Quite often people can have the early stages of diabetes without even realising it and the symptoms can be easily ignored, especially when you are feeling fine. But diabetes can affect many of your major organs, including your eyes and ears.

As we age we suffer from some degree of hearing loss, but it has been found to be of a greater loss in those patients with diabetes, in particular those who went for a long time without diagnosis or proper medication.

Although it can take a long time for diabetes to affect your hearing, and it can be so gradual you may not notice at first, the eventual effect can be disabling and your hearing once gone can never be recovered.

Controlling blood sugar levels with medication and a restricted diet can go a long way to help prevent degeneration of hearing. A lack of treatment could put a sufferer at a high risk of hearing loss.

Adults with pre-diabetes, where the blood glucose level is higher than normal but not high enough to warrant treatment, are at a 30% higher risk of hearing loss. This is why it is important for diabetes sufferers, and those with pre-diabetes, to have their hearing tested on a regular basis as well as their vision.

Studies conducted in Detroit, USA have shown that women aged between 60 and 75 had impaired hearing if their diabetes was not treated. During the studies, which used the official guidelines from the American Diabetes Association, patients that poorly controlled their diabetes showed risk of a greater degree of hearing loss compared to those with well controlled diabetes. The women of the same age who had controlled their diabetes had similar hearing levels to women who did not suffer from diabetes.

Despite various studies having reached the same conclusion, medical professionals still have not discovered the precise reasons behind the results. But one theory that seems to carry most weight is that high blood sugar levels cause a micro-vascular problem within the cochlea of the inner ear, which has an important role within the auditory system.

Research is still continuing to establish exactly why diabetes can affect hearing loss to such a great extent and no doubt more results will be published in the coming years.

In the meantime, keep up those all-important hearing tests as well as those regular eye tests.