The Cause of Hearing Loss And How Can it be Addressed?
The link between high-frequency loss of hearing and CMT could, at first, seem puzzling. Like all other parts of your body rely on properly functioning nerves. That also goes for your ears.
The theory is, CMT affects the cochlear nerve so noises in the high-frequency range aren’t able to be interpreted. Anybody with this type of hearing loss will have a hard time hearing certain sounds, including peoples voices. Trying to understand voices in a crowded noisy room is particularly difficult.
This type of hearing loss is commonly treated with hearing aids. There’s no recognized cure for CMT. Modern hearing aids can give tremendous assistance in terms of overcoming the effects of high-frequency hearing loss, isolating only those ranges of sounds to amplify. Additionally, most modern hearing aids can be adjusted to work well within noisy conditions.
Hearing Loss Can Have Many Causes
Researchers still aren’t completely certain why CMT and loss of hearing seem to co-exist quite so often (above and beyond their untested theory). But hearing aid tech offers an obvious solution to the symptoms of that hearing loss. That’s why many people who have CMT will make time to sit down with a hearing care professional and get a fitting for a custom hearing aid.
There are a variety of causes for hearing loss symptoms. Frequently, it’s an issue of loud noise resulting in injury to the ears. In other cases, loss of hearing might be the result of an obstruction. It also appears that CMT is another possible cause.