Ever feel like you’re spinning around while standing completely still? This sensation is known as vertigo. Vertigo is one of the main symptoms of Ménière’s Disease, a disorder of the inner ear. However, this chronic disease doesn’t just cause balance issues; it is also strongly associated with hearing loss.
The Inner Ear: The Connection Between Hearing and Balance
In your inner ear, there’s a snail-shaped cluster of organs called the labyrinth. This cluster controls both hearing and balance, meaning that oftentimes, they impact each other in significant ways.
The top part of the labyrinth—the snail’s body and antennae—is made up of three semicircular canals and two otolith organs. These components combined make up your vestibular, or balance, system. The semicircular canals are filled with a fluid called endolymph. As your body moves or is moved, the endolymph sloshes around inside the canals, and sensory cells “read” the movement of the endolymph to determine where you are located in space.
The snail-shell part of the labyrinth is the cochlea, the main hearing organ. It, too, is filled with endolymph, which sloshes around in response to sound waves that get funneled in from the ear canal. Sensory cells in the cochlea also detect endolymph movement to determine pitch and sound.
Imbalanced Endolymph
If there’s an excess of endolymph within the labyrinth, it disrupts the detection and transmission of hearing and balance signals and alters the pressure within the organs. This is believed to be the root of Ménière’s disease.
It is not known at this time what causes endolymph to build up in this manner, but some theories include:
- Altered inner ear pressure, which may be caused by conditions such as allergies, ear infections or respiratory illnesses
- Blockages in the inner ear that prevent endolymph drainage
- Irregular ear shape, which may also prevent endolymph drainage
- Head or neck injuries or trauma
- Autoimmune disorders
- Genetics
- Natural aging
Ménière’s Disease and Hearing Loss
When the cochlea struggles to collect or transmit sound information, as is the case with excessive endolymph, it can lead to hearing loss. Most of the time, symptoms only present in one ear. Early on in the disease, hearing loss symptoms may come in episodes before returning to normal, but over time, these episodes may become more frequent and last longer.
Other hearing-related symptoms of Ménière’s Disease include:
- A feeling of fullness in the ear
- Ear pressure
- Ear ringing (tinnitus)
These may also come in episodes.
Treating Hearing Loss Caused by Ménière’s Disease
There is no cure for Ménière’s Disease, but there are many treatment possibilities for the balance-related symptoms, ranging from medications to vestibular or physical therapy to surgery. For treating hearing loss, a hearing aid on the affected ear has been shown to be very effective. As hearing can fluctuate with Ménière’s disease, hearing aids are useful because their volume can be turned up or down according to your needs in the moment, allowing you to respond to a hearing loss episode smoothly. If the disease progresses and the cochlea sustains immense damage, a cochlear implant may be used. This hearing device sends soundwaves directly to the nerve pathway, bypassing the cochlea altogether.
If you have any more questions about Ménière’s disease, hearing aids or cochlear implants, call Valley Audiology today. We’d be happy to schedule a consultation for you.