This is a guest post by Natalia Z. of Webctor.com

With improper management of diabetes, women can experience greater hearing loss as they get older.

New research at the Henry Ford hospital in Detroit has revealed that if you are a female with diabetes and have not had the ability to maintain a healthy state with drugs, you have a greater chance of loss of hearing as you age.

Clinical Trials

A clinical study looked at women between the ages of 60 and 75 that have diabetes and were able to maintain a healthy state had less hearing loss than those patients who had poorly controlled diabetes.  In fact, women who had the ability to manage their diabetes well had hearing ability comparable to non-diabetic female patients in the same age category.

Male Hearing Loss

This study was also able to bring light to male loss of hearing.  It turns out that men whether they had diabetes or not at any age have greater hearing loss compared to females.

We all lose some hearing ability as we age however, hearing loss can increase with patients who are diabetic particularly when the diabetic condition is poorly managed.  This clinical study demonstrates this clearly and provides information on how important it is to properly manage your diabetes.  If for any reason you have lost a good deal of your hearing, there are new medical devices that can restore a fair amount of your hearing.

It’s important to know the signs of hearing loss.  These involve having problems hearing background sounds, being able to hear conversations in public places and turning up the volume on your radio or television set.  This may be subtle at first so try to take notice as you age.  The American Diabetes Association indicates that there are close to 26 million individuals in the United States alone that are diabetic and around 35 million people have some form of hearing loss.

The purpose of this clinical trial was to determine the difference if any between patients who had well  managed diabetes versus those with poorly managed diabetes as well as patients who did not have diabetes.  This was a long-term study taking place between 2000 and 2008 that involved almost 1000 patients.  Trials were conducted based on age and gender.  This provided information not available from previous trials as earlier clinicals did not concentrate on blood-sugar levels, age or sex.

According to Dr. Handzo, males have poorer hearing even when they are young which may mask any effects diabetes has on general hearing loss.  This suggests that more studies should be done on the role sex has to do with the loss of hearing.

About the Author: Natalia Z. is a one of the specialists on Webctor.com – a  new health center which is responsible for bringing free and accurate medical information to the Internet.  You can follow the portal on Twitter @webctor_com