Lifestyle, metabolic dysfunction and the risk of hearing impairment

To clarify this dynamic, researchers from Fudan University in China analyzed data from 441,844 UK Biobank participants, aged between 40 and 69, followed for an average period of 14.22 years. They created a lifestyle score covering seven components: smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, sleep duration, sedentary time, social engagement and dietary supplement use. Throughout the study, 20,743 new cases of hearing loss were recorded.

The main finding of the work points to metabolic dysfunction as the central biological link between lifestyle and ear health. While smoking causes harm through a combination of inflammatory and metabolic changes, the benefits of physical activity and healthy sleep come from improvements in metabolism, such as better insulin sensitivity, a balanced lipid profile, and a lower percentage of body fat. It is believed that such conditions preserve cochlear microcirculation and reduce oxidative stress in auditory hair cells.

People with intellectual disabilities have a five to ten times greater risk of hearing loss compared to the rest of the population. However, there is a high probability that the problem will not be diagnosed or treated properly. The HörGeist study, carried out in Germany, analyzed barriers, costs and the feasibility of implementing a program to mitigate this distortion. Among the 1,053 participants evaluated, 44% had hearing loss – 77% of which had never been diagnosed by a specialist. Although 27% of the group received instructions for using the equipment, adherence was only 37%, due to resistance from both caregivers and patients. Given this scenario, researchers highlight the urgency of raising awareness in society about the impact of untreated deafness on accelerating cognitive decline.