loss, tinnitus and menopause – Healthy Hearing

Contributed by Temma Ehrenfeld
Last updated January 29, 20212021-01-29T00:00:00-06:00

The decision to take hormone therapy (HT) to tame menopausal symptoms can be complex. There are benefits and risks that you must weigh with your healthcare provider. One area of emerging research is the relationship between hearing loss, menopause and hormone therapy. 

Researchers are still teasing out how menopause affects hearing. The same is true of HT: Research with mice and preliminary human studies suggest that taking estrogen can have protective effects on your hearing. However, an analysis with the largest data pool to date on the topic actually found the opposite.

So far studies have produced mix results
when looking at the impact of hormones
on hearing loss.

If you don’t currently have hearing loss, HT could increase your risk, according to a team led by Dr. Sharon Curhan, MD, a physician and epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. This was true for both pills and patches, and for formulas with estrogen only or combined with progesterone.

To get down to the numbers: When Curhan’s team analyzed data for more than 47,000 female nurses spanning 22 years, they concluded that a course of HT for five to ten years increased a woman’s risk of hearing loss by 15 percent compared to a woman not taking HT. 

Risk increased the longer a woman stayed on HT. The analysis also found that women who undergo menopause at an older age have a higher risk of hearing loss.

Menopause and hearing loss

It’s possible that your hearing may change, or you may develop tinnitus (ringing in the ears) as you approach menopause. Why? Drops in estrogen can trigger symptoms like hot flashes. Estrogen, a hormone, plays a role throughout the body—in your muscles and bones, heart and brain as well as reproductive system. Scientists know we have estrogen receptors in ear cells and in auditory pathways, but it’s still unknown exactly how estrogen affects hearing.

Sex hormone levels change during a menstrual cycle, and during menstruation, your hearing can become less sensitive. During perimenopause—the years before your ovaries stop releasing eggs and your period ends—your ovaries gradually produce less estrogen. In the last one to two years of perimenopause, the drop in estrogen speeds up. After your period ends, typically after age 45, the ovaries produce little estrogen but you still get some from your adrenal glands and fat tissue.  

As Curhan’s team reports, both human and animal studies have shown that low estrogen levels can impair hearing, possibly through alterations in blood flow to the cochlea, the hollow tube in the inner …….

Source: https://www.healthyhearing.com/report/53161-Hearing-loss-menopause-tinnitus-hormones