Can’t hear? It may be down to grinding your teeth

WHILE age and exposure to loud noise are the most common causes, hearing loss can sometimes be a symptom of another condition.

TEETH GRINDING

GRINDING or clenching the teeth can cause problems with the jaw joint, putting stress on the muscles and making them inflamed.

Stress makes people more prone to this problem, known as temporomandibular syndrome (TMJ). The condition affects one in five people at some point, according to the NHS.

Often, the teeth grinding occurs at night, and you may be unaware of it until you develop pain or stiffness in the jaw in the morning.

It can also cause clicking or popping as you talk or chew, difficulty or pain opening the mouth, tension headaches (particularly on the side of the head, earache, ringing or buzzing in the ears (tinnitus) and sometimes loss of hearing in one or both ears, possibly caused by muscular spasms of the muscles of the inner ear.

The problem often resolves by itself. A short course of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) is sometimes useful, and a mouthguard worn at night to keep the top and bottom teeth separated can ease the joint and allow the muscles to relax, according to Professor Andrew Eder, a specialist in restorative dentistry.

VIRUSES

THE COMMON cold can often lead to conductive hearing loss — hearing loss caused by a blockage — due to a build-up of fluid in the Eustachian tube, which runs from the back of the nose to the middle ear.

Young children are more likely to suffer this type of temporary hearing loss because they have narrower Eustachian tubes, which mean they are more likely to become blocked.

Some viruses, including the mumps (Cytomegalovirus), shin- gles (Herpes Zoster) and simple cold and flu viruses, can damage the inner ear, causing deafness which is often permanent.

With the mumps virus, the damage can occur to the foetus if the mother catches it while she is pregnant.

Up to 6,000 adults a year in the UK are affected by idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss, or unexplained hearing loss that can occur within days, sometimes as the result of an infection.

One year after sudden hearing loss, a third of patients don’t recover any hearing, a third recover fully and the remainder have some hearing loss.

Steroids are currently the only treatment option to help patients regain some hearing — they can help in some cases if taken within two weeks and are thought to do so by calming inflammation.

Steroids used to be given orally, but the latest thinking is to inject them directly into the ear- drum. What distinguishes sensorineural hearing loss from the blocked-up feeling you get with a cold is that the hearing suddenly disappears completely, usually in one ear, but possibly in both. A simple way for a GP to establish whether someone has sensorineural hearing loss is to use a tuning fork, which is positioned in the middle of the forehead.

The patient is then asked in which ear the sound is louder — if hearing is normal, it will be heard equally between the two.

BENIGN TUMOURS

OBSTRUCTION of the ear canal due to benign cysts may cause hearing loss by effectively blocking sound.

Acoustic neuroma, a rare type of benign brain growth on a nerve that helps control balance and hearing can cause hearing loss, usually in one ear.

Symptoms can come on gradually and may also include dizzi- ness or tinnitus, numbness down the side of the face and sometimes headaches and visual problems. Usually the treatment is surgery, although radiotherapy can be used.

Treatment for cancer can also to lead to total or partial loss of hearing, as chemotherapy can damage the cochlea or the auditory nerve.

‘Some powerful chemotherapy agents can cause deafness that does not recover, as the hair cells are damaged and die,’ says Tony Wright, Emeritus Professor of ENT at University College London.

OBESITY

EMERGING evidence suggests a link between obesity and hearing loss, and it looks as if the risk starts early in life.

According to a study published in 2013 in the journal The Laryngoscope, obese teenagers are more likely than their normal weight peers to suffer from hearing loss and almost twice as likely to have one- sided hearing loss related to low-frequency sounds (such as that of a trombone).

One theory is that obesityinduced inflammation may contribute to hearing loss.