Allergies and Hearing Loss

Allergies are a pain for anyone who spends their summer months sneezing into tissues. Allergies can hurt your eyes, make your face swell up, cause a perpetually runny nose and watery eyes. You'll cough more, you’ll feel like you’ve been hit in the face with a pollen bomb and it’s just not fun at all!

The one thing that you may not have considered is how your allergies can affect your hearing. Sure, you may have noticed that your ears feel insanely itchy, but all the sneezing and coughing are symptoms that are less severe than the ear pain that you may experience. One of the costs of allergies is hearing loss, and not many people know they can lose their hearing as a result. 

Hearing loss is caused by many things and you may not believe that you can lose your hearing, but different parts of your ears are affected by allergies, so it’s entirely possible that your allergies can cause one of these many parts to deteriorate. Sometimes, the hearing loss is due to swelling inside the ear as a result of the allergy affecting the rest of your face, but that swelling can prevent sound from entering the ear canal and that’s something that can lead to a temporary disability in your hearing.

What if They’re Left Untreated?

Anyone with an allergy knows how severe it can be if you don't get treatment – even for allergies to pollen. Allergies can cause mucus to travel to the eustachian tube, situated in the middle ear. This will then make you feel you are plugged up, and because allergies and hearing loss are so closely related, the buildup of mucus can be left untreated, which can make a temporary disability a permanent situation for you. 

It’s not an option to leave your allergies untreated as it’s just not worth the risk of your hearing to do that. Permanent hearing loss doesn't just affect you seasonally like the allergies might; it’s forever and your audiologist will be able to tell you whether your hearing loss is due to an allergy or not. Getting your allergies assessed by your primary healthcare provider and then following this up with an appointment with your audiologist for a hearing test is just good healthcare. You need to make sure that you are on top of your allergy treatment, too, as it can be better for you to get treatment than just sit on it for a while.

How Can You Prevent Allergies?

Unfortunately, there is no real way to prevent being allergic to something. If you are allergic to pollen, for example, you will either build up a tolerance for it over time or you will have to learn to manage it rather than prevent it altogether. There are steps that you can take to ensure that you manage your allergies, though, and mostly it involves ensuring that you are aware of the triggers for your allergies in the first place.

There are over the counter options to relieve pain, reduce allergy symptoms and decongestants are the most popular ones out there as they can reduce your mucus build-up in your ears. This reduction can ensure that your hearing stays intact and if you are afraid of that possibility of hearing loss but you can’t avoid going outside, speaking to an audiologist can make a world of difference. Not only can they work with you on your hearing loss, they can recommend the right treatments to ensure that your body can fight the allergies you are experiencing. Allergies shouldn't prevent you from enjoying life as you know it, and the right help can ensure that you are able to enjoy life without risking your hearing.

Getting help

No matter what you do, you need to be aware of how your allergies can affect your hearing and an audiologist can talk you through the risks. Allergies and hearing loss are not common together, but they are still a possibility of which you should be aware. If you are dealing with allergy-related hearing loss, you should speak to the experts at Gavin Audiology and Hearing Aids. With specialist patient care and an excellent staffing team, you can ensure that you can prevent hearing loss due to allergies. Call us today at (914) 610-3440 and get started with help for your allergies.