Why Arthritis Causes a Loss of One of Your Five Senses

Scientists have discovered a surprising connection between arthritis and one of your five senses, or rather the loss of one of these senses.

Before reading any further, arthritis sufferers should try to guess which one.

Do you trip over objects (eyes), do you find yourself saying “excuse me, what’s that?” (ears), or do you burn your food more often as your disease progresses?(nose)

In January 2016, a comprehensive literature review in the Open Rheumatology Journal found that people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were more likely to suffer from poor hearing than people without RA.

This is a well-established finding that dates back to the 1980s and 1990s, but the studies have become more sophisticated recently.

For example, in 2004, the American Journal of Otolaryngology printed a study that compared the hearing of 74 RA patients with that of 45 people without this condition.

They played tones at 11 different frequencies to check which ones their participants could hear. Not only did they find that all the tones from low to high had to be much louder before arthritis sufferers could hear them, but also that the hearing loss progressed with the duration of the disease.

In a 1990 article in the Journal of Otolaryngology, the authors tested 25 RA patients and 25 people with healthy joints, concluding that the former did not only struggle with the hearing of tones, but also with the hearing of speech.

Speech had to be louder before arthritis sufferers could hear it, and even louder before they could properly identify the words and sentences.

Why does this occur?

At this stage, researchers are not quite sure. Some have traced the increasing deafness to the arthritis itself, while others, like a 2012 study published in The American Journal of Epidemiology, have suggested that pain medications used by arthritis patients may be the culprits.

To be precise, ibuprofen and acetaminophen, when taken two or more times per week, can increase the rate of hearing loss, possibly because they reduce blood flow to the cochlea or damaged your body’s own mechanisms that protect it from damage.

The damage could be permanent. So make sure you do everything in your power to tackle your arthritis naturally. Here is the exact step-by-step strategy that helped me and has helped thousands of readers since…